Movie · 1987 · Drama, History · 2h 43m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 8.0/10 (205.2K ratings)
1500 slaves. 353,260,000 royal subjects. Warlords. Concubines. And 2 wives. He was the loneliest boy in the world.
Overview
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.0/10
IMDb: 7.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.93/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
Metacritic: 76
TMDB: 7.6/10
Director
Bernardo Bertolucci
Production
Soprofilms, TAO Film, Yanco, Recorded Picture Company
Cast
John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Jade Go, Fumihiko Ikeda, Richard Vuu, Tsou Tijger, Tao Wu, Guang Fan, Henry Kyi, Alvin Riley III, Lisa Lu
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A lavish, emotionally distant historical epic that still earns its reputation through scale, design, and visual splendor. It’s especially rewarding if you want a sweeping portrait of power, loss, and political transformation rather than a tightly intimate character drama.
Best for
fans of historical epics
viewers who value cinematography and production design
audiences interested in Chinese history
people who enjoy prestige period dramas
fans of contemplative, tragic biographical films
Skip if
you want fast pacing or constant momentum
you prefer emotionally raw, intimate storytelling
you’re allergic to long, stately epics
you need historically strict, minimally dramatized biography
Overview
The Last Emperor is one of those prestige epics that fully understands the appeal of scale. Bertolucci turns Pu Yi’s life into a spectacle of ceremony, collapse, and reinvention, and the film’s visual command is often more persuasive than its emotional temperature. The result is grand, mournful, and frequently beautiful, even when it feels a little upholstered by its own importance.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the sense of a life being shaped and reshaped by systems larger than the man himself: imperial ritual, colonial pressure, occupation, revolution, and reeducation. The film’s historical sweep gives it real force, and Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography makes almost every frame feel composed for awe. The score helps too, giving the movie an elegiac, almost operatic lift.
Bottom line
Still, it’s not a film for everyone. Some viewers will find it too polished, too reverent, or too emotionally remote for nearly three hours of runtime. But if you’re in the mood for a stately, visually sumptuous historical drama with genuine ambition, it remains an easy recommendation.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Matt Singer (3★) · 659 likes
Everyone knows it’s good to be the king. What this movie presupposes is... maybe it isn’t?
Darren Carver-Balsiger (4★) · 609 likes
As a technical achievement, The Last Emperor is very impressive. It is visually stunning, epic in scale, and made complete by a wonderful score. It's just a shame about the rest of it.
There's no way The Last Emperor could be uninteresting, given the inherent unusualness of the story, and it manages to be a clear and concise showcase of Chinese history. Unfortunately it manages to make a very dramatic real life story overdramatic and too embellished. It also spends… more
David Weigel (5★) · 526 likes
I'll defend this movie to the death, every time some smart-take artist lumps it in with "movies that didn't deserve the Oscar." Yes, the Academy drools too hard over Epic Movies, often at the expense of well-done comedies. But leave "The Last Emperor" alooooone.
- One of the absolute best film soundtracks of the 1980s -- half of it a towering Ryuichi Sakamoto strings-fest, half of it David Byrne trying out some fun things with Chinese instruments.
- A historical… more
Patrick Walsh (3★) · 323 likes
So beautiful yet so boring. Is this a movie or SOMEONE I MET AT A PARTY IN LOS ANGELES?!?!
The Greek Geek (4★) · 239 likes
If I had to pick whether to be an Emperor or a gardener, I'm picking gardner