Best Picture: #60
Original Release Date: April 15, 1988
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 43 minutes
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Quick Impressions:
The Last Emperor is bewildering to experience. I know very little Chinese history, and Emperor Pu Yi’s life unfolds in such a dramatic, startling way that my daughter and I could not help frequently reflecting aloud on how much more bewildering (disorienting even!) such a life must have been to experience.
Somewhat ironically, we’re given a static (and drab) frame story in which the adult Pu Yi is supposed to be learning to change. This is broken up by dynamic (and colorful) flashbacks in which we see that up to this point, the emperor’s life has been nothing but relentless, unsettling change (paradigm shift, world-altering change). All his life, he’s been told, “You are the emperor, and that will never change,” even as his entire world (including what being emperor meant) changed all around him. He’s now being told, “You must change,” (over and over again, the same message, in the same dull place, for years), and he seems to be thinking, “Please, couldn’t I just stay the same for five minutes to catch my breath!”
Watching, I often thought of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. (My daughter didn’t, of course, because she hasn’t read it.) Many novels successfully present us with a dramatic change of perspective at the end, but that one does it best. The whole time I was reading it, I was getting more and more caught up in Okonkwo’s story and his world. His life in his native Nigerian village is totally different from my own. His reality is constructed in a radically different way, and, of course, like most of us, he’s not thinking of it as a construct. He’s just experiencing it as reality. Then at the end of the novel, the British come along, and we suddenly get a disorienting shift to their perspective. It’s doubly disorienting for readers (like me) who have far more often been told stories from that perspective, the perspective of the colonizers who wrote our history. Now, after spending the entire book gradually learning to understand Okonkwo and his worldview, we suddenly understand (as in deeply feel) how disruptive and bizarre the European intrusion into his world must have seemed to him.
The Last Emperor works like that, too, only we get the disorienting shift that comes once at the end of Achebe’s novel every fifteen minutes or so in Bertolucci’s film. Things fall apart every time Emperor Pu Yi turns around. Nothing in his life is constant. Ever. The only constant is that he’s always a prisoner. He’s always chasing people who cannot stay. He’s always getting doors slammed in his face. He’s always standing apart from ceremonies happening around him that he can neither stop nor participate in fully. He’s always “in charge,” but never in control.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that made me so curious to learn about characters in history that I had no awareness of or interest in before. (Just wait until I get to Eastern Jewel!) That’s probably what The Last Emperor does best. It makes us want to learn more about the life of the last emperor of China. We see and long to understand. Even Pu Yi can’t understand his life, and he’s the one living it. Bertolucci’s film makes the world of China’s last emperor seem tantalizingly ineffable. (I mean, at the end, the lead character disappears!) When I’m writing, I always feel most satisfied when reaching hungrily for the liminal. What this film offers us is liminal in every sense of the word.
The Good:
My daughter’s comments helped me unlock the mystery of The Last Emperor. “Every time it cuts to the past,” she said, “I feel like we’re in another movie.”
“I know,” I suddenly noticed, “the genre of the flashbacks keeps changing. Right now, it feels like a film noir.”
The Last Emperor begins as Pu Yi is being processed as a prisoner of the Chinese Communist government. Then we learn his entire life story (beginning when he’s about three years old) through a series of flashbacks. (That’s what he’s processing, internally.) At moments of heightened drama, we tend to jump back to the frame story pretty abruptly. We think in alarm, “What happened?” We long to go back to the moment of suspense (which is usually traumatic for Pu Yi) to see how everything plays out. But we never do. We never flash back to the scene that caused us to worry. Instead we jump ahead in time to a new flashback, in another part of Pu Yi’s life. So even though we do move forward chronologically each time we go back, the past is always broken up, parceled out to us in increments. And every flashback sequence is like its own mini-movie, with its own color scheme, characters, genre. Only two things remain consistent. 1) Pu Yi is the emperor (though what this means keeps changing, as does his self-presentation style). 2) The film’s main musical theme plays at emotionally resonant moments. (And I love that theme so much!)
