
In the last days of August
1945, as the Japanese prepare to surrender to
occupying American forces, Emperor Hirohito rummages
around his palace, trying to make sense of the
impending defeat and his own responsibility for
it. In an unforgettably poignant performance by
Issey Ogata, Hirohito is fully brought to life
as an educated, ineffectual gentleman, aware of
his fallibility but trapped by rituals of adoration
behind the mask of divinity. Aleksandr Sokurov,
(Mother and Son, NYFF í97; Russian
Ark, NYFF ë02), brings his customary imagistic
brilliance to this tour-de-force of historical
reconstruction. As controversial for its interpretative
conjectures as it is visually arresting, The Sun
is a complex, important work by a major filmmaker.
110 min. Russia/Italy/France/Switzerland, 2005.
Click here for New York Times review and festival coverage.
Shown with
Adapted from a play by 1920s Russian avant-garde writer Daniil Charms, this "post-futuristic" fragment imagines a totalitarian world in which the limits of human perception and science conceal other, more ominous dimensions.
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43rd New York Film Festival, available exclusively
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