The Sun is the final installment of a three part series of biopics planned by Alexander Sokurov, one of the most consistent and unpredictable directors currently on the scene. Each film covers a key moment in the life of a world leader, the first two films,Moloch and Taurus, featuring Hitler and Lenin. The Sun follows around the surprisingly enigmatic Hirohito in the hours before Japan surrendered to American ground forces. Sokurov treats this turn of world events with characteristic distance and dignity, so much so that if I knew nothing about the film, it would have taken me a few minutes to even catch on to the fact that I was watching Hirohito.
Most of the film takes place in the imperial bunker, the final location of the emperor’s absolute isolation from his people. Sokurov lingers calculatedly on daily routine, gazing for minutes at the eating of a breakfast, the buttoning of a tunic, or the distanced contemplation of an emperor vaguely aware of the devastation of his empire. His collapsed world is a series of artificially regal rooms locked tightly underground behind bombproof vaults. Ogata’s performance as Hirohito compliments Sokurov’s deliberate pacing, his precise and haunting nuances practically justifying the production of this film. The history the film describes is difficult, but Ogata manages to make these unprecedented moments engagingly human. When Sokurov restages the conversations between him and General Douglas McArthur, even a bit of humor transpires. I found myself chuckling in spite of myself. McAruthur’s inability to comprehend Hirohito’s role as emperor is balanced by Hirohito’s presence as something from another world, incomprehensible even to his own people. These are probably some of the profoundest political lessons put on screen since Errol Morris’ Fog of War.
That is not to say that the film doesn’t have its share of horrors. Apparently, Hirohito had a keen interest in marine biology, and Sokurov parlays this hobby into an effective abstraction of the bombing of Japan. Planes dive, bombs fall, and walls of fire raze blocks of buildings. Slowly, these planes morph into marine creatures assaulting Japan in terrifying red skies. This sequence is very hard to describe, but oddly suited to the meditative air of Hirohito’s acceptance of his country’s destruction. It is brutally animal, and though Sokurov avoids the specter of war film realism, he manages to produce something even more memorable and instructive. The same could be said of the film as a whole.