The Sun

Director: Alexander Sokurov


(published in spanish language at Contacto Directo newspaper
Vancouver,BC)


Alexander Sokurov is one of the most intriguing and enigmatic filmmakers of contemporary cinema. Definitively “The sun” is a movie out of the ordinary, and also the third installment of a series of films where Sokurov analyses the theme of power seen through different points of view.

In “The Sun” Sokurov examines the persona of emperor Hirohito towards the end of Word War II. Just before he rejects his divine lineage descendant of the sun goddess, and assumes a position of a simple human being. Timing couldn’t be better, it is summer 1945 and something worst happens to Japan.

What for emperor Hirohito is a horrible nightmare, for us is an allegoric dream full of symbolism reminding us of the atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hirohito sees on his dreams, a dantesque scene, a Japan devastated by war from the sky, with planes passing by, which at moments turn into fish, flying menacing over a Japan turned into rubble.

The sun is a slow movie for the average moviegoer already used to commercial films, but for the connoisseur, The Sun brings the opportunity to meet again at the big screen the author of “Mother and Sun”.

I discovered Sokurov a long time ago, back on my days when I was student in Mexico; on those days I was an avid and recurrent client of the Monterrey Cineteca, a cultural space created by the ministry of culture in Mexico, and I remember watching for the first time Sokuro’s movie: “Mother and Son” another enigmatic piece of this great director.

The sun is as intriguing as most of his films, some critics compare Sokurov’s films with Tarkovsky’s and I agree with that, but until certain level, Sokurov indeed has a style of his own and it is worth to take a look a this great film.