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WRONG EMPEROR What attracted Bernardo Bertolucci to Pu Yi as subject for a major spectacle isn’t evident in The Last Emperor. This is an epic in search of a story and no matter how it pretends to be a very assured production, we come away thinking it’s too inconsequential: Pu Yi may be China’s last Manchu emperor but, minus the symbolism, he’s neither interesting nor very important historically. Bertolucci’s narrow perspective frequently bores—we keep watching in the ever-receding hope we’ll see more than what we’re getting; after the first hour we want to check out of the Imperial Palace and survey the blood and carnage spilling from beyond the prison walls of the Forbidden City because we’re desperate to believe something’s going on somewhere. Could be why China permitted Bertolucci to film there—no one disputes Pu Yi’s unimportance. Elaborating weariness, the director needs a series of vitamin B-12 shots: scene after vapid scenes put us into a stupor. For example, when Pu Yi as a young man is suckling on the surrogate’s breast, the camera pans some imperial sponges on small boats in a lily-loaded pond who are watching him with binoculars. Do we gasp at the languorous depravity or laugh? Haven’t a clue. I’d then indict photographer Vittorio Storaro for his lack of involvement with his real principal subject, the Forbidden City; his palette is numbingly jaundice. I’d then go after the absence of a score. And what the hell is Bertolucci up to when he dislodges us from the movie’s whole by giving us those very last shots of American tourists? The actors are D.O.A, so emblematically pictorial they’re poster shots; there’s more drama in the stills than in the action. Only twice in the movie does John Lone, who plays the adult Pu Yi, come alive long enough to get a reaction from us: when he sings “Am I Blue” and when he says he appreciates western goodies like Wrigley’s chewing gum and Bayer Aspirin. Told in flashback, the breaks are proficient, yet they work against not only the story’s momentum but against the central performers’ youthfulness because Orientals often don’t age convincingly before the camera. And there’s too much time spent on the lackadaisical sins of private lives—we fight the drowsies when watching Pu Yi’s first wife succumb to her opium addiction. At the beginning of the movie we find ourselves mesmerized by the dying empress-dowager when she informs the young emperor he’ll inherit the throne. If we close our eyes, we can easily believe her voice is provided by Meryl Streep doing her Out of Africa routine. The empress is intriguingly debauched and nearly evil-eyed and virtually levitating in the splendiferous surroundings of the imperial place (not too unlike Jabba the Hut in The Return of the Jedi). When the movie is finally over and lift somnolently from our seats, we regret not seeing The Last Empress. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved.
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