I must say that getting through The Last Emperor was a lot like work. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t my least favorite Best Picture winner, but it isn’t close to my favorite either. It’s a beautiful film and there are aspects to it that are very engaging and very entertaining. Perhaps the problem was that the only version that was available to me was the Extended Director’s Cut, which comes in at a whopping 218 minutes. That running time of nearly four hours was just too long, and I would be interested in finding a theatrical version of the film to see if I felt differently about it at 2 hours and 50 minutes rather than 3 hours and 50 minutes.

What did I like about The Last Emperor?

First of all, and no pun intended, I enjoyed the sheer majesty of it. This is an epic film in its scope and what Director Bernardo Bertolucci was attempting to accomplish. The film takes place over a half a century and Bertolucci jumped around the time line showing us the various stages of the life of Pu Yi. All of those stages of the story were depicted in a manner worthy of the seriousness of the content. This is a “big” film that is also self-aware. Bertolucci knew that this was going to be a grand showcase and he and the other filmmakers gave it the respect that it was due.

No one can argue against the fact that this is a beautiful film. In fact, this might be one of the most beautiful pre-digital films I’ve ever seen. What is so amazing about this film is the absolute control that Bertolucci and Oscar-winning Art Directors Ferdinando Scarfiotti, Bruno Casari and Osvaldo Desideri had over the color palette in this film. While this film is beautiful, it isn’t just beautiful for beauty’s sake. The color palette was kept under that much control in order to help tell the story and define the characters. Certain colors always symbolize certain aspects in the film and help to subconsciously guide what the viewers are seeing. Oscar-winning Cinematographer Victorio Storaro explained it thusly:

“Red is the color of the Beginning. When the Emperor cuts his veins he sees Red Blood that reminds him of his first color experience as a newborn Emperor. Orange is the color of family. It is the color of the Forbidden City which the Emperor associates with Warmth and maternal embrace. Yellow is the color of Identity. It represents Imperial Status in the mind of the young emperor. Yellow symbolizes the Sun itself. Green is the color of knowledge. We see green for the first time when tutor comes to the Forbidden City. Color Green symbolizes Knowledge that is to empower the young emperor.” 1

Looking back on the film, the filmmakers painstakingly controlled every aspect of the color so that the proper colors were used in each scene in order to convey the proper story component or emotion. Certainly there have been many, many films throughout the history of cinema that have used color in this way. The Last Emperor is merely one of the best examples of taking total control of the color palette in order to make your point.

Clearly this is an incredibly well-crafted film from a technical and visual standpoint. Among the nine Academy Awards it took home on Oscar night along with Best Picture and Best Director were Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction-Set Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Film Editing. Clearly this was a film in which all of the people involved worked very hard to craft a visually impressive film and their results were nothing short of stunning.

I also felt that The Last Emperor was very strong thematically. Bertolucci switched back and forth between Pu Yi’s life in prison and his life in Peking and then later Manchuria. What is ironic is that even when he was living in the Forbidden City as the Emperor, he was still technically a prisoner since he wasn’t allowed to leave. He was the stereotypical bird in a golden cage. His only real taste of freedom came after he was deposed and exiled to his ancestral homeland of Manchuria, where he thinks he is the ruler, but is in actuality merely a puppet for the Japanese in the early stages of World War II. In fact, the reason why he is later arrested and sent to prison is because the Chinese Communists accused him of conspiring with the Japanese during the war.

This irony of prison being prison no matter what it looks like is played throughout the film as Pu Yi struggles with the idea that he is the supreme leader of all of China, but is not allowed to leave his own home. All of that makes the final scene of the movie that much more touching, when as an old man living as a gardener in Peking, he goes to the Forbidden City, which is now a tourist attraction. He steps over a velvet rope and goes to sit on his former throne when a young boy tells him he’s not allowed. What’s interesting in this scene is that Pu Yi actually looks and acts happier than we’ve ever seen him. He seemingly lost everything, but when you think about it, he never had anything to lose in the first place. Now he is a simple man living a simple life and it’s satisfying enough for him.

Finally, I liked Peter O’Toole in this film. Starring in his first Best Picture winner since Lawrence of Arabia more than two decades earlier, O’Toole plays the tutor Reginald “R.J.” Johnston who attempts to teach Pu Yi not only basic academics, but what life is like in the twentieth Century, since tradition and heritage are keeping the Emperor locked in the past. R.J. is the archetypal mentor who gives knowledge and fantastical gifts to the Hero. In the case of The Last Emperor, that gift is a bicycle, which is shown to be the most exotic thing that Pu Yi has ever seen to that point. O’Toole played the role of R.J. with a debonair sophistication that came so naturally to him, you couldn’t tell that he was acting. He played the role with an impartial balance, but his subtle emotions were always clear, and we could feel his heartbreak when the Revolution forced him to leave the Emperor behind. Peter O’Toole was a remarkable actor, and I would highly recommend seeing as many of his films as you can.

