> didn't Jap surrendered only few weeks after the atomic bombs?
August 6th was Hiroshima, Nagasaki August 9th, and the surrender was August 15th. So counting from Nagasaki, less than a week.
> the movie suggest established American military presence in Tokyo before the bombs and surrender.
No, it doesn't. Though it compresses the time-line in a mythical manner so the same evening of the surrender he already goes to see McArthur, which in reality was two months later, it doesn't change the orders in which things happened. It just compresses the timeline into a few days.
You also should not forget that Tokyo was completely destroyed by the American bombardment, killing 100 000 people in just one night (plain case of massacre and violation of international law), 5 months prior to the Atomic bomb in Hiroshima, on March 10th 1945. I don't know what you mean by "established American military presence in Tokyo" but Tokyo was destroyed by the US military long before what are the concerns of this film took place.
> did the Hirohito really went to the US general with only ONE escort???
Why would he be taking a bunch of people with him? There was only one attendant who accompanied him when he went in MacArthur's office to see him in person, and most of the time they spend alone together, after that MacArthur knew he was fluent in English so no need for a translator. The whole political point was that he went to see him basically alone. What would be the point to go to see him if he would be surrounded by a bunch of ministers?
> is this movie generally correct in historical view???
Apart from the compressed time line (what you see in here, which looks like a few days at the most, actually took from August 45 to January 46), and the ruins of Tokyo looking like Berlin bombarded and destroyed, yes, it is pretty accurate in most details for the things we can actually know (and there are also so many undocumented stuffs). Well, Hirohito in the film looks more like him in the 80's than he would have looked in 45, though, and the letter he writes to his son sounds very odd, and the Empress doesn't look like at all like his actual wife. But over all, it is even surprising that all the gestures, details, and what they suggest were quite correct, there's basically no misunderstandings nor exoticism that most foreigners often make about Japan in this particular film.
Apparently, Sokurov understood what was the meaning of the Emperor and his function very well, so he never fall into the trap that most occidental people (and especially Americans and British, I must say) to mistake Hirohito from some sort of dictator, which he absolutely was not. The depiction of the subtle and enigmatic, coded nature of the system surrounding the emperor is quite faithfully portrayed here, though compared to the other two earlier entry to the trilogy of history, this third entry tends to be too gentle and lacks critical/ambiguous aspects. It looks like he is rather fond of Hirohito, more than Lenin and certainly far more than Hitler (though Lenin as he describes is arguably closer to what he is--even putting his own criticism about Russia in Lenin's mouth).
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