The Sun / Солнце (2005)

Third part in Aleksandr Sokurov's tetrology, following "Moloch" and "Taurus", focuses on Japanese Emperor Hirohito and Japan's defeat in World War II when he is finally confronted by Gen.
1 win & 2 nominations.

The predictably unreliable Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov has shot this wonderfully eccentric and fascinating film about the last days of Emperor Hirohito's reign as if it were a science-fiction film. And indeed, the otherworldly Hirohito (Issey Ogata) certainly does suggest a somewhat less cuddlesome E. T., both in his alienation from the quotidian world (the coddled emperor can barely dress himself) and in his relationship with his nominally more human protector, in this case General MacArthur (Robert Dawson). Shot in 35 millimeter in the filmmaker's preferred brackish tones, "The Sun" traces Hirohito as he wanders about his compound engaged in meaningless rituals and surrounded by minders who are as much his guards as his servants. In one of the most revelatory scenes, Hirohito, an amateur scientist, dons a white lab coat to examine the pickled remains of a hermit crab. As he waxes poetic about this pathetic pale specimen, there can be no doubt that the emperor - an all-too-human man raised as a god - is effectively staring into a mirror. Mr. Ogata, whose mouth incessantly opens and shuts as if the emperor were nothing more than a very costly pet carp, is mesmerizing.






Other Sokurov's films:
Days of Eclipse / Дни затмения (1988)
Moloch / Молох (1999)
Taurus / Телец (2001)