Too Much Too Soon!

When you're born on top, there's no place to go but down. The story of Pu Yi, told in The Last Emperor, reminds me a bit of the fate of child protégés or actors who wow the public when they're still children or adolescents. When that much success comes so easily and so early, there's little room for getting ahead over the rest of one's life. Bernardo Bertolucci was well-suited to give life to the story of Emperor Pu Yi, being a director who achieved success while still in his twenties, then struggling for equal respect later in his life when The Last Emperor was filmed.

Historical Background: Growing up in Palma Italy, Bernardo Bertolucci, born in 1940, developed two passions as a young lad: poetry and the cinema. Bertolucci's father was a poet and Bertolucci himself won a prize for a book of poems while still in his teens. He abandoned his study of modern literature at the University of Rome when offered an opportunity to work with Pasolini on Accattone! (1961). Pasolini, who was also both filmmaker and poet, became something of an artistic mentor to Bertolucci. When he was just twenty-two, Bertolucci directed his own debut film, The Grim Reaper, but it was a commercial failure. Before the Revolution (1964), his second film, which told the story of an affair between a troubled young man and an unconventional aunt, was more successful and even gained Bertolucci international attention. After a few years making documentaries for Shell Oil, Bertolucci made his return to feature films with Partner (1968) and The Spider's Stratagem (1970). His 1971 film, The Conformist, dealing with Fascism, solidified his reputation as a major talent among critics and fans. Then, in 1972, he directed the controversial Last Tango in Paris, which starred Marlon Brando. Bertolucci then turned his hand to a classic Italian epic, 1900 (1976). He returned to the theme of sexual taboos with Luna (1979), which dealt with mother/son incest. It was made in America and starred Jill Clayburgh, but was poorly received. Returning to Italy, Bertolucci next made something of a trifling film, The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981). Then, after a bit of a hiatus from filmmaking, Bertolucci returned with a trilogy of high-budget art films of which only the first, The Last Emperor (1987), was well received. Both The Sheltering Sky (1990) and Little Buddha (1993) were disappointments, both critically and at the box-office, but The Last Emperor took the Academy Award for Best Film in 1987 and earned Berlolucci himself the Best Director Award. Bertolucci's more recent works include Stealing Beauty (1996) and Beseiged (1998).

The Last Emperor, as the name indicates, tells the story of the waning days of the Manchu (or Qing) dynasty, which ruled China from 1644-1912. The Qing dynasty was established by the invasion of China by the Manchu people of Manchuria. To the Chinese people of the seventeenth century, the Manchus were foreigners, though the Manchus shared some of the elements of Chinese culture. A disastrous defeat of China by Japan in 1895 forced China to recognize Japanese control over both Korea and Taiwan, leading to a sharp intensification of political efforts inside China to overthrown the imperial dynasty. The Manchus set out to reform both the Chinese government and the economy and modernized the school system, but it was too little too late. Between 1905 and 1911, rebels staged a series of attacks against the Manchus and by the end of 1911, all of the southern and central provinces had declared their independence from Manchu rule.

The attempt to establish a Republic turned into an abject failure. The first president, Yuan, a Manchurian general, quickly consolidated his personal power, ruled as a virtual dictator, and even tried to reestablish the old empire with himself as emperor. After his death in 1916, China was effectively ruled by a number of warlords, each controlling a local territory, and civil war was widespread. By 1922, the Republic had fully collapsed. New social theories in opposition to Confucianism began to emerge. The old leader of the Republican movement, Sun Yat-Sen, began to reorganize his National Party to respond to the new ideas emerging among the Chinese youth. Meanwhile, some students were organizing Communist groups and in 1923, advisors from the U.S.S.R. urged the Chinese Communists to work with the Nationalists for revolution. With the death of Sun Yat-Sen in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek, the military commander of the Nationalist forces, became leader of the party and the revolution. The Nationalists defeated the northern warlords and reunited China in 1928, but not before betraying their Communist allies in 1927. The Nationalists ruled China for about two decades, but were greatly hampered by simultaneous opposition from the Communists and the Japanese. While the Nationalists fought the Communists, the Japanese seized more and more Chinese territory, establishing a puppet state in Manchuria, called Manchukuo, as early as 1931. In 1936, Chaing Kai-sheck was forced to abandon the civil war against the Communists in order to form a united front against the Japanese. The Japanese then launched a major offensive against China in 1937, which the Chinese faced alone and valiantly, until the entry of America into World War II, following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The Story: The story begins in 1908, when Ainso-Gioro "Henry" Pu Yi (Richard Vuu, at age three) became emperor of China at the tender age of three. He would reign for just four years, being forced to abdicate in 1912. During his three years as emperor, we observe the ridiculousness of thousands of soldiers and servants kowtowing to an infant not even yet weaned and dozens of servants catering to his daily needs. Even after his abdication, Pu Yi is allowed to retain figurehead status as emperor, residing in the opulence of the Forbidden City complex, encompassing more than 250 acres and 9999 separate rooms. The real governing power of China lay outside the Forbidden City, however, and Pu Yi (Tsou Tijger, at age eight) was not even permitted outside the gates of the City. Pu Yi acquires a Scottish tutor, Reginald Johnston (Peter O'Toole), who instructs him in the ways of the West, broadens his worldview, and gets the boy the pair of spectacles he so badly needs. Johnston also gives the young lad a bicycle as a gift, but the boy can still only ride it as far as the gates of the Forbidden City.

