I watched The Last Emperor last night and was really impressed by the quality of it all. It is quite the tragedy of life that a man, born into such greatness, had to live. I felt like a jerk afterwards for some reason. The movie was a bizarre experience. It was all spoken in English, but the fact that English was not most of the actors first language it felt very forced. In effect the film ended up feeling even more foreign than it would have using subtitles.

Pacing a film for 210 min is very difficult, and especially for a drama. I have seen 2 hour ventures fail that had more grand a scale than The Last Emperor. It also felt very raw at times, and I mean that in the best possible way. I could not help but be captured in the film from start to end.

While I hate to say it, The Last Emperor beats out Kundun as my favorite small Asian boy takes over empire tragedy.

I think I can say that a good amount of it comes from Bernardo Bertolucci, the director. Who the hell is this guy. He has a list of film credits and I have only heard of one other. It seems like he hit on something with The Last Emperor but can’t replicate it as he is not as renown a man. He managed to make us see things just as they should, never questioning scope, always believing.

As some of you may know I have not ranted about a film in a while. This film came in the mail as one of Ebert’s 4 star picks. So far I have recognized most of his 4 star picks as good, if not excellent, but most I would not have given 4 starts (over a 3 at least). I would defiantly give this film 4 stars. If you do want to see it I can’t imagine any of the film being cut out, let alone over an hour, so get the extended version.