Reviews

This movie is an insult to the beautiful historical classic work from Wu Cheng'en. It brutally involves theme's that do not fit at all with the story line. Such as a Caucasian man falling in love the Goddess of Mercy and she falling in love with him. Even though, in order to make one movie out a of a 3 volume work, selecting only parts from the book is necessary. This movie has misunderstood the meaning of the book and used elements to make it a sad abstract of the novel. He has gone past the key element of the book: the enlightenment, the search for the Way from five totally different characters, each representing an element of human nature. The Tang priest, Sun Wukong the monkey, lazy and clumsy Pig, hideous Friar Sand and the Dragon sun, changed into a white horse. It has wiped out every Buddhist element from the story, while that's the backbone of this book. How he ridiculed key figures from Chinese history and culture (Quan Yin, Confucius) and not even in a adult and serious way.

This movie does by no means represent the wonderful Chinese Classic `Journey to the West', or literally `Notes of a Journey to the West' and you may have already figured out that I was sadly disappointed with it.

This movie is a tragedy, not only due to its themes, such as heroism, love, trust and betrayal. These things set against a Chinese historical perspective increase this idea. The acting itself causes the typical `on stage' -element: The way the actors play characteristic elements seem overdue, dynamic and very expressive at as if performed on a stage. (this because the personal characteristics ought to be more clearly expressed as the audience sits on a greater distance from the stage itself. For these reasons, I see The Emperor's Assassin as a tragedy performed on stage, with a high level of artistic value, rather then merely a movie.

Music is one key-element for a good movie. The soundtrack is beautiful and equally as tragic as the movie. This is partly caused by the sad and melodramatic sound of the Chinese violin. The sound effects are a great addition to the movie. I refer to the scene in which the swordmaker's blind daughter meets her family's assassin.

For people who love dramatic and historical tragedies, this movie is a must. Even more when interested in Chinese history.

I've seen this movie so many times and it was the first DVD I bought right after I purchased my DVD-player.

Fortunately this movie wasn't made by Americans. They could never realize, nor understand this level of cinematography and would turn it into a Pearl Harbor (Oh my!).

What makes this movie great, is the way the movie continuously shows what seems to be a fairy-tale, but what is in fact nothing more but a play. A play played in China, suffering extraordinary changes itself. As Pu Yi mentions himself: a theatre without an audience. Left long ago.

This movie focuses on a single man, trying to make a change, but fails, for he is nothing but a puppet, controlled by the Japanese, as he for years was a puppet for China. He is eager to be in control, simply in order to make those changes reality, makes him an easy target for the Japanese. He grows up to be served and to be seen as the almighty and cannot hold himself up in New China, where there is no place for an emperor any longer.

The only persons that seems to do well in this new environment, is the woman who had in fact even less freedom; Pu yi's second wife. She claims her freedom after being settled in England.

Because The Last Emperor focuses on Pu Yi and his relatives, while moving the political issues to the background, makes this movie so 'uneasy' to look at. There is this wonderful story of a little lad who grows up in an ancient surrounding, but there is always the noise from beyond the walls he doesn't understand. He cannot understand why everything from beyond those walls (his brother paying him a visit now and then, Johnson, his tutor) seems to move on. Within those walls, time seems to stand still and everybody near him appears so eager to keep the 'real' world outside the walls of the Forbidden City.

The music makes this movie complete. A movie without good music is half wasted. It matches perfectly with the emotions, time and location. Surely Bertolucci's best movie.