Change Your Image
prekdahl
Reviews
Solntse (2005)
SInce the history is inaccurate, how accurate is the psychology
I would have given this film a higher rating based on the acting, concept, and mood, but I think that it is historically inaccurate. The film attempts a sort of dream like examination of the personality of Japanese Emperor Hirohito (Emperor during WWII), and the distance between his personality and his role in Japan. However, at the beginning of the film, Hirohito is meeting with his military who are saying that they will never surrender, and he agrees. This meeting in the film is happening after the Atomic bomb was dropped and American soldiers were already landed in Japan, almost into Tokyo itself. If I remember my history correctly, Hirohito broke the deadlock in the Japanese military, and was responsible for the decision for Japan to surrender. Also,this decision was made before Americans landed in Japan. I have read that the director of the film, Sokurov, has said that he is not aiming at historical accuracy in his films. But it seems to me that the real interest of this film is that it might be an "accurate", if subjective, reading of Hirohito's personality. If the film misrepresents such significant knowledge and personal action of Hirohito as this, how can we trust any of its representations about what Hirohito was like?
Teorema (1968)
How Pasolini Explained the Movie
After seeing this movie I was very confused until I read an interview with Pasolini from 1969. In it he said, "I leave it to the spectator
is the visitor God or is he the Devil? He is not Christ. The important thing is that he is sacred, a supernatural being. He is something from beyond." When asked if the members of the family were in some way improved by their encounter with the visitor, he said, "Only in the sense that a man in a crisis is always better than a man who does not have a problem with his conscience. However, the conclusion of the story is negative because the characters live the experience but are not capable of understanding and resolving it. This is the 'lesson' of the movie -- the bourgeoisie have lost the sense of the sacred, and so they cannot solve their own lives in a religious way. But the servant is a peasant, really a person from another era, a pre-industrial era. That is why she is the only one who recognizes the visitor as God, why she alone does not rebuke him when he must leave. When I say God," Pasolini quickly adds, "I do not mean a Catholic God. He could belong to any religion, a peasant religion. All religions are really peasant religions. That is why religion is in crisis today. We are passing from a peasant world to an industrial world. But a world does not die, so the peasant civilization lives within us, buried within us. It is buried, along with the sense of the sacred, within the factory owner and his family in 'Teorema.'" ... "The father almost does (learn from his truly religious experience). He takes off his clothes and, like Saint Francis, leaves all material things behind. When he reaches the desert, which represents the ascetic life he has been trying to gain, he is not capable of living a mystical experience, as Saint Francis was, because he is historically made in another manner. He arrives almost to the limit of being saved, but he doesn't make it. It's very important that the middle-class sees its own errors and suffers for them."
I would have to say that the movie is a failure, since I think it would be pretty much impossible for a viewer to grasp that interpretation after seeing the movie once, without exposure to Pasolini's thought. However, it has some beautiful and haunting passages, and the movie stays in your mind for a long time after you see it.