TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Smoreni Zmaj The Last Emperor is a upsetting drama about a man who spent his whole life in a cage, being someone's puppet. He grew up in the Forbidden City, where he played the leading role in a theater without an audience. He was raised and educated to regard himself as a sublime creature, but the cage is a cage even if it is made of gold. When communists took power in China, he gets asylum from Japan, where he continues to maintain the illusion of Emperor while being a Japanese marionette. When the Russians liberate Manchuria, he ends up in prison where he finally begins to grasp the world around him as it really is.Under the baton of Bernardo Bertolucci was born a movie which was nominated for nine Oscars and won all nine. It takes almost three hours, it's slow and not so entertaining, but the depth and strength of this drama does not leave room for boredom. This film is both technically and essentially excellent and I recommend to everyone who did not watch it to make up for that failure.8/10During the film, I had the impression that some parts of it were very familiar, as if I had already watched it, and I'm sure I didn't. It was only on the last scene that I discovered why, because the loan was so large that it could not go unnoticed. Korean film The Last Princess was apparently created after the model of this film. The titles of the films are almost identical, the story has a lot of similarities, and the end of The Last Princess is almost copied from The Last Emperor. The fact is that the stories of the last Korean princess and the last Chinese Emperor by their very nature must have some similarities, but the similarity of these two films is too large to be attributed to coincidence. All other similarities could be accidental, but the end is definitely rip off.

lukechong People watching "The Last Emperor" usually fall into two camps: one group who are smitten by the spectacle, lavish customs and costumes of the foreign culture; and those who find the movie wanting. I'm sorry to say I belong to the second camp.This movie comes across as a heavily exoticized melodrama, sans nuances, of the last emperor of China, Henry Pu Yi, who had a Scotsman for a tutor, lived through the demise of his Chinese/Manchurian empire, then tried to set up a new Manchukuo in China's northeast but in the end was turned into a puppet ruler by the Japanese imperialists. He eventually became a lowly gardener, reformed in a Communist labor camp.While the spectacle grand, the costumes and sets beautifully designed, and the film lavishly lensed by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, what remains of the film is not enough to coalesce into an integrated artistic whole. "The Last Emperor" comes across as one of those exotic breed of western films which are there solely to pander to western tastes, penned by a western writer with little knowledge of Chinese or Manchu culture. It will win many awards at the Oscars, but is ultimately no better than a soulless cardboard pastiche of the real thing.First off, what's with the use of pidgin English dialogue? Out of the respect for the culture the movie really ought to be shot in the Mandarin language, not in some foreignized pidgin version of that Chinese tongue. Much of it sounds like it was dubbed during the days of Fu Manchu when China was heavily stereotyped by the West. Does this film go any further than perpetuate this stereotype?Secondly, the director shines too much of a magnifying glass over the Chinese/Manchu culture, yet many aspects coming across as inaccurate or over-fetishized. What's with the lolling breasts of Pu Yi's young nanny, her nipples constantly exposed, or his wife's translucent see-through negligee? Or the lesbian Manchurian spy nibbling the toes of her imperial mistress? They don't add anything to the narrative. And who would step into the imperial bedroom without being announced?The film is also not nuanced in its depiction of China or the people and personalities who interact with the emperor at that time. The only enlightened person is Pu Yi's Scots tutor, who introduced to him a bicycle. The consorts are a bunch of useless, tittering old hags, the Communists are largely berating, the rest of China is anonymous, largely devoid of personality. Even the prison interrogator is played with nauseating Maoist overtones by a Mao lookalike, complete with perfumed make-up and intimidating gestures.Only one or two characters from this epic drama turn the head, the prison warden is one, and Pu Yi's wife the Empress another. But the screenwriters don't develop the back stories much, which is really a shame.One good thing is the casting. The child actors playing Pu Yi are uniformly superb. John Lone too is excellent playing the lonely but manipulated emperor. Joan Chen acquits herself adequately as the empress. Given the fact they are heavily handicapped by a lackluster script, they have done well.The best part of the movie comes at the end, when Pu Yi witnesses the castigation of his prison warden during the Cultural Revolution, then gives a young red cadet a cricket canister hidden behind his Forbidden City throne. It gives a tantalizing view on what might have been if the screenwriter and the director decided to develop the script in a more nuanced manner. Yes, "The Last Emperor" may depict successfully a sad, lonely monarch of a crumbling empire, but much of it also comes across as exoticized and foreignized. And the payoff at the end is simply not enough.

Filipe Neto This film tells the life of the last Chinese emperor, Pu Yi. Crowned as a baby, he lived a life of limitless luxury but was eventually expelled from his throne by the revolution of 1911. Imprisoned in his palace like a bird in a golden cage, he saw the decay of his country and the dramatic changes of Republican China from the inside of the Forbidden City. Expelled by the Communists years later, he spent a good part of his life trying to regain his throne, and the rest of it imprisoned in Chinese reeducation camps that transformed him into an ordinary man. There is undoubtedly a poetic beauty in the transformation of the main character, and the film can make us feel the changes in his personality, as well as the changes of his former empire. The film suggests several things about him and the imperial family that I do not know if they are truth, like the apparent lesbianism of one of the emperor's wives and their use of drugs. Bernardo Bertolucci is a director that I normally do not appreciate, but I recognize in this film many qualities. The actors did a very regular and interesting performance. John Lone was perfect in the role of the emperor, but even brighter was Peter O'Toole, in a role that, otherwise, with another actor, could be overly subdued. The film's set-ups are glamorous and go a long way toward creating a Hollywood-era epic movie feel. Nevertheless, the comparison of this film as "Seven Years in Tibet", by context, time and closeness, is more pertinent than with any other film.

gavin6942 He was the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, the absolute monarch of China. He was born to rule a world of ancient tradition. Nothing prepared him for our world of change.This is a beautiful film. It looks great, with the scenery and costumes, and they were able to film in the Forbidden City, which is something of a small miracle. (It has the unfortunate side effect of taking some of the mystery out of the City, but that is a whole other thing.) Now, my knowledge of Chinese history is pretty sparse. Other than things like their involvement in the Korean War, I am rather ignorant. I really had no idea that they had an emperor as long as they did... and the level of respect for a two-year old? Wow.