Bertolucci movie saved by brilliant looks

Rating: 8/10 (7 September 2008)

Probably Bertolucci's most well-known movie. It's understandable for it has not so many layers as masterpieces he made before (La Luna, Il Conformista) which makes this less intelligent and more consumable for a wider audience. For that i could be considered a new attempt to make something like his other masterpiece Novecento. So the life of Pu Yi is told from the beginning to the end. As with so many biography-movies that leads to a bit of a And then, And then, and thenetc-plot. So the plot is not what does make this a great movie but the camera-work really saves this. It's beautifully photographed and widely recognized as one of the films you should see on the big screen. In the Netherlands there even was a commercial where they used The Last Emperor for a cinema-advertising-campaign: The big screen, the big difference. I must say that since the introduction of the DVD i seldom go to movie-theaters any more (no noisy public, no going through bad water, at home you can smoke during a movie and stop the DVD to make a sanitary stop. Luckily it also Works great on the TV-screen. So not his best movie but for the beautiful cinematography it gets 8 out of 10 points (very good, buy the DVD)