I was gone for a while watching Felicity reruns(I'm not ashamed!) but now I'm back with the Best Picture of 1987. And if I'm being honest, I'd never even heard of this movie until I started this project. So beyond the basic plot(essentially just the movie title) I really had no idea what happens in this movie.
If you've seen the animated Anastasia, you basically can understand the plot of this movie. It's Anastasia without the amnesia. Or the singing. So I'm not saying Anastasia is better(I am. I am saying that), just that it's more rewatchable. Partially because this movie lasted 2.5 hrs. Honestly, they should've cut out all the stuff when he was a kid because it was boring and a lot of super gross things happened. Namely, that one of his servants smells his poop(and they show his turds onscreen I am not making this up), and then when he's about 11, he is still nursing(I can't tell you which I was more grossed out by).
So, the movie goes through flashbacks of the Emperor(his name is PuYi) and in 'present day' 1950 he is a prisoner at a Communist reform prison, being questioned by a total psycho and another guy who's pretty decent. He tries killing himself-which made things confusing, because I thought he'd do that so he wouldn't be tortured by the Communists. But instead of torturing him, they teach him humility and give him marketable skills like gardening. Which is a weird thing for a movie made in 1987 to be saying such nice things about Communists. I don't know. Anyway, a young PuYi meets Peter O'Toole and they get along splendidly. It's like The King and I, but you know. Without romance. Or singing. Singing makes most movies better. Then PuYi gets married to 2 women, because you can do that if you're emperor.
Then we finally get to the geopolitics of it all, which is that PuYi is an ineffectual figurehead, and most of that is because his servants and the dowager empresses won't allow him to leave the Forbidden City. So he just does nothing. When he finally gets fed up and tries to replace the servants and make reforms, they burn down part of the compound. Then the Communists come and take him away and he finds refuge with the Japanese. This was really interesting and they should've done more about this because I'm assuming most people like me don't totally understand the complexities of the China/Japan relationship. The Japanese basically take advantage of him a lot because he's a really good figurehead and they want a nice front to cover their Conquer Asia plans. So they set him up in Manchukuo(he is ethnically Manchurian so he has a pretty good claim), and he tries to assert some independence. Obviously, the Japanese get annoyed by that and blah blah that's how he ends up in Communist prison. While he's in prison he sees a film reel about the Rape of Nanking/Nanking Massacre, that happened on his watch, but which he didn't know about because the Japanese hid it from him. He ends up taking responsibility for that and everything else the Communists accused him of-which allows him to be 'rehabilitated' and released. When he's released he works as a simple peasant gardener and it's quite touching even though he was awful for like the majority of the movie(he made one of his servants drink ink to prove he was Emperor and it was the worst).
So some side notes about this movie. First is that aside from the Emperess, the women in this movie are HORRIBLY written. Just lazy, writing and flat characterization. His second wife gets annoyed that he won't pay attention to her, and that she has a very strange status by Western standards so she just runs away like she's starring in a female remake of Singing in the Rain(she runs outside when it's raining and laughingly goes 'I don't need this umbrella!' She isn't seen again and it was very odd). Then! UGH. This pilot woman shows up to be friends with the Empress, but she is basically a cartoon villain. She wears a pilot's outfit in the movie-like as if that's normal for a woman in the 1930s. She also informs the Empress WITHIN MINUTES OF SEEING HER, that she-the pilot woman-is a spy for the Japanese. Because she hates China. Does she explain why? No. Just lazy writing(maybe because the writers were men who were not Chinese). She later whispers to the empress at PuYi's coronation in front of a huge crowd of people 'I'm a spy and I don't care who knows it.' UHM NO. Listen, I don't know a lot about being a spy aside from what I've seen in like Mission Impossible and Alias, but do you think Sydney Bristow just willy nilly tells some opium-addicted famous person she's a spy FOR NO REASON? IN FRONT OF PEOPLE?????? Honestly, she was the worst character.
The Empress meanwhile is having a lot of struggles. She gets married to the Emperor when he's still pubescing. And she is supposed to be 17(she is fully 25 at the very least and Wikipedia confirmed that). So she's living in seclusion, then is travelling all over the world while her husband tries to reclaim his Emperor-ship. She gets addicted to opium which is pretty common except PuYi's mother died of an opium addiction so he doesn't want to hang out with her anymore, (there's a weird scene where she's eating a flower because PuYi is too dumb to know that he is a figurehead and it was very confusing). She later gets pregnant by PuYi's driver(who is shot in the grossest, but also very comical way) so that PuYi can have an heir. Except the Japanese murder her baby, and take her away, and when he sees her years later, she is like a shell of a person and who can blame!? They should've made the movie about her.
ANYWAY. Last notes on the movie include that they did weird voiceovers for some of the actors and it was terrible and very obvious. Maybe instead of doing voiceovers they should've let everyone speak Mandarin. Just a suggestion! Also John Lone played PuYi and he is quite attractive so its tragic that he quit acting in 2007. And he was quite good as an actor, and listen for a movie that won Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay(and was nominated for a TON of other Oscars), you're telling me no one in this movie deserved an acting nod? SIDE-EYE ACADEMY. I'm even surprised Peter O'Toole wasn't nominated, because. He is Peter O'Toole.
