THE LAST EMPEROR
A film review by Kevin Romano
Copyright 1988 Kevin Romano
Admittedly, I saw this movie in my local $2 house where the picture wouldn't fit on the screen so the right-hand side wrapped around the wall and waved on a curtain. Although an interesting distraction, especially when the emperor appeared to be literally two-faced, I think I saw enough of the film to give my views on this Sino-Latin collaboration.
One of the nice things about movie reviews is that they are often refreshingly wrong. I feel this is because when we see a film we filter it through our own unique set of life experiences and the things we "see" are those things to which we have become sensitive -- sort of like a group of allergy patients sitting in a doctor's office. I am no exception. The things I "see" you may say don't exist in the film or vice versa. This is a healthy phenomenon. So, as a word of caution, if you haven't already seen this movie, go see it for yourself; don't believe critics. One man's meat is another man's poison, as the saying goes. I, myself, however, always read and believe criticisms. As Luis Bunuel I'm sure would comment about one of our national weaknesses, "Those poor naive Americans." Being half-English and half-Italian has already made me the type who would shout, "Long live the King!" and then take out a gun and shoot the bastard. Just joking! I think.
Anyway, here are some of my ideas about the film: The movie was hard to watch. It was colder than a winter in Chicago. Nonetheless, although I don't think I could sit through it again, it makes important comments about the lunacy of political power and, as it offers no alternatives other than awareness of the problem, it is dreadful in its implications.
The story, as the title suggests, is about the life of the last emperor of China. As a three-year-old he is installed in "The Forbidden City," and everyone bows down to him. He quickly gets the idea that he is superior to others and can do almost anything he wants. This is shown in the film to be correct and incorrect at the same time. Within "The Forbidden City," a symbol of the emperor's own imprisonment, he is free to do whatever he wants, but he is, indeed, not free to leave. He is a puppet, if you will, to protect the interests of those who put him in power in the first place. Sound familiar?
One very striking shot near the opening shows the young emperor and his brother, who has been allowed to visit him, at the head of a long retinue of heavily-robed functionaries, dias-bearers and so forth. The emperor starts running across an extremely expansive, stone-paved courtyard. The retinue speeds up to try and follow and they all end up going in a huge circle in the courtyard. The camera observes this from on high to emphasize how small they are -- a bit of directorial virtuosity which caught me by surprise. The emperor leading the people in circles -- I wonder where that idea came from.
While the emperor is thus cut off from the rest of the world, China becomes a republic and the emperor becomes aware that it now has a president. The feeling of his own imprisonment grows.
Eventually, the emperor gets a tutor from Scotland who encourages him to free himself. The emperor, now around twenty, fires the old-guard and installs a person to do an inventory on how much has been stolen from the storehouse. The eunuchs, hundreds of them, burn the storehouse to the ground. The emperor says that this is to cover their thieving and, in a strange scene in which the eunuchs carry their testicles in phials out into the courtyard -- wishing to be buried as whole men -- we are lead to believe that they will be executed, although, thankfully, we don't have to witness the mass executions. Apparently, showing them would have made the emperor too hateful to the audience and interfered with the main theme which I will get to.
The film is largely based on the political history of China. As such, it follows the emperor's life into the period when he collaborated with the Japanese in Manchuria. It is a sad life in which the enslavement of China has its parallel in the enslavement of the emperor -- he is merely a puppet again, this time in the hands of the Japanese.
When the Communists take over, the emperor is caught and spends ten years in prison being reeducated, eventually becoming a gardener and dying in 1967. Ironically, the Communist who reeducates him is portrayed as a kind teacher who has a profound humanity. Later, as the emperor walks the streets, he sees the jailer forced to march in a parade of denunciation in which he is humiliated -- the vagaries of politics. The emperor stands up for him, but is, in turn, ridiculed by the young Chinese cultural revolutionaries who are just as much under the spell of an illusion as the emperor ever was. The circle is complete. The emperor has gone from illusion to disillusionment to awareness only now to be ridiculed by the young Chinese Communist guards just starting off on their own period of illusion.
During the emperor's reeducation the moviemakers mix in footage of real atrocities, such as the mass opium addiction of the Chinese, real executions, as well as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima. This ties the movie, more than anything else, to our own reality.
So is this picture a cinematic version of Machiavelli? In some ways it is. Human nature doesn't change -- certainly a view of Machiavelli. The emperor loves Manchuria. Machiavelli was a passionate lover of Florence. The corrupt nature of humanity is certainly present, but, perhaps it is best not to drive the parallels too far, for the emperor's life is ultimately seen from the point of view of a long period spent under the spell of an illusion and his equally long period before breaking out of this psychic prison. His struggle consumed his whole life. The implication, I think, is that ours could consume the whole world.
From almost any angle this movie is first-rate. It even had a moment or two of humor as when a Chinese band plays its version of "Auld Lang Syne" as a send-off for the emperor's Scotch tutor.
I don't quite know what to say about the coldness of the film. In one way it is totally apropos; it fits the subject matter perfectly. On the other hand, who wants to go see a cold movie? All I can say is that I am really glad to have seen this important film. I would compare it to going to the dentist's office to have your teeth drilled -- necessary, but not exactly an endearing experience. I salute the moviemakers -- this is a stupendous and important film. In a world asleep in its illusions, political power may just be the greatest oxyMORON of all.
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