Distraught at his "captivity", the young emperor (Wu Tao as the adolescent Pu Yi) plots to escape to Cambridge in England, but Johnston suggests an alternative – escape into marriage. As an emperor, Pu Yi is entitled to more than one wife, if he so chooses. He looks through a set of photographs of eligible young ladies, settling on a pair. One will be "first wife," Empress Wan Jung (Joan Chen), and the other his "first concubine" or "second wife," Wen Hsiu (Vivian Wu). They live a life of both luxury and confinement, relishing their ménage a trois arrangement. In 1924, however, Pu Yi and his family and retinue are thrown out of the Forbidden City by the Nationalists and forced to vacate to Manchuria. From there, for the next seven years, Pu Yi (John Lone as the adult Pu Yi) plays the part of an international playboy, dressing in Western clothes, smoking American cigarettes, and crooning "Am I Blue?" at a Western nightclub.

Come 1931, the Japanese set Pu Yi up as "emperor" of Manchukuo, though it is a token position without real power or authority. He is being exploited by the Japanese to give a semblance of authenticity to their puppet state, but Pu Yi is so desperate to rule again that he overlooks the hollowness of his title. His movements are as restricted now as during his former days in the Forbidden City. The first concubine walks out on Pu Yi, reasoning that a Westernized Pu Yi is no longer entitled to two wives. The Empress, in the meantime, sees more clearly than her husband that he is betraying China and the Chinese people. In her despair, she allows herself to be seduced by opium and a female Japanese spy (who nibbles on the Empress's toes). She also gets pregnant via her Japanese driver, but her baby is put to death and the Empress is sent off to an asylum.

As World War II begins, Russian paratroopers invade Manchuria and Pu Yi is captured and turned over to the Chinese Communists. Pu Yi is then subjected to a ten-year "reeducation" process in the Foo Shoe prison camp, under the supervision of the Governor of the Detention Center (Ruocheng Ying). The ex-Emperor, who doesn't even know how to tie his own shoelaces or urinate unobtrusively, finds himself scrubbing toilets and sweeping floors. He's also required to write his life story and confess his crimes, which requires several drafts as Pu Yi slowly grasps the extent of his own culpability in various atrocities committed by the Japanese on the Chinese people. Pu Yi begins the ten-year sentence defiant and self-righteous, progresses to a suicidal stage, and finally becomes resigned and adapted to a new life as a simple gardener.

The film completes a full circle when Pu Yi, now an old man, visits the Forbidden City, which has been newly opened as a tourist attraction. A young boy employed as a guard in the imperial chamber is naturally incredulous when Pu Yi whispers that he used to live here as emperor. Pu Yi pulls a cricket chamber from under the pillows on the Dragon Throne, where he had hidden it years earlier, much to the little boy's amazement.

Themes: The main theme, in my opinion, is the absurdity of some of the institutions that we humans construct. Pu Yi is, for the most part, a predictable product of the circumstances to which he was exposed, so the absurdity does not so much lie with him as an individual man as with the society in which he lived. A society that glorifies a three year-old boy as emperor, giving him absolute authority over thousands of full-grown men and women, has created a ridiculous system of governance for itself as well as a ridiculous basis for rearing a child. The absurdity of the arrangement is further evident in the fact that the emperor, who is told that he can do whatever he pleases, is prohibited from walking out through his own front gate. Pu Yi led a mockery of an existence for much of his life. He was the ultimate figurehead – powerless to control his own situation despite the appearance of absolute power. His glorification as "emperor," both in childhood and, later, under the patronage of the Japanese, was purely for the benefit of others. As a simple gardener, toward the end of his life, he became truly useful for the first time in his life.

