Alexander Sokurov’s The Sun envisions the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, a putative descendant of the Sun God who renounced his divinity in the wake of nuclear devastation, as an obscure man of captivatingly delicate temperament. As bombs rain down on Tokyo, he dissects a hermit crab, composes mediocre haiku, and paces his lab-turned-bunker with the fumbling gait of a drowsy Chaplin. These diversions obscure what intermittently emerges as a horrendous angst – the Emperor (Issey Ogata) must decide exactly how to submit to his enemy, a submission that was intolerable to many Japanese, and one that would permanently undermine the concept of the Emperor’s divinity.
The enemy is embodied in the person of General Douglas MacArthur (Robert Dawson), who having come a long way is baffled to find a “child” at the reins of the Japanese war machine. Of all The Sun’s pleasures, both queer and profound, the dinnertime interactions between these two are best. Sokurov has reconstructed the dining room of the famous photograph to a tee – and it is tempting to think that he drew his first fancies about Hirohito from it. There is certainly a Chaplin-esque lilt to the real emperor’s posture there. But only a fine imagination could create this: a moment in which MacArthur, having excused himself, watches from behind a slit door as the gleeful Emperor snuffs out candles for the sheer joy of temptation. Marianne Moore once wrote that “To explain grace requires a curious hand”, so too for the velleities of absolute power.
The film begins, both in coloring and in manner, as a sort of BBC country house drama. The Emperor is fed and dressed by his aged and fawning butler, while a factotum busies himself with the task of projecting despair-defying honor. Sokurov is unafraid of comedy, despite his subject matter – the butler must apologize for each chance contact as he buttons up his master, who, oblivious to this exertion, contemplates the beads of sweat on the old man’s scalp. These unbearably close portraits of confusing intimacy (later the Emperor lights his cigar, forehead to forehead, from MacArthur’s) are a hallmark excellence of the film. One of their effects, besides humor, is to reset the historical consciousness of the viewer. After a few minutes we become mere observers of human strangeness, watching as they move from one oak-paneled room to the next, half-forgetting the chaos that rages outside, in this case, over the radio.
Other modes come quickly though. As soon as the Emperor exits his quarters into the bomb shelter’s ratty hallways, Sokurov (who is also the photography director) floods us in stark, fearful shadows. These tonal shifts are common and unapologetic, and evoke an emotional realism that stands in contrast with the close character study. As the frail, almost demented emperor struggles to nap, we are flashed into a horrifying dreamscape of the bombing of Tokyo, in which winged carp play the part of American warplanes. This segment, among many others, is an example of the film’s potent command of CGI.
Ogawa, who was faced with history’s first prolonged depiction of the Emperor [1], has created an unforgettable character. An essential component is a facial tic; his mouth constantly opens and closes as if in anticipation of an utterance, or an incoming morsel. It gives one a persistent sense of the Emperor’s absurd struggle to occupy a divine body.
Hirohito was a published marine biologist, and one of the film’s finest sequences shows him at study over a preserved Dorippe Granulata, a rare horseshoe crab found in Japanese shallows. Initially loquacious about the specimen, whose shell resembles a samurai mask, the Emperor pauses at his description of the creature’s migratory habits. Here he falls into a torpid contemplation of the causes of the war. In this case, his grasping conscience fastens upon the United States’ Immigration Act of 1924, which incensed the Japanese people, and in his estimate, allowed the Japanese military to ride a jingoistic wave toward hostilities. It is a testament to Sokurov’s prowess that at this point in the film we know his Emperor well enough to sense the true meaning beneath these half-felt equivocations. He is ultimately baffled by war, and though he may well have contributed to its advent countless times, in repose he simply cannot imagine it as a reality. The Emperor’s thoughts consistently return to an idyll of ancient, sea-locked Japan. In an earlier scene he recites a poem by his grandfather, the Meiji Emperor [2]:
Sea to the North, and to the South
To the West and to the East
Waves whirl up
The film’s dramatic structure is built around the Emperor’s emergence from this idyll, and his eventual renunciation of divinity and submission to Allied forces. Sokurov denies us the famous radio address, opting instead for a delirious nighttime scene in which the Emperor chants elements of his speech, negotiating in the moonlight for the release of the god within. The scene is unmistakably drawn from Faust [3] , but here the bargain is struck in order to descend to the life of a private man. It is a prospect the Emperor welcomes happily. At no point in the movie does the historical reality loom so vividly above the individual’s mind: what should we really care for the consolations of such a bloodstained man? Yet early the next morning, as he and his wife discuss the prospects of their mortal life, one cannot help but wish them luck.
The Sun will be at Film Forum until through December 1st.
[1] Portrayal of the Emperor, who’s voice wasn’t heard by the Japanese people until his radio announcement of surrender, has remained taboo. Sokurov kept his lead’s identity secret during filming for fear of assassination. Interestingly, the film was well received by many in Japan.
[2] The historical record gives a different poem, no less in line with his thinking:
Across the four seas, all are brothers.
In such a world why do the waves rage, the winds roar?
[3] The Sun is the third part in a tetralogy of films concerning figures who embody absolute power. It was preceded by one about Hitler, (Moloch) and Lenin (Taurus). The final film will be on Faust.
