Emperor (2012)

 

            “Emperor” is a historical drama directed by Peter Webber.  It was his first film in 5 years.  He needs to get a better agent.  I’m not sure what motivated him to end his hiatus to make this film.  But I am much more perplexed as to what convinced the producers to make this film.  Don’t get me wrong, the more war films the better as far as I’m concerned.  But there are so many better topics that have not gotten off the bench, I wonder how a movie with virtually no potential box office gets put in the game.  For instance, how does this movie get made and “They Marched into Sunlight” sits in developmental hell.  Come on, Tom Hanks, get off your ass!  But I digress.  Let’s see if “Emperor” is a good movie even though no one was interested in seeing it. 

 

            After the Japanese surrender, Gen. MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) arrives in Japan to begin the occupation.  He brings Brigadier General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) to handle the arresting of war criminals.  Fellers narrates the film and is clearly sympathetic toward the Japanese people and the Emperor in particular.  MacArthur gives him ten days to determine whether Hirohito should be charged.  Fellers interviews high Japanese officials like Tojo to see if they can provide exoneration for the Emperor.  Meanwhile, in a subplot, Fellers is trying to find out if his pre-war Japanese girl friend Aya is still alive.  Queue the flashbacks.  These two efforts interweave.  In the last reel, a mustache-twirler is thrown in who accuses Fellers of being a Jap-lover who steered a bombing raid away from Aya’s home town.  The suspense is supposed to be building towards a decision by MacArthur that anybody watching this movie would already know.

 

            I guess I’ve already telegraphed that I was not impressed with this movie.  I’m glad it was green-lit, but the script did not defy my premonition that it would be boring.  As I’ve said, any historically literate viewer already knows that Hirohito was not put on trial.  The movie tries to overcome the lack of suspense by giving us an insider’s view of how the process worked.  But even that is not suspenseful because it is clear MacArthur does not want to try the Emperor and he has appointed a man who is simpatico with that.  It is interesting to see the interviews with various Japanese officials, including Tojo, who was put on trial and executed.  However, the movie does not debate whether Hirohito was a war criminal.  Every witness exonerates him.  Perhaps this was done for Japanese box office. 

 

            The romance is there just to take up time and appeal to female moviegoers.  There is no heat as Fox gives an inexplicably wooden performance.  The flashbacks are mundane and the payoff is weak.  Jones is much better as MacArthur.  He’s got the personality down pat.  Unfortunately, he is a secondary character.  Jones does not have to do much heavy lifting as he often plays roles like MacArthur.

 

            How is the movie when it comes to accuracy?  It does not start well as it leads with footage of the bombing of Hiroshima.  Except that the footage is of “Fat Man”, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.  What follows is acceptably true to the facts.  There was a Gen. Fellers who was in charge of exonerating the Emperor.  He is an interesting figure.  In 1940, he was in Egypt with the job of reporting on British efforts in the war with Rommel.  He had some ‘splainin to do as his reports were intercepted and deciphered by the Germans.  They got heads up about British forces and their movements.  It was a intelligence disaster and possibly cost many British lives.  In his defense, he was not a double agent and he did complain about using the less secure diplomatic code instead of the military one.  The British were not thrilled to learn that he was given the Distinguished Service Medal for his reports.  He ended up in the Pacific as MacArthur’s Chief of Psychological Operations.  He wrote a series of memoranda arguing against putting Hirohito on trial.  In Operation Blacklist, MacArthur put him in charge of getting witnesses to exonerate the Emperor.  The fix was in, but the movie is more ambiguous about that.  He did such a good job that in 1971, Hirohito presented him with the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure (the equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom).  Do I need to tell you that the romance was fictional? Fellers had been happily married for twenty years at the time of the movie.

 

            I can only recommend “Emperor” to history buffs who want a behind-the-scenes look at the handling of the Emperor after WWII.  Although I feel it is definitely a war movie, it is not appealing to war movie fans.  Watch “Judgment at Nuremberg” or “Downfall” instead.

 

GRADE  =  C

CRACKER? Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

               

                “Judgment at Nuremberg” is another of Stanley Kramer’s “message movies” like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” and “Inherit the Wind”.  This time he decided to be one of the first to take on the Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust.  He was inspired by a teleplay that aired on Playhouse 90.  He got Abbie Mann to adapt the screenplay for the big screen.  He then convinced Spencer Tracy to lead the cast.  Tracy loved the script and liked working with Kramer.  He made the film in spite of a kidney ailment and ill health due to years of alcoholism.  The cachet of Tracy brought several other all-stars to the production.  Most agreed to take substantially less of their normal salaries because of the social importance of the movie.  The cast included three actors who were problematic:  Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, and Montgomery Clift.  Dietrich was difficult on set and insisted on special lighting and wanted her lines rewritten, which Kramer denied.  Garland had not made a movie in seven years and had a reputation for being difficult.  She was uncharacteristically fine for this production.  However, she had trouble getting into character.  Clift binge-drank through his participation, which actually enhanced his performance.  The movie was a minor hit (but did not do well in West Germany because most Germans did not want to reopen old wounds).  It was critically acclaimed although there were some that questioned Kramer’s directing.  It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won for Best Actor (Maximilian Schell) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Mann).  Kramer received the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award.

