AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

prekdahl I would have given this film a higher rating based on the acting, concept, and mood, but I think that it is historically inaccurate. The film attempts a sort of dream like examination of the personality of Japanese Emperor Hirohito (Emperor during WWII), and the distance between his personality and his role in Japan. However, at the beginning of the film, Hirohito is meeting with his military who are saying that they will never surrender, and he agrees. This meeting in the film is happening after the Atomic bomb was dropped and American soldiers were already landed in Japan, almost into Tokyo itself. If I remember my history correctly, Hirohito broke the deadlock in the Japanese military, and was responsible for the decision for Japan to surrender. Also,this decision was made before Americans landed in Japan. I have read that the director of the film, Sokurov, has said that he is not aiming at historical accuracy in his films. But it seems to me that the real interest of this film is that it might be an "accurate", if subjective, reading of Hirohito's personality. If the film misrepresents such significant knowledge and personal action of Hirohito as this, how can we trust any of its representations about what Hirohito was like?

field-jessel "The Sun" was a good way to introduce ourselves to the minimalist, detail-obsessed films of Alexander Sokurov -- so thanks to Minnesota Film Arts for showing it at St. Anthony Main, February 2010.Sokurov's Emperor Hirohito is not only humanized in this film, he finds redemption, if in a limited way that leaves him assailable for his true weakness: weakness of will, anxiety of spirit, and dreamy preference for leisurely study and cool contemplation. Hirohito is a true nobleman where his job called for either a savior or a butcher.The actor who plays Hirohito has an amazing technique. All of his facial features and especially his mouth and front teeth are applied very deliberately to create the sense of a careful, intelligent, and ultimately ordinary man.What to say of Sokurov's unique vision? It's something like a documentary of daily habits, a virtuosic sequencing of mundane and ritual behavior -- eating breakfast, reading a book, chatting with his servants, waiting for General McArthur to return, greeting his wife -- sequences that contain turning points. A surprisingly naive, yet resigned man faces up to his life, thus learning to really live in the end.

garnetdurham 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.

frankiehudson The beginning of this film is exceptionally dull, half an hour of Hirohito - in an excellent, intriguing performance by Issey Sogata - pottering around, surrounded by his overbearing courtiers. His servants appear genuinely awed by the God-like emperor and can hardly bow low enough to show their total subservience. Everything - buttoning a jacket, placing a knife and fork in his hands - is undertaken for the emperor.In a curious similarity to Hitler's last days in the chaotic bunker in the recent film Downfall (2005), Hirohito is confined to his own bunker beneath his imperial palace in Tokyo. Yet, there is little sign of the war down here, just a series of dull, ill-lit yet nicely-furnished rooms, all wooden panelling and seemingly very quiet, in the aftermath of the atomic bombs. The strange thing is the almost entirely Westernised clothes and total banality of the emperor's life. Hirohito wanders around like an Edwardian gentleman, attired in exquisite tailoring, all top hat and fine suits, like Bertie Wooster without the humour.Hirohito studies Darwin and makes a few minor reflections on his role in Japanese imperialism leading up to the war, and the nature of the beast, yet he is basically Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Selles) in the film Being There (1979), a sort of idiot-savant set free into a world of which he has little or no understanding. You just can't believe that Hirohito had any serious role in the whole affair.Continuing the Darwinist motif, there are little surrealist sequences, dream-like glimpses into Hirohito's mind, with strange flying fish bombers and so forth. In these sections, the film's like a sort of Salvador Dali/Luis Buenuel/Hirohito war and bombing comb. This reminds me of the brilliant Terence Mallick film, The Thin Red Line (1998), with several US troops under-going similar experiences in an island paradise during the terrible war in the Pacific.This is why I think the film works. The first meeting of Hirohito and MacArthur - in effect, the new emperor of Japan - is full of tension, a clash of two cultures, both incredibly nervous of each other. The two men start bonding and in one incredible moment of film, MacArthur and Hirohito have a sort of cigar kiss, the former lighting the emperor's cigar while puffing on his own, both engaged, head-to-head. It's like they're exchanging the fumes of victory and defeat. The embers. It is like an antidote to Bill Clinton's normal use of cigars.They get along just fine, like Laurel and Hardy Go to Tokyo, or something. Or Will Hay, for British readers.Did Hirohito really speak English? In one moment, Hirohito - in true Chauncey Gardiner fashion - goes into the garden for his first-ever photo-shoot. The photographers are squabbling amongst themselves over terms and conditions while, in the background, this peculiar, be-suited gentleman wanders around tending his roses. He proves to be quite a star, however, influences as he is by the American film stars he so idolises.