The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci

The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci

Cinema Release Date: November 25, 1987
With John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole
Genre: Historical, Biopic
Time: 02h25min Production Year: 1987 

The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci, Pu Yi, the Last Emperor

The Last Emperor, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1987, is a great historical epic that recounts the life of the Emperor of China Pu Yi. At the age of three years, he had been taken from his mother and taken to the Forbidden City, to succeed the empress dowager Tz'u Hi, who first exercised the regency on behalf of his son Tong Zhi and Guang Xu of his nephew. His political view was conservative. In a state plagued by corruption and internal conflict, it caused the Boxer Rebellion, although which was quickly quelled by an expeditionary West.

When the little emperor ascended the throne, he became in the hands of the regents, who are responsible to keep aside from the tumult in late Qing dynasty. As a sort of puppet who was only represented in front of the official ceremonies, he lived a very sad life without authority and power. Played by hundreds of servants, living among the eunuchs and courtiers, he was bored in his role as an emperor, especially those civilians listened to his mother.

While the Kuomintang has already seized power, nothing seems to have been changed inside the Forbidden City. It was still an island, which has been cut off from the outside world. Until the day when the Cultural Revolution happened, the emperor was forced to leave the palace, which was invaded and ransacked by insurgents. He had to seek refuge in Japan. Of course, the Japanese took him as a pawn on the chessboard of international politics. But nothing happened as planned. The axis Germany-Italy-Japan had lost the war of between 1939 and 1945, and the Soviets came to lend a hand to the Chinese to expel the Japanese invaders and the emperor was naturally delivered to authorities in his country.

                                                        When Pu Yi was young as the Last Emperor

He was sentenced to life imprisoned. It was thanks to his good conduction and his ideological shift that he finally got his own freedom. He decided to end his life as a gardener in Beijing, where a large of foreign tourists visited it every year. His memoir was published in 1965 and he died in 1967. Through this movie, we are surprised that the transformation of a man-god in a character of Mao's dictatorship has reduced him to a mere sub-human in a country vitrified by a new ideology.

The film is a masterpiece. Hiromura will write up: "Simply one of the largest murals done in films. A monument, a giant, a miracle." The film was shot in the Forbidden City and is dedicated to the late emperor who was the last imperial figure of the twentieth century. It is based on the incredible and tragic story of this little boy, torn from his mother, deprived childhood, crushed under the weight of tradition…

The actors, all are perfect in their performance, make their characters believable and the staging is accurate and effective, which helps us go back to the time and life in the Forbidden City…. The film requires no less than 270 technicians, 19,000 extras, 9,000 costumes and takes 2 years of negotiations with Chinese authorities for the right to shoot the scene. So it is a feat.

Thanks to this movie that we can revisit the late Imperial history and go into the inner mind of the last Emperor.