Absolutely one of Spielbergs best

Rating: 10/10 (8 July 2006)

Underrated is right. This film has so been ignored when discussing truly great films and certainly the films of Spielberg. This film came out the same year as Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor", and was buried under the buzz of that film. Too bad, because Spielberg achieved what Bertolucci could not: Encase and convey a highly personal story within the context of particularly turbulent historical events. The experiences of Spielbergs "Jim" are felt more deeply than those of Bertolucci's Pu Yi. Both films are visually stunning, and on an epic scale. But these qualities tend to overshadow the human story of Last Emperor, and this is a human tragedy of epic scale! It is about China's last monarch, the last of a line dating back thousands of years. It is about the extinction of a species. Pu Yi is the last Mohican, so to speak, the last dinosaur. And yet, the deep, personal sadness of this doesn't come through anywhere near as profoundly as the broad and deep emotions of the boy Jim living through Japanese internment in Spielberg's Empire of the Sun. We get underneath Jims's skin, and ride the emotional roller- coaster that is his life. Conversely, we watch Pu Yi, often with the level of understanding one might have watching an animal in a zoo. We may feel some pity at it's captivity, but then we see it fed and housed and calm, and we figure, "Well, I guess it's not that bad." And of course there is this: Empire of the Sun makes me cry every damn time I watch it.