(USA, 106 min.)
Dir. Peter Webber, Writ. David Klass, Veri Blasi
Starring: Matthew Fox, Tommy Lee Jones, Eriko Hatsune, Colin
Moy.
It only takes one soldier to derail a mission. A good
general can devise a shrewd plan of attack, assemble all the proper hardware
and battlements, and command a robust group of soldiers to execute his orders.
If, however, one lone soldier steps out of line, the entire mission can fly off
the rails.
The greatness of Emperor,
despite its battalion of talent, is, as the army might say, completely FUBAR thanks
to its wayward soldier, Matthew Fox. Fox, still looking sickly gaunt from Alex Cross, is insufferably dull in the
lead role of what could have been a strong film. (To his fairness, though, he’s
much better here than he was in the aforementioned Tyler Perry movie.) As his
character, General Bonner Fellers, navigates the mess of post-war Japan, Fox
advances the procedural with a series of wooden conversations played with
monotone flatness. Some of Fellers’ explorations of the ideological turmoil in
which Japan finds itself are intriguing, but watching Emperor was like Hiroshima on my brain cells as Fox mused dogma in
bland, one-note voiceover for the better part of two hours.
Fellers is tasked to investigate the culpability of Japan’s
Emperor Hirohito and to provide evidence whether the Emperor should be tried
for war crimes. The mission falls on Feller from General Douglas McArthur, who
must deliver a verdict on the Emperor’s fate since he is technically the new
ruler of Japan as the Supreme Commander of the Occupying Forces. Tommy Lee
Jones plays McArthur with marvellous gusto. The General is relegated to a
supporting role in the film, yet Jones’s appropriately larger-than-life
portrayal of the man brings the kind of fireworks one hopes to see in a film
like Emperor. Jones is at his ornery
best as he chews McArthur’s corncob pipe, so one can’t help but wish that Emperor focused more on the burden
resting on the General’s soldiers, rather than on Fellers’ love life.
Fellers—and, by consequence, Emperor—devotes much of its attention to investigating an old flame
from the young man’s past. Before the war, back in America, Feller fell in love
with a Japanese exchange student named Aya (Eriko Hatsune). Memories of Aya
haunt Feller as he travels war-ravaged Japan, and Emperor provides ample flashbacks that show Feller following his
girl to Japan, where the impending war cut their romance short.
The flashback scenes overtake Fellers’ mission to ferret out
the guilty parties in Japan. Fellers’ memory of Aya inevitably seeps into his
investigation, and his commitment to her draws out the devotion to the Emperor
that he witnesses from his prisoners. Many of the parties of Emperor, on either side of the case,
provide ample declarative statements that make the message abundantly clear. Aya,
for example, tells Feller during one of his memories of their time in Japan,
“Now that you know loyalty, you will understand Japan.”
It’s not exactly as cinematic a musing as “We’ll always have
Paris,” but the flashback scenes, dull as they are, help Fellers see the
situation with utter clarity. Emperor
delivers a verdict on the ideological dissimilarities that divide the East and
the West—political and philosophical viewpoints are fundamentally different
between ancient and comparatively new cultures. There is an ideology or a
mindset that can’t be blasted out by force. Even though Feller and McArthur’s
mission portrays the Japanese as a conquered people, the support for the
Emperor suggests that the Japanese won the war… or at least until America got its
way.
Emperor comes to
life in its final moments when General McArthur finally has a one-to-one
session with Hirohito himself (played by Takatarô Kataoka). The Japanese, as
McArthur states, consider Hirohito a god, so the man-to-man chat is a humbling
endeavour to bring together the best of both worlds. The humorous meeting between
the two suggests that these seemingly opposite ideologies are actually
compatible if negotiated through civility rather than imposed by force. The
post-scripts of the film, however, somewhat sugarcoat Hirohito’s renunciation
of his divine status as a triumph for Uncle Sam. The preceding lesson could
have offered an appropriate endnote to leave viewers thinking about the
necessity of entering a foreign land and imposing democracy by force.
Alternatively, the film could have provided more backstory on the cultural
history of Japan, rather than the courtship of Fellers and Aya, to make the
crumbling of the empire more palatable. Emperor
ultimately results in the same kind of “Yay, America!” backslapping that some
critics/filmgoers found problematic in Argo,
but the delivery is nowhere near as engaging or, because of Matthew Fox, not nearly
as entertaining.
Rating: ★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Emperor is currently playing in Toronto at the Varsity.
Its Ottawa release
is to be announced.
*Photos by Kristy Griffin, courtesy of Mongrel Media
