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Features: Widescreen, Dolby Digital (5.1)
Editor's Note
Although it is 160 minutes long and shot with breathtaking scope and sumptuousness, Bernardo Bertolucci's film is a story about claustrophobia. Pu Yi, the Manchurian emperor of China who ascended the throne in 1908 at the age of three, is a prisoner in the palace he rules over. Outside, real power changes hands with each coup d'etat. Pu Yi grows to manhood, is tutored by a Westerner (Peter O'Toole), and marries a gorgeous princess (Joan Chen). However, the adult Pu Yi (John Lone) is destined for a communist reeducation camp when the war is over. From start to finish, Pu Yi is a passive antihero who can never come to grips with the idea that the absolute power conferred on him as a child was only a mirage. The mistakes Pu Yi made trying to realize that power, especially collaborating with the Japanese during the war, provide Bertolucci with the chance to explore his familiar theme of collaboration and its moral consequences (as he did in THE CONFORMIST and 1900). In the end, Pu Yi seems to have reached a kind of peace, and the terrible waste of a special man's life disappears into a drab, grey-clad Beijing.
Plot Summary
THE LAST EMPEROR is the true story of Pu Yi, the last monarch of a China that changed drastically during his lifetime. Though he comes to power at the age of three and is waited on hand and foot by an army of servants and consorts, Pu Yi is politically powerless. His life becomes a tortuous struggle with this reality, as he is used as a puppet by the Japanese and later reeducated by the communists. Bernardo Bertolucci's award-winning film is epic, lavish, and poignant.
| Features | Source: Image Entertainment Inc. / Criterion Collection |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
|  | Studio: Image |
| Release Date: 1/6/2009 |
| Running Time: 164 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1987 | | Catalog ID: 1779 | | UPC: 00715515033725 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Academy Awards (1987) |  | Winner, Best Art Direction - Set Decoration | | Winner, Best Film Editing | | Winner, Best Picture | | Winner, Best Sound | | David Byrne, Winner, Best Original Score | | Ryuichi Sakamoto, Winner, Best Original Score | | James Acheson, Winner, Best Costume Design | | Bernardo Bertolucci, Winner, Best Adapted Screenplay | | Bernardo Bertolucci, Winner, Best Director | | Mark Peploe, Winner, Best Adapted Screenplay | | Jeremy Thomas, Winner, Best Picture | | Vittorio Storaro, Winner, Best Cinematography | | Cong Su, Winner, Best Original Score |
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| | Professional Reviews | Entertainment Weekly
"...Numbingly beautiful....Sumptuous chinoiserie..." -- Rating: B 03/05/1999 p.71Variety
"...A film of unique, quite unsurpassed visual splendor, THE LAST EMPEROR makes for a fascinating trip to another world..." 10/07/1987 Film Comment
"...[The film] has the feel of other-worldliness, of science fiction..." 07/01/1987 p.61-3 Los Angeles Times
"...If you want a staggering and certainly singular movie experience, THE LAST EMPEROR will do very nicely..." 11/29/1987 p.C1 Total Film
"[T]here's no faulting the use of genuine locations, the magnificent costumes of Vittorio Storaro's breathtaking cinematography." 04/01/2004 p.42 |
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