Last Emperor -- a Political

¶ … Last Emperor -- a political and historical overview of the events behind the film

One early scene of "The Last Emperor" (1987) is especially striking and remarkable in the eyes of a contemporary viewer. In this scene, the residents of the Forbidden City, the Imperial Palace of the Qing Dynasty that ruled China, from which all persons were forbidden to leave or enter without the Emperor's permission, bow down before the new, young emperor. The Emperor is a small child and is wearing a beautiful robe that is too large for him to wear comfortably. It drags upon the ground. The bowing, scraping masses cower in front of him.

This scene illustrates how the last emperor of China was a very ordinary man, unable to fulfill the grand role and destiny emperors of the Imperial throne were supposed to inhabit. As a child emperor, the Dowager Empress, the boy's mother, officially reigned over him as regent. Even afterwards the Last Emperor had trouble exerting his own authority over more politically powerful members of the court. The Last Emperor becomes the puppet of other who wished to reign behind the throne and use his image. As a young boy, the Last Emperor was not even allowed to leave the confines of his own palace, because his word did not officially hold sway, like the words of his regent mother. The boy's tutor later advised him to escape to England to study in Cambridge, but although the emperor attempted to do so, he found himself inexorably drawn back by the pull of events, as China was invaded by Japan.

The Last Emperor Pu Yi abdicated his formal authority in 1912, after the establishment of the Republic of China, although he did remain for a time on the throne, a figurehead used by the real, military leaders of China. Later, during the Pacific War (which eventually became World War II) the emperor was evicted from his home in the Forbidden City. He went to Manchukuo which was controlled by the Japanese -- and the Japanese also used the emperor as their figurehead, to placate (ineffectually) the Chinese masses and to accept their foreign authority.

But Mao trained his People's Army with great vigor and eventually the communists overcame their rival factions, both the Japanese and the Chinese nationalists, who later fled to Taiwan. Pu Yi was captured by the Russians during the war, and the Russians turned him over to the Chinese, as this supposed supporter of the Japanese was the 'enemy.' But it is clear from the film that despite the intense eternal strife within China and the terrible suffering inflicted upon the land during the Pacific War by Japan, the emperor had little deeply held inner political convictions of his own, either communist or capitalist, nationalist or Chinese. He seems immune to the events and the greater, wider scope of history. He had little sense of how it was to live as an ordinary civilian, even to care for himself without constant overseeing by others. Until he lost his position as emperor he was not allowed to do so much as tie his shoes or ride a bicycle where he pleased.