Heaven's Mandate

Rating: 10/10 (18 May 2008)

Back when I was a university student studying a course in the Far East we learned the term 'Heaven's Mandate'. It was said that when one dynasty overthrew another, the mandate from powers above to rule China had been lost and a new mandate was given to the winners. It was a self fulfilling idea because if the Mings went out and the Manchus went in it was because the Manchus now had the Mandate. The Last Emperor is the story of Young emperor Pu Yi who was the last Manchu Emperor, crowned at the age of 3 in 1908 and removed in 1911 during the revolution. Pu Yi spent half the rest of his life trying to gain that back and the other half trying to roll with the punches for making some very bad choices in trying for the former. By that time if you want to extend the idea, the mandate now fell to Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communists. Still very few people had as colorful, as tumultuous, and as epic a life as Pu Yi as portrayed by Chinese actor John Lone. Whatever else Pu Yi was, he was a survivor and maybe if he hasn't got Heaven's mandate any more, he's at least got a heavenly place. From 1911 until he was kicked out, the young Emperor was still permitted to run a kind of fairyland kingdom in the Forbidden City area of Peking which was the exclusive domain of the Chinese Emperors for centuries. During that time he had an English tutor in Peter O'Toole, the one major occidental player in The Last Emperor. The relationship here is similar to the one shown in Seven Years In Tibet between Brad Pitt as Heinrich Harrer and the young Dalai Lama. Here though the emphasis is on the pupil not the tutor. The Last Emperor is an epic international achievement, not possible during the years of Mao Tse-tung's rule. As a film it received great international respect winning nine Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Bernardo Bertolucci. That's quite a mandate in and of itself. Though the film is more than two and half hours long I guarantee your interest will not flag. And it really is worth it to see at the very end the elderly Emperor's meeting with the new Red Guards of Mao's Cultural Revolution and that bit of symbolism with the cricket. Absolutely priceless, just as the film is.