The Last Emperor 4K 1987 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

In 1908, the Qing Empire. Three-year-old Pu Yi becomes emperor of the Celestial Empire. The child emperor is treated as a deity. He can do everything except leave the palace. The winds of change that shake the world beyond its walls do not reach the Forbidden City. But the life of China's last emperor is part of the great history of the 20th century.

Review 4K Movie

The emperor is a three-year-old crowned baby, splashing around in the bathtub and giggling at his servants. The Emperor is a spoiled boy, unreasonable in his use of power and eager to demonstrate his superiority to everyone. The Emperor is a teenager in love, beginning to realize his place in the world. The Emperor is a stately young reformer. The Emperor is a man banished from the city. The Emperor is a playboy. The Emperor is a puppet. The emperor is a prisoner. Emperor... an old man at peace.

The Forbidden City. That is where Pu Yi, the last of the Qing Dynasty, which dominated China for centuries, ruled. The absurdity of the young lord's position is that he has no right to go beyond his domain. Seeing the world "beyond the wall" is forbidden to him. Pu Yi is absolutely free, but only within the borders of the Forbidden City. "I think the emperor is the loneliest young man in the world," states his English mentor Reginald Johnston (Peter O'Toole). "Open the door!" - exclaims the helpless Pu Yi as yet another hard-fought sense of life hides behind the gate.

The small, disconnected emperor is not taught to live in the Forbidden City. After all, the servants are there to fulfill the most reckless whims, not to reveal to the young ruler the harsh realities of life, in which he plunges headlong into, when his long-held dream to break free, finally realized.

The warmth and extravagance of the Forbidden City throughout the film is in stark contrast to the gray prison life of the former emperor, where, after a failed suicide attempt, he is forced to tell the story of his life. The confession we witness is not the confession of a lord, but of a man.

The emperor's life is a continuous chain of losses. It was his mother, his mousy friend, his teacher, his second wife, his empress... It was because of a number of things, from Pu Yi's own cruelty to a political conspiracy.

Power is an illusion for which he has to pay with his freedom and which he tries time and again to recreate after being expelled from the Forbidden City. The lure of grandeur is why he falls into the trap of the Japanese, in whose hands he becomes a puppet and, in the end, Pu Yi is none other than a slave to his desire to rule.

In The Last Emperor, Bertolucci redefines the concepts of "historical person" and "history," where the former becomes hostage to the latter. The individual has no power to affect the uninterrupted flow of life. We only perceive Pu Yi as a person at the end, when a smiling old man with sad eyes appears before us. Before that he is only a part of the system, a continuation of the dynasty.

The word "last" in the title is a brutal statement about the impossibility of returning to the past greatness. The era comes to an end, and the world is open to the new, while the "man from the past" dissolves where his ancestors have been dying for thousands of years.

The age of change has displaced the traditional way of life forever, and in 1987 the Italian maestro realizes that the individual played only an extra role in the grandiose spectacle of Madame History. In Bertolucci's beautiful obsession, coolness and passion, reason and desire, a sense of duty and a desperate urge to break free, all continuously bordered by the small soul of the great emperor.