Puyi: Opportunistic criminal or man caught up in whirlwind of change?

Rating: 10/10 (3 August 2008)

What is an emperor, who has been told all his life that he is meant to rule, supposed to do when he no longer has an empire? It is easy to condemn the Emperor Puyi as a weak willed collaborator and monarchist and to reasonably wonder why anyone would want to make a movie about such an apparently vacuous person. But Puyi's life was tragic and as such provides the basis for an excellent historical drama. Puyi never asked to be emperor, which was the only job he was ever trained to do, and after having been evicted from his palace ... which was his home ... sought refuge with the Japanese who took him in and gave him a job, the only job he was ever trained to do. So can it be any wonder why the dispossessed emperor would have had some affinity for the Japanese? John Lone gives a great performance as the dispossessed and unhappy emperor and Joan Chen is equally impressive as his depressed and opium addicted wife who was the classic innocent victim and who did nothing to deserve her vile mistreatment by her own people. Mrs. Puyi was so utterly harmless that the mere thought of anyone wanting to mistreat her is sad and troubling. This movie dramatizes a universal theme - the challenges associated with adapting to relentless change as one tries to maintain their emotional equilibrium and sense of identity while all the landmarks of their lives are rapidly disappearing. Was Puyi a opportunistic criminal? Or was he a man caught up in a whirlwind of change that ultimately proved to be his undoing and then his redemption?