Review: Emperor (2012)

March 12, 2013 Reviews 1 Comments

Cast: Matthew Fox, Colin Moy, Tommy Lee Jones
Director: Peter Webber
Country: USA
Genre: Drama | History | War
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: Emperor opened in limited release on Friday March 8, 2013.

Emperor (Webber, 2012) tells the story of the American occupying forces in post-war Japan and the rounding up of the chief architects of the start of the war in the Japanese military and politics. General Bonner Fellers (Mathew Fox) is appointed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) to investigate Emperor Hirohito and see if he gave the order to start the war by bombing Pearl Harbor and to do so in 10 days. This begins a police procedural film, tracking down the key players in the Emperor’s entourage and military figures. There is also a sub-plot that involves Fellers as a young man, 12 years previous, falling in love with a Japanese student while he was in college.

There are some who may feel that the love story sub-plot is unnecessary and distracting to the overall plot of the film. I disagree.

She flees back to Japan when her father begins dying and he eventually ends up in Japan in 1940 while writing a paper for the army on the mentality of the Japanese soldier. They meet and begin to spend time together again and she informs him that her uncle is a General who could help him with his paper. He and the General become friendly until Fellers is forced out of the country due to political upheaval just before the start of the war.

This all feeds into why MacArthur picks Fellers to lead this investigation. His love of Japan may be what is needed to spare the Emperor and avoid a rejection of the occupying force and a rebellion. Fellers does his due diligence and tracks down the people needed and tries to get an answer one way or another if the Emperor was responsible for the war and should be deposed and tried as a war criminal or allowed to be left on his throne.

There are some who may feel that the love story sub-plot is unnecessary and distracting to the overall plot of the film. I disagree. The love story grounds Fellers emotionally to Japan and causes him to weigh his decision instead of just the evidence (or lack thereof). Without it, it would be a The Naked City (Dassin, 1948) style, find the evidence and make the arrest film and while that can be great, as in the case of The Naked City, but in this case it would have been a detriment to the film. With Fellers emotionally invested in Japan, he understands what would happen if the Emperor were to be deposed. The Japanese considered their Emperor a god and worshiped him thusly. For a foreign entity to come in and tell them their god is a criminal and execute him on that basis would be disastrous to not only the American interest, but to Japanese culture on the whole. He also understands that the American public are calling for Hirohito to be brought to justice for attacking them and he has to weigh that aspect as well.

The procedural portion works as well as the compelling love story, however despite the tight time restraint of 10 days for the investigation, the film takes a leisurely pace. The clock is ticking, but we don’t feel it and that lowers the stakes of the film. In so doing, Webber draws us out of the main plot of the film and ends up investing more emotion into the sub-plot and therefore makes that part a little more interesting. He does a very good job of weaving the two stories together, making the sub-plot inform the main plot in numerous ways and links the two when Fellers visits the old General to gather information about not only the Emperor but of his lost love.

If the flashbacks set the tone of love for Japan Fellers feels, the contemporary scenes show the heartbreak that follows war. Webber avoids sentimentality while showing utter desperation and destruction.

Webber is also adept at mixing the imagery of pre-war and post-war Japan. In the flashbacks, the Japan we see is beautiful and unmarred by any kind of violence. In the 1945 segments there is little more than two buildings standing amidst rubble and people picking through that rubble for food or just because they have nowhere else to go. He does not dwell on that, he simply shows it to amplify the reality of where we are and what has happened. If the flashbacks set the tone of love for Japan Fellers feels, the contemporary scenes show the heartbreak that follows war. Webber avoids sentimentality while showing utter desperation and destruction.

The look of the film is equally as striking in the different timeframes that it exists in. The colors of pre-war Japan are bright, vibrant, and almost hyper-real showing a place of happiness outside the specter of war. The post-war Japan is faded and grey. Webber avoids the now standard Janusz Kaminski look of WWII, a faded almost black and white with hints of color that he used in Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998) that was also adopted by Clint Eastwood and his D.P. Tom Stern for Flags of Our Fathers (Eastwood, 2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (Eastwood, 2006). Instead, he uses a dull color but one more of dust and debris on the lens from the inherent dust in the air after years of bombing raids. He achieves all he wants to say about the decimation of Tokyo and Japan in general in the brief shots outside the military headquarters.

Webber is best known for his debut feature, The Girl with the Pearl Earring (2003) and he uses the slow build he used so well in that film in Emperor, but to a less successful effect. With tighter editing or a more conscience effort to show the strain of a massive 10-day investigation of an un-reachable person. There are scenes between Feller and MacArthur that try to play up the timetable, but ultimately they just give Jones a showcase to play a known eccentric, iconoclastic figure in American history.

That brings me to the portrayals in the film. Tommy Lee Jones’ MacArthur is a supporting character and a rousing one at that.

That brings me to the portrayals in the film. Tommy Lee Jones’ MacArthur is a supporting character and a rousing one at that. MacArthur was well known to be brash and outspoken, much like his contemporary Gen. George Patton. Jones’ MacArthur is nowhere near as flamboyant as George C. Scott’s Patton in Patton (Schaffner, 1970) but he is enough to provide some great moments for Jones throughout the film. Fox’s Feller is much more subtle and nuanced. He never loses his composure, except during one scene in a bar where some locals are throwing things at him. He gets angry and overturns a table on them and proceeds to get the crap kicked out of him. Aside from that outburst, he is calm and level-headed during his investigation. Fox understood that in order to play an effective counterpoint to Jones, he had to stay low-key despite being the main character. This works to even the film, but does not work because Jones is on screen so little that the counterpoint is overplayed and lessens the impact of the film. He didn’t need to go over the top, and the scenes that show him struggling with the decision he ultimately has to make are well played, but they are subdued.

In the end, Emperor is a well-plotted story with a good enough story to sustain its relatively short 98 minutes. If the film’s high stakes and timetable were treated with a little more urgency, the film would have been much better and the audience more invested in the fate of the Emperor and less of that of Feller’s one true love. As it stands, the sub-plot is more dominant and the main plot suffers as a result. Truncating the sub-plot and lengthening the main would have done better service to the ultimate point the film was trying to make and would have involved the audience more in the importance of Feller’s job and less in his feelings about Japan and what it could have meant to him if circumstances had been different. The film is good, but if the plots had not been vying for dominance, it could have been much better.

77/100 ~ GOOD. In the end, Emperor is a well-plotted story with a good enough story to sustain its relatively short 98 minutes.

By Doug Heller

I believe film occupies a rare place as art, entertainment, historical records and pure joy. I love all films, good and bad, from every time period with an affinity to Classical Hollywood in general, but samurai, sci-fi and noir specifically. My BA is in Film Studies from Pitt and my MA is in Education. My goal is to be able to ignite a love of film in others that is similar to my own.