The Last Emperor (1987) Columbia Pictures 📢 Director: Bernardo Bertolucci 💰 Producer: Jeremy Thomas 👫 Cast: John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ying Ruocheng, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto. 🏆 Awards ceremony: -60th Academy Awards: April 11, 1988. Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, California. 🎭 Other films nominated for Best Picture this year: -Broadcast News. -Fatal Attraction. -Hope And Glory. -Moonstruck. 📕 Plot summary: A young boy (Puyi) becomes the Emperor of China at the age of 3. The film shows his frustrations with being restricted to being confined within the Forbidden City and not allowed to leave the grounds. Years later Puyi is expelled and exiled to Tientsin where he then gets married. And a whole lot of other nonsense happens too! 💥 Standout scene(s): Near the end when Puyi tries to reason with a guard in the street over Jin Yuan's treatment as a prisoner and vouches for him being a good person. 🔑 Facts: -The 60th Academy Awards. -Nominated for 9 Academy Awards, it won all 9: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay (adapted), Music, Sound, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Editing. -This was the second Best Picture appearance for Peter O'Toole (Lawrence Of Arabia). -There is a 3½ hours version of the film labeled as the 'Director's Cut' but the director later claimed this was NOT his cut, but rather an erroneous title given to that version. 🙂 Personal opinion: Political bullshit I couldn't care less about. The story is uninteresting, the movie is too long and the whole thing suffers from a serious helping of utter boredom. A slow film which gets better as it progresses, but you really need some stamina to endure it. At times it seems more tedious than OPPENHEIMER (and that takes some doing!) but there is a serious storyline underneath it all. And to be serious, the film does have a very professional-looking style about it and it is reflected in its production. I have read elsewhere that the film is highly regarded, and let's face it, it won 9 Academy Awards... but no, this is definitely not my kind of movie. Peter O'Toole does make a positive difference to the dynamic of the film, however. The graphic depictions of WWII which are shown on a screen later in the film are very harrowing and a little unnecessary I thought. A word has to be said about Academy Award winning director Bernardo Bertolucci here: is it just me or does this guy like showing pre-teen full frontal naked young boys in his movies? The young lad playing the Emperor in this film is seen on more than one occasion showing his little dangler flopping around for the world to see; just as two boys did in an earlier Bertolucci movie, 1900. Something a bit dodgy right there. And if that wasn't bad enough, what is with the 8 year-old actor playing Puyi doing getting milked by a young woman's tit? I can't believe the blatant child sexual abuse being displayed here was allowed to remain in the film, let alone be shot to begin with! You'd think that would be the end of my questioning but no. I just couldn't get over some of the absolutely ridiculous rituals, rules, laws and protocols that are shown: such as the young boy taking a shit into a pot, the camera showing us in great detail the poo and then the servant sticking his head into the bowl and sniffing it! WTF? But no, it gets worse.... we have servants walking backwards, an elderly Empress dying and having a pearl shoved in her mouth seconds later, a woman eating the petals of a flower, a woman walking around with a garment over her head and covering her eyes so she can't bloody see where she is going, a child being sexually exploited... it's all just too bizarre for me. Having had the unfortunate advantage of seeing both versions of the movie I have to say the extended cut does make more sense but if you are going to attempt watch either version without the aid of sleeping pills then my advice is to get a ton of snacks for the duration. If it's emperors you want to see then try RETURN OF THE JEDI instead. But I do have one good thing to say: the Blu-Ray release from Arrow is absolutely gorgeous and contains two versions of the film for anybody desperate enough to want to watch either one of them. I never want to see this film again so long as I live. Did it deserve the Oscar? ❌Seriously? Do you really need me to answer that? 2/10

Review date: 14 April 2025