Everything else changes. The film’s use of color is sophisticated, yet simple enough that I noticed it. Creating this effect requires careful craftsmanship on the part of the filmmaker, but the viewer doesn’t even have to notice in order for it to work effectively. Each sequence in the past is its own, defined by a specific color palette. If you’ve seen a lot of movies, you’ll notice (like we did) that every flashback sequence plays out like a different film, a different kind of film. At first the changes are subtle (if you can call anything that happens in the Forbidden City subtle). But once Pu Yi leaves the Forbidden City, we would have to try not to notice that the flashbacks have changed genres.
You don’t need to be a film scholar to think, “Hmm, something has really changed here,” when you jump back to the past and suddenly The Emperor of China is a self-described “playboy” singing hits with a band in blackface at a night club in 1927. If you’re like us, you’ll then realize, “Wait a minute. This has been happening with the flashbacks all along.”
In the early flashbacks, the movie gets a lot of help from the fact that Pu Yi is a child. Every time we look at a different period of his young life, the actor playing him must change. So Pu Yi is literally a different person in every one of these early flashbacks. (It has to happen that way. Child actors grow up at a set rate. It’s very convenient.) But once John Lone starts playing the adult Pu Yi, then in every flashback, he’s forced to change his clothes (as in his entire self-presentation style). The effect is kind of dizzying. We never see the same Pu Yi twice (except in the prison frame story. He’s in the prison for ten years, and that’s the place where color goes to die. Calling the prison drab makes it sound too visually stimulating.) By necessity, Pu Yi is a master of disguise and self-reinvention.
As I said, these changes begin long before Pu Yi leaves the Forbidden City. Peter O’Toole drifts into the movie for a while, and suddenly we’re watching The King and I. With every flashback, everything changes, the characters, character dynamics, costuming, themes. At one point in prison, someone points out to Pu Yi that Peter O’Toole’s character wrote a book about him. Pu Yi rejects the idea that Mr. Johnston (O’Toole’s character) had the authority to make sweeping, definitive claims about him, pointing out, “Mr. Johnston had left before I was taken to Manchuria. He could not have known what happened.” Nobody can write the book on Pu Yi because his life changes completely in every chapter! Possibly even he doesn’t know what happened to him! (The strange interlude in Manchuria is actually my favorite part of the film, and I’ll talk more about it later.)
The supporting characters in this movie are all so interesting. We especially loved Ruocheng Ying as The Governor. Not only is Ying giving a good performance as a sympathetic character, but the film makes such good use of the character. He teaches Pu Yi many things and ultimately reinforces what life has been teaching him all along—no matter what anyone teaches you, nothing will ever be true, and life will never be comprehensible or consistent from moment to moment. (And there’s another, more comforting moral hidden underneath for Pu Yi to discover. Sometimes, you don’t get what you deserve. Bad things that happen to you are not necessarily cosmic punishments. Life is chaotic and crazy, dishing out rewards and punishment haphazardly. Pu Yi knows the governor is a good man. Maybe it’s okay for him to think that he himself is a good man, too.)
Both Pu Yi’s wives (played by Joan Chen and Vivian Wu) are extremely interesting, complex characters. (And my daughter was taken by surprise when she noticed that one character’s name was Party Boss. I constantly joke that anything that sounds vaguely applicable was “my nickname in college.” I do that so often that my six-year-old makes that joke, too, and the phrases that he chooses to joke about reveal to me the randomness he perceives in my selections. We had to stop and talk about the meaning of the designation Party Boss in this context.)
But the character who demands the most attention is clearly Eastern Jewel (Maggie Han). She literally demands it. Once we reach a certain point in the film, she shows up everywhere, drawing as much attention to herself as possible. Her catch phrase is, “I’m a spy, and I don’t care who knows it.”
After the movie ended and we started talking about another film we might want to see, my daughter joked, “Is Eastern Jewel in it? That’s the whole selling point for me. That’s what I’ll be looking for in a movie from now on.”
She’s really something! She just bursts into the scene like, “Of course, you know me!” At first my daughter and I were so confused. We had never seen her before, but she seemed so confident that everyone would know her. And then every character who encountered her would exclaim, “Eastern Jewel!”
