Something to watch tonight: Friday 6 June

Emperor (Webber, 2012)

Every Sunday for the last 25 or so weeks, I’ve been watching an episode of the 1973 documentary series The World at War. The last three episodes have been about Japan: the home front, the war in the Pacific and the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to precipitate the end of the war.

The final shot of the most recent episode was General Douglas MacArthur receiving the formal Japanese surrender. At that moment, I realised that I had a copy of a feature film that picks up from where that scene ended – a film that I hadn’t actually seen. Emperor was released in 2012 and starred Tommy Lee Jones as MacArthur along with Lost’s Matthew Fox as another General, Bonner Fellers.

The film is about the uncertain period at the end of the war when nobody really knew whether the US occupation of Japan would be peaceful or not and whether any attempt by the Allies to prosecute the Japanese Emperor Hirohito for war crimes would result in further bloodshed. Fellers is the Japanese cultural expert employed by MacArthur to come up with an urgent answer because politicians back in the US were eager to see ‘justice’ done for Pearl Harbor and everything that came after.

The film dramatises all of this decently, and we are encouraged to see the Japanese perspective through Fellers’ eyes, but the over-egging of a romantic subplot implies a lack of confidence in the material to break through to mainstream audiences. And so it proved as the film was not a massive hit.

Directed by The Girl With a Pearl Earring’s Peter Webber, the other interesting thing about the film from a New Zealand perspective is that it was shot here and there is a big local contribution to the cast and crew. It’s shot by Stuart Drybugh (The Piano), edited by Chris Plummer (Boy), designed by Grant Major (A Minecraft Movie) and has costumes by Ngila Dickson, who had also contributed to turning New Zealand into Japan on The Last Samurai.

In the closing credits, we are given confirmation that Fellers was indeed a real person and told that when he left the service he became active in politics. What that doesn’t tell you is that the kind of politics he was active in believed in a “one-world conspiracy” promoted by a shadowy Jewish cabal. Not quite as heroic or culturally sensitive as Fox’s portrayal would have us believe.

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Where to watch Emperor

Worldwide: On physical media from ViaVision