I'm currently slogging my way through The Last Emperor. The film is just so long. I know it has to cover the entire life of Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, but it seems to drag at times. The time period and events are interesting, but the way the director Bernardo Bertolucci presents them seems too slow for the content.
The film is set in 1950 in a Chinese prison where the Emperor and other warm criminals are being detained. Just like when he was a child, the Emperor is incapable of doing anything himself. His entire life someone has dressed him, bathed him, even tied his shoes for him. The film then flashes back to different points in Pu Yi's life, starting in 1908 when the previous Empress named him as the new Emperor when he was only 2 years old. The structure works well for this type of story, but I found myself more interested in the time in the prison than the development of Pu Yi. As a child and young man, he's a self-absorbed brat, and while the acting is excellent, I didn't enjoy watching that type of character. I'm thinking it was a true picture of the boy and man, but that didn't mean I wanted to watch his character continue to become more selfish instead of realizing his flaws and maturing.
At this exact moment, the film is in 1967, and it seems as though Pu Yi may have finally learned to think about others. All it took was the ruination of his life and the destruction of everything he knew. See, the story is interesting. Maybe another director's take on the film would work better for me.
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