• Quotes (3)
• Trivia (5)
• Plot Description
• Soundtrack
• Wallpapers
• Popularity
Release Date
Nov 20, 1987 (USA)
DVD Release Date
• R1: Feb 23, 1999
• R2: 24 May 2004
Budget $25,000,000
MPAA Rating
PG13
Running Time
2 hours, 40 minutes
Country Hong Kong, France, Italy, UK
Studio Columbia Pictures
More info on IMDb.com
Other Titles
• The Last Emperor
• Der Letzte Kaiser (1987)
|
Genre: Drama, Epic, Biography, Political, True Story, Period Piece, Marriage, World War II, Drugs, Prison, Murder, Culture Clash, Infidelity
Tagline: He was the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, the absolute monarch of China. He was born to rule a world of ancient tradition. Nothing prepared him for our world of change.
Plot: Although it is 160 minutes long and shot with breathtaking scope and sumptuousness, 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.
More Plot Descriptions
 Discussion forum for this movie
|
| |
|
| Written by |
Mark Peploe
The Sheltering Sky, Profession: reporter, Afraid of the Dark |
|
| Cast |
Joan Chen
Judge Dredd, Twin Peaks, On Deadly Ground |
 | |
 | |
 | | | Victor Wong
Big Trouble in Little China, Tremors, Seven Years in Tibet | Dennis Dun
Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, Year of the Dragon | |
[more] |
|
| Music By |
David Byrne
Married to the Mob, Young Adam, Dead End Kids |
 | | Cong Su
Lü cha, Shou ji, Mo li hua kai |
|
|
|
Movie Database
In Theaters