If you've seen the animated Anastasia, you basically can understand the plot of this movie. It's Anastasia without the amnesia. Or the singing. So I'm not saying Anastasia is better(I am. I am saying that), just that it's more rewatchable. Partially because this movie lasted 2.5 hrs. Honestly, they should've cut out all the stuff when he was a kid because it was boring and a lot of super gross things happened. Namely, that one of his servants smells his poop(and they show his turds onscreen I am not making this up), and then when he's about 11, he is still nursing(I can't tell you which I was more grossed out by).
So, the movie goes through flashbacks of the Emperor(his name is PuYi) and in 'present day' 1950 he is a prisoner at a Communist reform prison, being questioned by a total psycho and another guy who's pretty decent. He tries killing himself-which made things confusing, because I thought he'd do that so he wouldn't be tortured by the Communists. But instead of torturing him, they teach him humility and give him marketable skills like gardening. Which is a weird thing for a movie made in 1987 to be saying such nice things about Communists. I don't know. Anyway, a young PuYi meets Peter O'Toole and they get along splendidly. It's like The King and I, but you know. Without romance. Or singing. Singing makes most movies better. Then PuYi gets married to 2 women, because you can do that if you're emperor.
Then we finally get to the geopolitics of it all, which is that PuYi is an ineffectual figurehead, and most of that is because his servants and the dowager empresses won't allow him to leave the Forbidden City. So he just does nothing. When he finally gets fed up and tries to replace the servants and make reforms, they burn down part of the compound. Then the Communists come and take him away and he finds refuge with the Japanese. This was really interesting and they should've done more about this because I'm assuming most people like me don't totally understand the complexities of the China/Japan relationship. The Japanese basically take advantage of him a lot because he's a really good figurehead and they want a nice front to cover their Conquer Asia plans. So they set him up in Manchukuo(he is ethnically Manchurian so he has a pretty good claim), and he tries to assert some independence. Obviously, the Japanese get annoyed by that and blah blah that's how he ends up in Communist prison. While he's in prison he sees a film reel about the Rape of Nanking/Nanking Massacre, that happened on his watch, but which he didn't know about because the Japanese hid it from him. He ends up taking responsibility for that and everything else the Communists accused him of-which allows him to be 'rehabilitated' and released. When he's released he works as a simple peasant gardener and it's quite touching even though he was awful for like the majority of the movie(he made one of his servants drink ink to prove he was Emperor and it was the worst).
So some side notes about this movie. First is that aside from the Emperess, the women in this movie are HORRIBLY written. Just lazy, writing and flat characterization. His second wife gets annoyed that he won't pay attention to her, and that she has a very strange status by Western standards so she just runs away like she's starring in a female remake of Singing in the Rain(she runs outside when it's raining and laughingly goes 'I don't need this umbrella!' She isn't seen again and it was very odd). Then! UGH. This pilot woman shows up to be friends with the Empress, but she is basically a cartoon villain. She wears a pilot's outfit in the movie-like as if that's normal for a woman in the 1930s. She also informs the Empress WITHIN MINUTES OF SEEING HER, that she-the pilot woman-is a spy for the Japanese. Because she hates China. Does she explain why? No. Just lazy writing(maybe because the writers were men who were not Chinese). She later whispers to the empress at PuYi's coronation in front of a huge crowd of people 'I'm a spy and I don't care who knows it.' UHM NO. Listen, I don't know a lot about being a spy aside from what I've seen in like Mission Impossible and Alias, but do you think Sydney Bristow just willy nilly tells some opium-addicted famous person she's a spy FOR NO REASON? IN FRONT OF PEOPLE?????? Honestly, she was the worst character.
The Empress meanwhile is having a lot of struggles. She gets married to the Emperor when he's still pubescing. And she is supposed to be 17(she is fully 25 at the very least and Wikipedia confirmed that). So she's living in seclusion, then is travelling all over the world while her husband tries to reclaim his Emperor-ship. She gets addicted to opium which is pretty common except PuYi's mother died of an opium addiction so he doesn't want to hang out with her anymore, (there's a weird scene where she's eating a flower because PuYi is too dumb to know that he is a figurehead and it was very confusing). She later gets pregnant by PuYi's driver(who is shot in the grossest, but also very comical way) so that PuYi can have an heir. Except the Japanese murder her baby, and take her away, and when he sees her years later, she is like a shell of a person and who can blame!? They should've made the movie about her.
ANYWAY. Last notes on the movie include that they did weird voiceovers for some of the actors and it was terrible and very obvious. Maybe instead of doing voiceovers they should've let everyone speak Mandarin. Just a suggestion! Also John Lone played PuYi and he is quite attractive so its tragic that he quit acting in 2007. And he was quite good as an actor, and listen for a movie that won Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay(and was nominated for a TON of other Oscars), you're telling me no one in this movie deserved an acting nod? SIDE-EYE ACADEMY. I'm even surprised Peter O'Toole wasn't nominated, because. He is Peter O'Toole.
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