Production Values: The film script for The Last Emperor has some real strengths, though it is also the film's principal weakness. The basic premise – a boy who grows up as an emperor but turns into a simple gardener – is certainly a fascinating one. Moreover, Bertolucci uses Pu Yi's story to illuminate the history of China during the period encompassed by Pu Yi's life, a truly tumultuous time that reshaped China not once, but repeatedly. Unfortunately, there are some limitations inherent in the premise, which limit the dramatic appeal of the story. Pu Yi was not a great man who shaped the history of his time. Instead, he was a rather shallow man, by in large, whose life was determined by the monumental events happening around him. Pu Yi did not even have a ringside seat on the historical events, living a highly sheltered life inside a walled city, later in Manchukuo, and still later in prison camp. It is difficult to illuminate history through the vantage point of one so isolated from it. Some critics complain that there is no story in this film, but that is overly harsh. There is a story – just not enough to sustain a film of either 165 minutes (the theatrical release) or 218 minutes (the director's cut). The story is overwhelmed by the brilliant sets and costumes and gorgeous cinematography. In one sense, it is thematically appropriate that Pu Yi's story would be overwhelmed in that way, by the lavishness of the production, since Pu Yi in real life was equally overwhelmed by the tide of the history around him. It's thematically appropriate, but as drama, it is not gripping. The one overriding weakness of this film is that the story is slow moving, at times, and less than fully engaging.

On the other hand, The Last Emperor is about as lavish as a period piece as you'll ever encounter. Bertolucci was granted full access to the Forbidden City and all of the film was shot inside mainland China. The color palette of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is loaded up with brilliant yellows (the Emperor's official color) and, later, crimson reds (for the Communists). The Last Emperor is an altogether visually stunning picture and one has to suppose that it was primarily on that basis that it won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

I thought the editing for this film highly effective. The story begins with Pu Yi in the detention facility. His life's story is then told in a series of flashbacks. This intercutting between his sorry life as a prisoner and the grandeur of his life as emperor effectively emphasizes the contrast that is the most intriguing part of Pu Yi's life.

It's not easy to play the part of a man who is essentially phlegmatic and buffeted about by history. John Lone gives an unimpassioned performance, which is how it must be, I suppose. It is part of the limitation of this film that the lead character is so passive, but the fault lies in the story rather than the performance. Lone appeared the next year in The Moderns (1988). Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia (1962), What's New Pussycat? (1965), The Lion in Winder (1968), etc.) breathes real life into the portion of the film in which he appears. Ruocheng Ying was very good as the Governor of the detention center. The two female leads, Joan Chen and Vivian Wu (The Pillow Book (1996)), were lovely to look at but their parts offered little challenge, except perhaps for a scene in which Joan Chen staggers back to her home, briefly, after her incarceration in an asylum.

Bottom-Line: The Last Emperor is a sumptuous film and a very good one by almost any standard – any standard except an Academy Award for Best Film. I don't know what its competitors were in 1987, so I won't say that it was undeserving to the selection – only that it is not up to the standards of the selections for Best Film in most years. It's a very good film, just not a "Best" film. It is magnificent as a visual treat, but far from gripping entertainment.

This film comes in two lengths that differ by a full hour. The director's cut, which is what I watched, runs 218 minutes, while the earlier theatrical release was 165 minutes. There wasn't enough story for 218 minutes; perhaps that would be less of a problem for the 165 minute version, though the reviews I read based on the shorter version still complained about lack of dramatic punch. The extras on the Artisan DVD are limited to the theatrical trailer, production notes, and some cast and crew biographical information. The Last Emperor is in English (Chinese accented except, of course, for O'Toole).


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Italy:

Amarcord
L’Avventura
The Bicycle Thief
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Cinema Paradiso
The Conformist
Death in Venice
Divorce Italian Style
The Dreamers
Eclipse
8 ½
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
General della Rovere
The Leopard
Life is Beautiful
Malèna
Mamma Roma
Miracle in Milan
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Nights of Cabiria
La Notte
Padre Padrone
Il Postino
Rocco and His Brothers
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Shoeshine
The Son’s Room
The Spider's Stratagem
Star Maker
Swept Away
Teorema
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Umberto D.