The Last Emperor Reviews
PopMatters
Bernardo Bertolucci takes this outline of Pu Yi's tumultuous life and transforms it into an absurdist journey in The Last Emperor, a masterpiece about the loneliness and hubris of believing that we can control our own destiny.
Full Review
| Original Score: 9/10
Total Film
[A] massive, magnificent historical biopic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
This tension between the permissible and the forbidden, between exterior and interior, between the illusion of freedom and captivity, between light and darkness becomes the organizing principle of Bertolucci's spectacular epic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Top Critic
The expanse of time is saturated with an expanse of visual beauty that feels absolutely right for the story.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Movie Metropolis
That rare breed of film that is both pure Oscar bait and a thoroughly compelling work.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
It works astonishingly well.
Groucho Reviews
Works the brain in two-part harmony: the melody skids effortlessly across the historical timeline of the Ching dynasty, China's last, and the harmony part is all aesthetic appeal... [Blu-ray]
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Urban Cinefile
Bernardo Bertolucci's cinematic biography of Emperor Pu Yi is an astonishing, ravishing and smashing film... And it's a glorious production which won 9 Oscars - that's every major category for which it is eligible
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Visually splendid epic on the last Manchu imperial ruler of China.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Filmcritic.com
We never question the integrity of the historical moment in the film, but we do question our patience.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Slant Magazine
The Last Emperor is most decisively a lesson of nobility.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Constantly absorbing and tremendously interesting.
Film4
Storaro's photography, Scarfiotti's designs and the locations seduce us into this leisurely odyssey covering 50 years from Emperor Pu Yi's accession aged three to his end.
EmanuelLevy.Com
Though boasting stunning photography by Vittorio Storaro (who shot in the Forbidden City), Bertolucci's beautifully crafted saga suffers from episodic text, incoherent story, and lack of truly epic hero at its center.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Cinema Sight
An involving look at the life of an emperor forced to give up all that he knew only to realize he never had everything he wanted.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
John Lone is superb as the sad mediocrity; and if spectacle finally triumphs over sympathy, it is not without a decent struggle.
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Mesmerizing, Oscar-winning, fate-filled journey to a vanished time and place.
| Original Score: 5/5