“I feel like she’s about to sing a song to introduce herself,” I said during her first scene. It really does feel that way. For one thing, she shows up out of nowhere. The king’s first wife (in status) is reeling with grief after losing his second wife (her only friend), and then suddenly in walks Eastern Jewel dressed as a pilot (like in an old-fashioned aviator’s costume).
“Who is this?” my daughter croaked in surprise.
“Don’t you remember me?” she says with cavalier confidence to the empress who is clearly distraught about something else (that the audience has also been following).
“No!” I yelled at the TV while my daughter died laughing. “Who are you?”
She says, “I’m dressed like a pilot, but I still can’t fly!” Then the empress exclaims, “Eastern Jewel!” (Like we should all know!)
At that point, I really started to feel like a rousing musical number was coming. (Maybe because in The Drowsy Chaperone, which I saw on my honeymoon, an aviatrix drops in to start a rousing musical number. But something like “Gaston” from Beauty and the Beast would not feel any more out of place here than Eastern Jewel does herself.)
The empress explains that she’s sad her husband’s other wife has left. Eastern Jewel cheerfully tells her, “Now you’ve got me!” (Apparently they took dancing classes together once.)
At this point, my daughter and I were screaming at the TV, “Who are you?”
That’s when she tells us she’s a spy. (“Of course you are!” I said. My daughter was laughing and laughing.) Eastern Jewel’s exact words are, “I’m a spy, and I don’t care who knows it!”
She goes on to reveal to the emperor’s wife, “I work for the Japanese Special Service Bureau, and I’ve come to protect you.”
They must have gotten really close during dancing classes because now they’re on the bed together, and Eastern Jewel is pressing for closer friendship (at least) while casually asking if she smokes opium and insisting that the emperor and empress change their plans to seek asylum in Europe and instead trust her (a declared Japanese spy).
Then the emperor walks in. His wife jumps up, and Eastern Jewel announces unabashedly, “I’d love to be the emperor’s new secondary consort.”
He exclaims, “Eastern Jewel!” Then he kisses her.
I asked, “How does everybody know her???”
My daughter joked uneasily, “Is this a different movie now?” And I replied, “I feel like we’ve now wandered into Eastern Jewel: The Movie already in progress.”
Eastern Jewel says, “I came to see Your Majesty.” My daughter continued for her, “I knew I would find you if I started making out with your wife.”
“Well, she’s very friendly,” I noted.
In alarm, my daughter noticed, “And now did she just die?” Because she theatrically falls back on the bed as if unconscious.
“The emperor was wearing poisoned lipstick,” I joked. “He’s a spy, too.”
Giggling, my daughter said, “Seriously. Look at her? Is she getting up?”
Eastern Jewel is quite good at stealing the spotlight. As it turns out, she is not dead. She’s Pu Yi’s cousin. (“She must be his favorite cousin!” my daughter joked later.) And although he’s fond of her, he doesn’t think she’d make a good secondary consort. No kidding! That’s the soundest judgment Pu Yi ever shows as emperor. His actual secondary consort Wen Hsiu (played by Vivien Wu) marries him very young and is the most deferential partner in a complex marriage dynamic with the emperor and his first wife. Meanwhile, Eastern Jewel strolls in wearing an aviator’s costume announcing she’s a spy working for Japan and an opium dealer, tries to seduce both the emperor and his wife and steals the whole scene. Yes, she probably will not make the best secondary consort. She’s not even very good as a secondary character. She clearly wants to be the protagonist of her own movie (perhaps even her own musical extravaganza that runs on Broadway for ten-plus years).
For me, Eastern Jewel’s character is key to unlocking the whole film. After watching that baffling (and highly entertaining) scene, I realized, “Wait! Maybe we should know her.” Suddenly I remembered that this is true story about real, historical people. (You go in knowing that it’s about the last emperor of China, but the story seems so fantastical to experience that you kind of forget. At least, we did. I immediately started looking up the true story of the historical figure known in the movie as Eastern Jewel. I encourage you to do the same. (One of her real names is Yoshiko Kawashima. We’re planning to read the novel The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel, and we’re still looking for the best non-fiction books about this period.)
