almost too remote at times

Rating: 7/10 (30 November 2010)

Bernardo Bertolucci's epic biography of Mainland China's final hereditary monarch shows a man adrift in time, born into a century which saw a hundred generations of history and tradition become anachronisms. Crowned at age three the Sun of Heaven and Lord of a Thousand Years, the emperor Pu Yi would serve as little more than a symbolic figurehead throughout his life, with no real power beyond the walls of the Forbidden City.
The scenario has all the elements for a compelling history lesson, and the scale of the film is hard to resist: Bertolucci and co-writer Mark Peploe trace the emperor's life from opulent cradle to inglorious grave (he died a humble gardener in post-Revolution Peking), setting their story against a turbulent and colorful background of modern Chinese politics. The panoramic photography is like a window opening onto another world, filling the screen with rare and exotic sights. But at times the spectacle almost overwhelms the lonely figure at the center of all the pageantry: the emperor himself, a prisoner on his own throne, and as much a mystery at the end of the film as he was when it began.