At once sprawling and intimate, visually rapturous and psychologically brooding, The Last Emperor is famed Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s biopic of the last monarch of China’s final imperial dynasty. Puyi’s sad and turbulent life mirrored his country’s violent upheavals during the twentieth century.
Born a Manchu royal, Puyi was plucked from his mother as an infant on order of the aged Empress Dowager. He lived as a pawn in a high-stakes game of political chess: from his ascent to the throne at age three, through his dethroning when China became a republic in 1911, World War II, the 1949 Revolution, and the Cultural Revolution. Description by Cheng-sim Lim.
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