Poetry and War
Despite historical consensus and the drastic global underpinnings of the place and time within The Sun, Sokurov manages to present a calm coming of age and an intensely strange antihero.
We see a tiny fragment of a world at war, a secluded bunker/ bungalow, the hideout for Emporer Hirohito, presumed descendant of the sun god. His people are devout unto death. The war is almost up. Japan is ravaged and there is little more to lose.
In a time of war, there exists the populace, soldiers and warmakers. All are affected in ways that cannot be hidden. As portrayed here, Hirohito is different. He is aloof, studying marine biology, willfully distracted, overjoyed by nature’s diminutive food chain basement. He is carefully carted through a series of rooms within a makeshift bunker, anxious caretakers hastening at his side. He takes MacArthur’s demand for surrender as a chance for more research, this time on the demeanors and customs of a brash American general.
The portraiture of the film is strong and steady, faintly blurred to denote time; it is easy to stay aware of the frame. Up close and intimate shots of almost still politicians in extreme states of emotion, beaten by a nation’s pride and death by the thousands plead with Hirohito to stop the war, succumb to shame. The petitions are met with a fleeting poem as written by the emperor’s grandfather, a confusing, quirky, and distanced recall to arms.
Contrast is a powerful tool. Who can relate to a god? How can a fledgling country understand the praxis of an ancient civilization? Is a holed up poet qualified to sacrifice thousands?
Can we relate the unanimous emperor to the film’s director, by way of poetic historicization?
This film encourages an introspective response beyond politics. In its humble climax, Hirohito rejects his deified status and for the first time feels human, free. A strange, almost beautiful revolution in a world torn to shreds.
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