At the age of 53, Alexander Sokurov is Russia's leading intellectual film director and one of the European Film Academy's top 100 directors. His new film, Solntse (Sun), which is about Japan's Emperor Hirohito and will be the third part of his study of men in power, is already in the editing room. "The emperor had the courage to give up the past and provide a worthy future for his country," the director says in describing the message of his new film.
His trilogy about the politicians who largely wrote the script for the 20th century began with the 1999 film Moloch about Hitler's private life. In 2000, the director continued his series with the film Taurus, which focused on Lenin's last days. Sokurov is interested in the personal dramas of famous leaders. He explodes any notion about the sanctity of power. "It involves hatred, suspicion and aggression, the desire to destroy similar others," the director explains. "I want to understand what becomes deformed inside a person at the moment he gets power."
In his opinion, absolute power consumed Hitler's soul to the point where it could not be revived. Lenin, Sokurov continues, understood the terrible dead end he had driven his country into, but "it was too late." Emperor Hirohito, who ruled Japan for over 60 years, overcame his pride bred by power. "He was the only historical figure of his time who went through entire WWII as a leader of the Germany-Italy-Japan axis and not only escaped trial, but also remained in his country with the same status," Sokurov believes. "Moreover, in terms of objective development, Japan has by far surpassed the victors."
The emperor remains a sacred figure for many in Japan. The Russian director presents him as someone who would have eagerly opted for science over ruling. He was interested in botany and ichthyology, published his scientific pursuits and made a few discoveries. "He was a man of deep intuition, exclusive dignity and big courage," the director says. "He was ready to accept death as the vengeance of the victors." When the Americans entered Japanese territory in 1945 - the events highlighted in Sokurov's film - the Japan's several million soldiers were ready to fight. Hirohito's position determined the outcome of the war. "He said, 'Don't put up resistance, the life of a Japanese is the most precious thing,' and thereby saved his people from extermination," the director emphasizes.
Sokurov's interest in history is professional, as he graduated with a history degree from University of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod, Volga area), where he simultaneously worked for local television.
At first, only film connoisseurs took note of Sokurov, especially after his debut feature in the 1970s, The Lonely Human Voice, won the blessing of Russian cinema's leading light, Andrei Tarkovsky. His second work, The Mournful Insensitivity, adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House in 1983, won acclaim of the critics for its depiction of loneliness and the lack of affinity between people. It was then that Sokurov established his style of "intellectual painting," as he spent hours shooting every scene with exquisite skill.
It was only in the mid-1990s that he was promoted to the status of intellectual movie idol, winning one award after another, from the Vatican's International Prize Third Millennium to the main Russian State Prize. He has represented Russia at the Cannes Film Festival ever since.
Indeed, his Father and Son, which describes the harmony of close souls, took the FIPRESCI prize in Cannes in 2003. This movie was a sequel to the 1997 award winning Mother and Son, in which the mother peacefully passes away in the lap of her affectionate son.
Sokurov's Russian Ark was released in 2002 to mark the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. Following its US release in August 2003, Time marveled at its unprecedented virtuosity, while The Washington Post hailed its cinematographic magic. It also sold out in Europe and South America.
The film, which is based on the reminiscences of the French writer and traveler Astolph de Custine's time in Russia, charts three centuries of Russian history played out in the Hermitage, with 900 actors, as well as hundreds of wigs and costumes shot by a non-stop camera. The name of the movie can be interpreted as follows: like the Biblical arc, Russia floats on the waves of time, preserving, despite all the historical upheavals, its priceless cultural wealth.
Alexander Sokurov has taken the director's chair for films about 20th century Russian geniuses: Fyodor Chaliapin, Anton Chekhov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Dmitry Shostakovich and Andrei Tarkovsky, as well as unknown soldiers who served on the Tajik border.
On completing the movie about Emperor Hirohito, Sokurov will embark on another project to present a more general picture about the 20th century's dictators.
