Director: Alexander Sokurov
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 3.0
Imaginative "recreation" of how Emperor Hirohito (Issei Ogata) reacted to Japan's defeat in the World War II, came to terms with his own existence as a mortal (as opposed to a divine being) and reluctantly surrendered to U.S. General Douglas MacArthur (Robert Dawson). Sokurov's off-beat approach to a revered Japanese figure reveals him to not only be "child-like" but also impossibly out-of-touch with reality: while war is raging, Hirohito locks himself away studying marine biology (a genuine passion of his), dreams of flying fish dropping fish bombs (?) and seems perplexed when he has to open a door for himself without a servant/slave performing that task for him. The clash between the American Way (embodied by MacArthur and the GIs and their lack of decorum) and the Japanese Way (of servitude and unthinking loyalty) is revealed in the interactions between the two groups: the Japanese sweat, shake and bow in Hirohito's presence, while the Americans look at him as this pale, goofy, Asian Charlie Chaplin. Still, the film seems a bit too careful in exonerating this frail little man for war crimes - Tojo and the Japanese army get most of the blame - and some historians aren't so quick to conclude he was "just" a figurehead....
