Twilight Hours

"Alexander Sokurov is perhaps the most ambitious and original filmmaker working anywhere in the world today." - Susan Sontag

Russian director Alexander Sokurov's The Sun plays on Wednesday and Thursday, September 16-17. The concluding installment of Sokurov's trilogy of intimate, eccentric portraits of despots, The Sun transports us back almost 70 years to the end of WWII for an extremely privileged account of Emperor Hirohito's final days as Japan's ruler. Daintily embodied by Issei Ogata, Hirohito is an enigmatic intellectual, quietly wrestling with the demise of his divine status and the encroaching influence of modernity (and the West) on his nation. Sokurov uses Hirohito's downfall not to simply recreate history but explore what film critic Andrew Tracy describes as "momentary nexuses through which various realities—those created by the powerful and those of which they can not even conceive—momentarily intersect." Eschewing the bombast that normally accompanies filmed history, The Sun's humane yet ambiguous treatment of its subject invites reflection.

Nicole Monnier, Professor of Russian at MU, will be on hand afterward to discuss the film and Sokurov's career.