The Sun (2005)

...and Henry fell asleep."That is one movie that won't get any high marks in popularity," Kristl said, somewhat louder than was necessary, for the movie was just finishing up with the credits, but she wanted to see if she could get Henry to wake up and make her a coffee.It hadn't gone quite unnoticed to Kristl that Henry had nodded off somewhere at the beginning of the movie. Not that it surprised her the least. The movie didn't contain kick-ass women waving swords about or shooting bad guys with pistols contain an unending supply of bullets and didn't need to reload. God, these guns basically that fired themselves.. No excitement and boss battles here. Just a weird strange movie.The pace was at best leisurely, if you tried to state it in an optimistic manner, ...which was probably done on purpose. "Slow. It is interesting in a way, but requires a lot of patience to sit through. The whole movie is somewhat strange too. I can't help it, but somehow I have to compare it to Der Untergang, with the raving Hitler. Both men who had were prime movers in World War II. Both in a situation that everything is lost. Both living is a world completely disconnected from reality and both strange men, completely out of touch with the rest of humanity."Henry stirred, then turned around and continued snoring."Reminds me not to have a beer before a movie. Unless it's going to be a some high fast paced on the edge movie. Then beer is okay," Kristl mused. Picking up the trail of her thoughts, Kristl continued, "This emperor is living in his own world, treated like a god on earth, which he was to most of his people, and totally out of touch with reality. Like when he leaves a room, people open the doors for him, except that one time after leaving the room after having an audience with MacArthur. The emperor gets confronted by a door. And you see him struggle how to open the door. Normally other people open the door for him.""Or his totally nonsensical reaction in a meeting of the rulers of Japan. He babbles some disconnected lines. Which seems to vaguely touch on the situation but seems to say not a thing. Like those predictions of Nostradamus.""Or his tendency to switch subjects during a conversation. Suddenly talking about something else entirely. And then this man has to make a decision about ending the war. And almost, like a little happy child, he renounces his divinity."Henry made some snorting sounds, giving Kristl some hope that he was about to wake. She was pondering prodding him to wake him up."But to be honest.. it is quite a long movie for it seems to just study this strange man, living in this make believe world. Isolated from it by the people around him. Somehow you would expect a movie to add at least a layer of tension or drama. Something more than the intimate study of a reclusive. But that is about it."She prodded Henry, he just murmured and turned on his other side. "And I understand from other sources that it might be quite a wrong picture at that. According to others he wasn't this strange disconnected child, like MacArthur says, but he was well aware of what was going on and informed about it and actually several times the author of harsh decisions, like ordering the use of gas in the Sino-Japanese wars. A picture that could still fit with him being a child.. but an innocent one? It is a pity the movie doesn't seem to take that into account. The double side of a child: innocent against cruel. Kids can go many ways.."Kristl looked at Henry, who was now snoring audible, "Sleeping like a baby." She grinned.She stood up, walked over to the kitchen and made her own coffee. She like his coffee better, but she had to make do. Then she got one of those sheep woolen blankets, they had in the spare room, and tucked him in. And she did not forget to turn of the light when she left. The exit light above the rear door provided just about enough light. Just like those lights for kids to make them sleep better in the dark of night.www.meritcoba.com

The Sun is a domestic film of quiet heartbreak that just happens to be about the ordained leader of a nation. It chronicles the last days of Hirohito's reign in a sympathetic but not apologist manner, dealing in subtlety and silences. Sokurov not only manages to make this elegiac instead of boring but fills the screen with indelible images.Almost as important as Sokurov to The Sun's success is Issei Ogata. Ogata portrays Hirohito as a curious mixture of wisdom and naiveté. He acts with his whole body, from the prim minimized way he stands to the strange tremblings of his lips. Halfway through the film Douglas MacArthur proclaims that Hirohito is like a child, but this isn't quite accurate. He's a man who's developed stunted, like a flower twisting towards the sun, and often seems to have a baffling idea of what the outside world is like. He more resembles a hermit than an emperor, and this may be Sokurov's ultimate statement about power: that as much as it allows you to control others, it also isolates and insulates you from them, and ultimately makes you as strange and pathetic as the old man in this film.

Make sure that you don't have any sharp objects near you when you watch this garbage because you will probably want to cut your wrist! Let me explain.My wife and I read the great reviews before we rented this so called movie. So after the first thirty minutes of unbelievable boredom, we both knew that it would probably crank up and take off. Not only didn't it take off, the battery was too weak for it to even crank up!In our desperate attempt to rationalize why this waste of time got such high reviews, we even started to try and pretend that it was some kind of dark comedy. It wasn't. Don't buy this movie or even rent the DVD. Let me see if I can explain it any clearer. If you have NetFlix, this movie is basically free because you only pay a small monthly fee, DON'T even waste having it mailed to your home. For that matter, don't even watch the instant stream!The only thing that we think this movie would be good for is to tell someone that you don't like how great it is!Don't believe us? Then rent it. . . Apology accepted:)

Robert Dawson as MacArthur was a poor choice. He looks nothing like the real General, neither in height nor stature. In a famous photo of the period, MacArthur towers over Hirohito, even in His top hat, this framing suited the General's ego, and was not re-created in this film. Noticeably absent also, was the Generals favorite corncob pipe in this film, something the General was never without throughout World War 2.Other than that, the movie was a fascinating look at the Emperor's life, albeit from a very short time span. I thought this movie would have been much more interesting had it covered the start of the World War 2 with the Emperor receiving His Banzai's on His White Horse and seeming invincibility, to His ultimate fall from from a living God to That of a mortal being and a broken ruler.