The sun (2005)

Aleksandr Sokurov is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting contemporary directors. He made the impressive The Russian Ark (that is a long take!) and he has made the shimmering little film Mother and Son. The Sun (2005) is just as impressive, even though it is a deceivingly simple film without aesthetic pretense. With the exception of one or two surreals breaks, this could be a stage play. The story is equally simple. World war II is drawing to an end. The Japanese Emperor contemplates his future. We see him mostly alone in his chamber: writing poetry, fiddling with biological research, dressing. He meets general MacArthur. They dine. MacArthur offers him a deal. They smoke cigars.

The performance of Issei Ogata, who plays the Emperor, is magnificent. His frailty and his tics are just as important as his lines. This is not a historical drama in the traditional sense. What this is: it's a movie about political bodies stripped down to flesh and bones. The presence of the very few characters are remarkably physical. This is of course something that sets the film apart from almost every film made today (even those who do their best to appear "sensual"). The almost insurmountable tension of every small scene is all the more surprising as the cinematography and color setting are so mundane - no flares, no tricks, no nothing. In this setting, lines that easily turn into predictable clichés actually work (when the Emperor talks about his supposedly divine nature). What makes The Sun such an extraordinary film is that it transcends every conventional concept of what it means to "know" a character. We learn nothing about the Emperor. He is an utterly elusive character - but the film seems to open up for the perspective that it is not very clear what it means to "know" here at all. For this reason, it is slightly misleading to say that the film attempts to present the "human" side of the Emperor. The film explores "viewing somebody as a human being" - that is true - but the disparate images it ends up with are an open-ended affair. No "humanistic message".

The Sun is the third part of a trilogy. I haven't seen the first two films - Moloch and Telets - but I hope I will get a chance to see them soon.