the isolation of a simple man in times of change

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2008)

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor is a glorious epic that almost should be made for someone of a higher stature. In a sense all of the visual splendor that Bertolucci, DP Vittorio Storaro, and all the costume and set and art designers- not to mention the Forbidden Kingdom itself- are a contradiction on a man who spent his life more or less as a prisoner, either by birth or by choice. He was taken from his mother at a very young age, still practically an infant, and basically given an empire, with many servants waiting at any and all command.
But then Pu Yi was given an empire that was crumbling due to the historical shift from power of empire to republic, and he became only important as an obscure figurehead in a society that kept him away. Until he was 18 or 19, when he was forcibly ejected from the Forbidden Kingdom by a new system, his whole upbringing was warped. This led then to becoming, by something of his choice (though, as with any drug like the devil opium from his homeland, something he wanted without knowing all the consequences), an installed 'puppet' emperor. And, finally, this led to a real prison, albeit one with a far greater existential means to an end.
What Bertolucci charts, brilliantly, is what a man of royalty becomes when he has no power, no real influence (and, if any, as a pawn figurehead for the Japanese), and most importantly with very few actual emotional connections. There's a wet nurse, there's a wife (or two, briefly), and R.J. (Peter O'Toole), but in general there's very little Pu Yi can cling to. It's rather staggering to boot since the director is not entirely after a political message- Maoists are seen as just another wave, towards the end of the film, that's stemmed from the protesters from earlier in the late 1910's- but more-so about what Pu Yi's purpose is in life without real freedom. There are escapist pleasures, like being a Playboy, and even as a puppet emperor there's some escapist element from the gravity of the real situations he's not aware of. As the director said once about the character, which makes some good sense, is that he's a 'Peter Pan character', and with change being reflected as something that goes on to far greater lengths around him than in himself.
But is this a Peter Pan story or film? Not quite; it's one of those grandly filmed historical dramas that does the rare step of choosing character over plot (this despite the fact that Bertolucci jumps back and forth between the 1950s prison and the history), but at the same time everything goes like clockwork, staggeringly at times, in terms of the production values. Almost by luck, like with the scenes with little Pu Yi, there's some awesome cinema captured in the unexpected, as the colors spring out, sumptuously, with themes that are quite internal and deeply felt. He also has the luck of having John Lone playing, for the most part, Pu Yi from young adult to old man, a presence that often hides back his true isolation with the markings of a man who's not as strong as he thinks he is (this despite how he acts with his wives, and how he is around the wise and caring Johnston, played by a perfectly cast O'Toole). Lone makes the character sympathetic in ways that would be trickier for a less adept actor with those subtle moments of anguish.
Worth seeing for sure in full widescreen, preferably the remastered Criterion where everything's crisp as bacon, it's one of the best films of 1987, and it challenges the perception of the typical 'costume epic'; beneath the veneer of the hundreds and hundreds of extras, the atmosphere behind the walls of the Kingdom or at the prison, and in all the carefully orchestrated moments, there's questions about the nature of power and change in contexts political and personal.