                Mann based the screenplay on the Judge’s Trial of 1947.  This was one of the twelve U.S. military tribunals (known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials) that followed the main trials.  16 jurists and lawyers were on trial.  Most were members of the Reich Ministry of Justice and the others were prosecutors and judges of the Special Courts or People’s Courts.  The main charge was furthering the “racial purity’ program including eugenics. Specifically, the defendants were accused of judicial acts of sterilization and persecution of people for religious, racial, political reasons or for disabilities.  This particular trial was held from March 5-December 4, 1947.  Ten of the sixteen defendants were found guilty and most were given life sentences (although all got out in a relatively short time).  Mann also incorporated the Katzenberger Trial which involved an elderly Jew who attempted to seduce a sixteen year-old Aryan girl in violation of the Nuremberg Laws.  He was sentenced to death.

                The movie opens with the iconic shot of the blowing up of the swastika at Nuremberg Stadium.  The movie takes place in Nuremberg in 1948.  The trial is of what seems to be small fry – four Nazi judges.  Tracy plays the presiding judge Dan Haywood.  He is modest about his abilities and is determined to understand as well as judge.  As part of his process, he befriends the widow  (Dietrich) of a German general who was executed for his role in the Malmedy Massacre.  Haywood is not locked into finding the defendants guilty.  The prosecuting attorney is Col. Ted Lawson (Richard Widmark) who, in an emotional opening statement, makes it clear that all Germans are to blame for the depredations of the Nazis. On the other side, defense counsel Hans Rolfe (Schell) argues that the men had no choice because they would have been considered traitors if they had refused to carry out the laws.  Clift plays an intellectually-challenged man who was forcibly sterilized.  Garland plays a woman who was a sixteen year-old girl who had relations with a Jewish man resulting in his execution.  They both have memorable stints on the witness stand.  Lawson uses their testimony to nail the four judges who handled cases like these.  Lawson himself makes a trip to the witness stand to narrate footage of the liberation of the death camps.  The footage includes piles of naked corpses and bulldozers being used to inter them.  

                The climactic moment in the film is the testimony of Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) who had been a famous and respected jurist and scholar before the war.  Janning is pleading guilty, but explains that good people went along with the Nazis because they thought the injustices would be temporary.  Rolfe uses his closing argument to reference how the Allies shit stank too.  He mentions Oliver Wendell Holmes defense of eugenics and Churchill’s early praise for Hitler.  And, of course, he can’t go without bringing up Hiroshima.  It’s up to Haywood and the other two judges to decide the fate of the accused.

                “Judgment at Nuremberg” is a thought-provoking film.  It explores several themes.  One is whether international law takes precedent over national law.  In other words, should the defendants refused to enforce laws they should have known were wrong.  Another is how can the Allies condemn actions that were not that much different than injustices they perpetrated.  Many American states had eugenics and/or miscegenation laws at the time.  The movie only hints at the hypocrisy of that situation.  After all, the movie was made during the Cold War and no studio would have financed an indictment of America.  In fact, the movie uses the breaking out of the Berlin Blockade to make the case that the trial was influenced by the desire to not offend West Germany too much during the crisis.

                The real strength of the movie is the acting.  Kramer makes great use of his outstanding cast.  This is definitely an actors’ movie.  The stunt casting of Dietrich, Garland, and Clift works, especially if you know their backstories.  Clift, in particular, is amazing given what he was going through in his personal life.  In fact, Kramer used his mental instability to get a great performance out of him.  It was a gamble.  Clift was drinking so heavily that he could not remember his lines.  Kramer allowed him to ad lib most of his testimony.  It worked.  Tracy glues it all together and gets to give a closing speech that was eleven minutes of one take.  But acting honors go to Schell.  He won the Best Actor Oscar even though he was fifth billed.  His nomination with Tracy was a rare double nomination and even rarer victory for one of them.  Speaking of great actors, Werner Klemperer recreated his role of the unrepentant judge from the Playhouse 90 production.  Klemperer was a Jew whose father’s family had fled Nazi Germany.  He insisted that if he played German roles they had to be negative characters or buffoons.  Col. Klink was the latter.

                The acting distracts from the length and preachiness of the movie.  It is typical Kramer.  Kramer was criticized by many for this aspect of his “message movies”.  I think this was unjust.  He took chances with his topics and those movies were significant.  They may seem tedious to some, but he was sincere.  He also took some grief for showy cinematography in this film.  Most famously for a shot where the camera makes a 360 degree circuit around Widmark during a monologue.  Kramer admitted later that it was a bit overblown.  I thought it was cool and I liked the frequent use of deep focus.  If you are not a critic whose job is to get upset about cinematography stunts, such shots can be interesting.