What did I not like about The Last Emperor?

This film is long. I mean it is really, really long. And there are long stretches where it is boring. It’s not the pacing that makes it boring. I can handle films that have slower than normal pacing, but something at least has to be happening, or I need to feel like we’re moving towards something happening. There are several stretches through The Last Emperor, especially in the first half of the film when he’s primarily still a child, where nothing is happening. We see a lot of beautiful scenery and ornate interiors and fantastic costumes, but we don’t get very much story. To me the story doesn’t really get interesting until he’s an adult and has to confront his changing world.

Again, this is the director’s cut and not the version that won the Oscar, and I do feel like cutting that hour out would probably have made a huge difference in my enjoyment of the film. Yes, I’m sure that I would have missed out on some amazing shots, but the story really needed to be tighter.

I was not a huge fan of Pu Yi as a character. I understand that he was raised as an entitled royal, but it was difficult to empathize with him or to feel any kind of sympathy for him. As he grew up I felt bad that he was locked in the Forbidden City, but he was such a petulant little shit that it was hard to hold onto those feelings of sympathy. He does become more likable after R.J. enters the film and starts to teach him to be more independent and less reliant on tradition and heritage. It seems like there is an opportunity to build some sympathy when he finally does attain some semblance of what he thinks is freedom when he moves to Manchuria and claims himself ruler of that land. The problem is that he becomes a stooge and puppet of the Japanese and everyone sees it but him.

Even in the prison when he’s being interrogated, it’s hard to feel any compassion for Pu Yi because he still carries himself as an Emperor. We see this as those loyal to him continue to take care of his needs, like getting him dressed and tying his shoes.

Finally, I didn’t care for the overall way in which the story was told. I felt like the scenes in the prison were much more interesting because there was palpable tension in them and there were also allies from unexpected places and betrayals from equally unexpected places. Too much time was spent on Pu Yi as a child, and not enough of an effort was made to allow the audience to relate to him as a human being.

Overall this is a difficult film for me to critique. What is does well, it does very well. What it doesn’t do well, struggles mightily to hold my interest. This film is as beautiful as any film I’ve ever seen, but it fails to hold my attention for long stretches due to the convoluted and self-indulgent manner in which the story is presented. I may be in the minority here, but I feel that The Last Emperor is overall overrated as a film. I think the best way to sum up my opinion on this film is to quote the Critics Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes: “While decidedly imperfect, Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic is still a feast for the eyes.” 2

Did the Academy get it right?

I will give it a reluctant yes, but the only reason for that is due to the meticulous craftsmanship and artistry of its visuals. The Last Emperor is a work of fine art from a visual standpoint, not unlike Amadeus. But unlike that film, the title character is not nearly as accessible to us so we are not able to emotionally engage with him and the whole story suffers because of that. Plus the films that it was nominated against, while exceptional for the most part, weren’t really the types of films that would be considered Best Picture-worthy, especially when held against the scale of The Last Emperor. Broadcast News, for example, had an all-star cast and was charming and funny and cute. While it was more entertaining, charming and funny and cute rarely win you an Oscar. Fatal Attraction was perhaps the most iconic film of the year, and it finished the year as the #2 film at the box office. But it was primarily a suspense/horror film, and we were still a few years away from that genre breaking through the Best Picture wall. I’ve not seen Hope and Glory, but it was also a foreign film, and foreign films might be the only thing that gets less Academy love than courtroom dramas or science fiction. Then there was Moonstruck, a romantic comedy starring Cher and Nicholas Cage, and who can forget Cher’s outfit from that Oscar night. Also a top box office performer in 1987, as a Romantic Comedy, it really didn’t stand a chance against The Last Emperor. I don’t think that I would have voted for any of those pictures over The Last Emperor. There is one other point I would like to make, and that is the fact that there were two movies that were not even nominated that should have been. Good Morning Vietnam deserved some Oscar love, as did The Untouchables. I could also make the case that Full Metal Jacket and Wall Street could have been nominated as well. From my standpoint, the fact that none of those films were even nominated for Best Picture was the biggest mistake the Academy made in 1987.

1. Cinematography Workshops – Light Extreme; Cinematic Expression – Color in Film. http://lightextreme.com/ColorInFilm.html
2. Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/last_emperor/?search=the%20last%20emp