Great art, great vision, but not great film entertainment.

Rating: 6/10 (22 September 2004)

The life and times of Pu Yi, the boy Emperor of China whose life-of-destiny was overtaken over by the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
This is one of the most difficult movies I have ever had to review because, while I cannot ignore the majestic flow and vision of the film and the man mountain of film awards, I also cannot also ignore my own heart and aching bottom. While I can quote clichés about the "meaning of film" all day long, I believe that all movies (whatever the aims and nature) should be enjoyable while watching them and you shouldn't be glad when the final credits roll - indeed you should be sad!
Bernardo Bertolucci believes that cinema is mostly vision and atmosphere - and believe me he is master of his limited focus - but there is also a need for a story. Something that passes him by. If we are lucky a story that changes pace, informs, excites and thrills.
This film has moments that will stay in the memory forever and when I first saw them as TV clips I thought "this is going to be something else - an epic." However they are simply impressive props and backdrops for a story that would be better told as a documentary.
The film opens up on the story of a little boy born with a destiny. Not many people are born with a destiny outside of royalty and they should be treat with sympathy because, while they may seem fated, they also live in a gilded cage. Even if history had not taken over events Pi would have lived a life of quiet impotence - despite the title he would have had no powers and would have had no influence on his countries' affairs. A living and breathing statue. The revolution probably did him the best favour that he ever had.
I always think that a life spent on holiday is most intelligent person's version of hell. A life spent on holiday while trapped inside a prison camp must be the worst. Filming took place in the real Forbidden City, but I am not that impressed by it. It could have been built in a studio and we would not have known. Vast amounts of money have been spent and it is all up there on the screen, but that, by itself, doesn't really impress me.
I won't go through the changes in the Emperor's life on a stage-by-stage basis (as so many have done) because that would take away some of few things that will carry you through the (very long) movie.
It is a comment on the nature of this film that people are quite happy to explain it scene-by-scene as if this doesn't take away anything from it. It does and frankly does a disservice to the film or maybe this is one of these "great art pieces" in which such spoiler rules don't apply.
Bernardo Bertolucci is pretty overrated as a director and as a story teller he couldn't work on TV. He is a bit of a fossil in that he takes hours to say what could be said in five minutes. The acting is steady, and in Peter O'Toole we have excellence, but I couldn't get inside anybody - they either had a brown nosing or duty-to-do role and no-one is really allowed to be themselves. The acting is - in the main - cold and seems swamped by the oriental mysticism that the director wants us to bath in.
This is an important film and well worth seeing, but I wasn't entertained and after the opening - which looks at a unique childhood - I became bored and restless. Usually childhood is most boring part of any biography and the story usually picks up when they take up the sword of whatever made them famous. Here we have boy/man on the road to nowhere or nothing. A sad tale of a boy/man who seemed to have everything but in fact had nothing.
Sorry, I was left with a numb brain and a numb bottom - and I didn't even see the "long" version! To borrow a very famous review line "there is so much to admire here that I only wish I could have liked it more..."