                Will “Judgment at Nuremberg” crack my 100 Best War Movies?  It could.  It is a must-see.  It is a rare war movie that makes you think and examine your conscience.  A key part of the script is that the audience wonders what Haywood’s final decision will be.  It could go either way.

GRADE  =  B+

CRACKER? Prisoners of the Sun (Blood Oath) (1990)

                “Blood Oath” (also called “Prisoners of the Sun” in the States) is an Australian film released in 1990.  It was directed by Stephen Wallace and written and produced by Brian Williams.  Williams’ father John was the prosecutor in the trial depicted in the film.  The movie marked the screen debut of Russell Crowe.

                The film is set on the island of Ambon.  Of 1,100 Australian and Dutch prisoners taken when the Japanese took the island, only about 300 survived.  The war is over and a mass gave has been uncovered .  Capt. Cooper (Brian Baker – playing the role representing John Williams) heads a war crimes trial to bring the perpetrators to justice.  Crowe is his aide.  A flashback depicts the mistreatment of prisoners supervised by the vile Sgt. Ikeuchi (Tetsu Watanabe).  The big fish is Adm. Takahashi (George Takei) who is chaperoned by an American Maj. Beckett (Terry O’Quinn).  Cooper attempts to prove the admiral gave the orders.  He is acquitted because of lack of evidence and flown back to Japan. 

                Now that the big fish has gotten away, Cooper concentrates on four airmen who were shot down on Ambon and disappeared.  His superior asks him why he needs the four airmen when he has 300 corpses in a mass grave and plenty of eyewitnesses to the brutality of the guards.  Good question and one that remains unanswered.  One of the captured airmen’s had a brother in the camp who witnessed not only his torturing, but the subsequent beheading and burial.  On the witness stand, the obviously traumatized Lt. Fenton (John Polson) gives damning (but seemingly inadmissible, evidence) against Icheuki.  When Fenton dies that night, Cooper beats up Icheuki with  no consequences and a lot of irony.

                With the new revelations and the discovery of the grave site of the four airmen, Cooper focuses his efforts on Icheuki and a milquetoast officer named Tanaka (Toshi Shioya).  Tanaka testifies that Takahashi gave the orders, but Beckett makes sure his boy is untouchable because he is part of the post-war plans for Japan.  As part of the Pacification program the future of the world depends on him, according to Beckett.  Cooper counters with: “You’re not working out the future of the world, you’re just preventing it from being different from the past”.  Oh, snap!  It’s not just the emperor who will get off easy.  It’s just politics.  Ikeuchi has no protector so he commits hari-kari.  Good riddance.  There’s still that little matter of Tanaka cutting off an airman’s head with no written orders nor proof of an official court-martial.

                “Prisoners of the Sun” is based on a true story.  After Ambon fell, the Japanese executed 300 Australian and Dutch prisoners in what became known as the Laha Massacre.  Three-fourths of the remaining prisoners died before liberation due to overwork, disease, and mistreatment.  93 guards were put on trial in 1946 in what was the largest war crimes trial in the Pacific.  Rear Admiral Hatekeyama was determined to have ordered the executions, but he died before the trial finished.  A different Hatekeyama was hanged for being in direct command of the executions.  Three other officers were hanged for assorted mistreatments of prisoners.  It appears the filmmakers have taken many liberties with the facts.  The whole subplot of Takehashi being protected by the American government seems made up to advance the theme of politics trumping justice.

                There is nothing special about the movie.  The acting is fine.  Baker is seethingly righteous.  Watanabe is creepily malevolent.  Shioya is effective as the pawn.  The rest are okay with Crowe not deserving his prominent placement on the poster and Takei slumming in a stunt casting.  A nurse is thrown in to provide a female foil and undeveloped romance angle for Cooper.   The score is new wave schmaltzy.  The cinematography is standard.  The set is pretty good.  It does look like a prison camp.

                The plot is the main flaw.  Close examination leads to head scratching.  There should have been plenty of evidence of brutality to convict the guards.  After all, Fenton was not the only surviving prisoner to witness and be subjected to violations of the acts of war.  No other survivors are called as witnesses.  The subplot of Takehashi getting off is an indictment of the post-war coddling of war criminals and is thought-provoking.  It is also memorable that Cooper’s obsession with convicting someone results in the conviction of the less than villainous Tanaka.  The flashbacks, including the beheading of Fenton’s brother, are well done.

                “Blood Oath” is the type of movie that takes a forgotten moment in history and brings it to the public’s attention.  For that, it deserves some praise.  It did cause me to read up on the trial and I found there is not a whole lot of information on the Internet.  What little I found gave me the impression that the movie is not really a good history lesson.  It is fairly entertaining and the themes are compelling, just not a movie to get excited about.  Even if you are a Russell Crowe fan.

 

                Will it crack my 100 Best War Movies list?  No.

 

grade =  C+