The Last Emperor is a true story. But it’s told in flashback, and each flashback is deliberately presented as its own little film. I suspected something like that as I watched, but Eastern Jewel’s character really drove the point home for me. Pu Yi’s own experience of his life was fragmented. Due to circumstances beyond his control, even his own identity changed again and again. Watching The Last Emperor does not give us every historical fact, but it does leave us with a helpful impression of the instability of Pu Yi’s reign and what it was like to live through those turbulent years in China.
At the end of the movie, my daughter remarked, “This seems so incredible that it’s hard to believe it’s really a true story. But it is a true story, right?”
“Yes,” I said, cautioning, “Now I don’t know what’s been changed for the screen. Some details may have been added.”
“Like Eastern Jewel?” she joked.
“No!” I said. “She’s real! I already looked her up. But her name isn’t Eastern Jewel.”
“Of course not,” my daughter said. Googling her name, she added, “Oh I like this. First thing it says about her is, ‘Spy,’ just like she does.”
Eastern Jewel is a spy, and neither she nor Google even cares who knows it! (We’re so excited to read more about her. She’s really a character!)
Best Scene:
You’re probably gathering that the scene we liked best featured Eastern Jewel (since I just related the whole thing to you). But what I think is the best scene is the party in Manchuria, where Pu Yi is ruling as puppet emperor. (Eastern Jewel is there, too, but it’s not my fault. I didn’t invite her.)
My daughter loved the visuals of this party scene (the impact of which continues into the next scene in which the empress leaves the party and wanders off into an empty room—well, empty except for Eastern Jewel. She’s everywhere, of course).
This whole scene is quite cinematic, like a scene in a film. Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally) they’re making a film during the party, which I assume is a propaganda film for the Japanese government.
My daughter loved the look of this whole scene, the way the party looks like a movie. That’s the thing. It is a movie. Pu Yi just doesn’t realize he’s acting in it. He thinks he’s really the Emperor of Manchuria. He’s not. He’s the puppet of the Japanese, a figurehead for a government that doesn’t really exist, a front to make the citizens of Manchuria submissive to Japanese rule. (Now, it’s worth noting that I got my information about this from a Chinese propaganda film later in The Last Emperor. The empress knows, too, but presumably her source is Eastern Jewel, perhaps not reliable, and her own observations, perhaps not reliable either since she’s always high on opium, thanks to Eastern Jewel.)
This scene is so complex. The empress (played by Joan Chen) is wandering around lost in a fog, fingering the walls with a dreamy look on her face like she’s starring in a late 80s perfume commercial. (“What’s going on?” my daughter wondered. I told her, “It’s either opium or Obsession by Calvin Klein.”) At one point, the empress sits down and starts conspicuously eating a large floral arrangement, blossom by blossom.
Pu Yi is furious. He thinks his wife is making him look like a fool. Actually, she’s the one trying to tell him that his own behavior is making him look like a fool. He’s not really the emperor here. He’s letting others use him. He has no real power. He can’t believe her because she’s using opium, and his mother died from an opium overdose. The reality of the situation is quite tragic. The pageantry is lovely and surreal. The movie is obviously very good because the Japanese are able to accomplish all of their goals unchecked for a long time. It’s a great scene.
Best Scene Visually:
My other favorite scene is when Pu Yi is forced to watch a most disturbing film in his re-education camp. It’s about the stupid person who let the Japanese gain power in Manchuria, the idiot who pretended to be a benevolent Manchurian emperor, so the Japanese government could commit horrible atrocities behind the scenes. That useful fool is Pu Yi.
It makes me think of Homer Simpson. “Oh, I like it better when they’re making fun of people who aren’t me.” (I find that quote very relatable.) That’s funny, but this isn’t. Watching this scene, I felt Pu Yi’s pain so intensely.
It’s pretty easy to see why the Chinese government would allow this production to film inside the Forbidden City. (It’s very cool, by the way, to watch all of the early scenes that take place there, visually overwhelming. My daughter noted, actually, that the whole movie is visually overwhelming, at all times.)
At the end of this scene, we hear the narration of the filmstrip say, “Nine days after the bomb at Hiroshima on August the 15th, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan. It was the first time his voice had ever been heard on the radio.” My daughter pretended to narrate, “Eastern Jewel was also there.” Then we get another flashback, and sure enough, there she is!
Best Action Sequence:
The love scene early in Pu Yi’s marriage is fantastic. Though my daughter and I joked abundantly while watching it, the whole thing is quite well done. I’m talking about the scene in which he recreates a game he used to play with the monks with his two wives under the bedsheets. In this scene, we see how the marriage works when it’s working well. Later on, reality completely changes for these three, and their union falls apart. I also find it interesting that Pu Yi’s unusual upbringing actually does prepare him to be a husband to these two wives. It is only when their world completely changes that these lessons he learned in childhood stop working for him. And, predictably, the scene ends in fire, chaos, and disaster, because never in his life is Pu Yi allowed more than a few fleeting minutes of happiness.
The Negatives:
I have a hard time finding fault with The Last Emperor. Initially it seemed like a chaotic jumble to me, full of tonal shifts and changing priorities, like a movie that didn’t know what it wanted to be. Then I realized that was all done by design. The movie knows exactly what it’s doing. It wants us to experience the life of the last emperor of China as he himself experienced it. Pu Yi is the one who never knows just exactly who or what he’s supposed to be. The rules keep changing for him (not just stated rules, either, I mean fundamental, guiding precepts about the nature of reality). His world changes again and again, and the movie marks these shifts for us by changing color, changing visual perspective, changing clothes, changing actors, changing characters, changing genre.
For the longest time, we keep going back to the frame story that holds the whole thing together (Pu Yi’s time as a prisoner in the drabbest place imaginable). Only when he has moved through the whole chaotic, kaleidoscopic catastrophe of his past is he able to move forward, to leave the drab prison and return to a more stable world. And when even that begins to change around him, he is finally able to hold onto his core identity and not go spiraling into yet another flashback. He’s finished processing his past at that point. He returns to the Forbidden City in the living present. It’s a tourist attraction. It doesn’t hold terrors for him anymore. He just goes back to have a last look at the place.
The only problem with this film that I see is rooted in me as an inadequate viewer of it. I do not know much Chinese history. I only know what little I have learned in history classes or read casually in books (usually for children). Even when I know of events in Chinese history (names, facts), I do not know these events in their complexity. (It’s almost as if I’ve managed to pick them up as bits of trivia for some reason.)
I find the governor of the prison very sympathetic, and the films he shows are quite persuasive. But they are propaganda films, too. Just watching the movie casually, you’re tempted to think, “Communism was the best thing that ever happened to China!” (Maybe it is. I don’t know, you see.) Of course, the ending of the film (the fate of the governor, the similarity of the flag-waving parade to the arcane ceremonies of Pu Yi’s childhood in the Forbidden City) kind of dismantles the idea that China’s communist government is stable, consistent, unerring.
But I just don’t know enough about Chinese history to comment on the impression of it I get from watching The Last Emperor. Maybe the film is wildly inaccurate or has propagandistic leanings. I don’t know enough information to comment on that. I do know the movie won nine Oscars and deserves all of them. (I love the score, particularly what I think of as the main theme!) Is it historically accurate or responsible in its depiction of sensitive events? You will have to ask someone who knows the history of that period and region better than I do! (And it will not be hard to find someone. I know nothing.)
Overall:
My daughter and I enjoyed The Last Emperor so much that now we’re excited to read more about Eastern Jewel. (Of course, she shows up in this paragraph. She’s everywhere!) If you want to study Chinese history, this film is a great place to start because watching it will make you so curious to learn more. I don’t know much about the life of the historical Pu Yi, but now I do know how Bernardo Bertolucci thinks it felt to live as the last emperor of China in a world whose constructs were constantly changing.