Spine 422: The Last Emperor

Despite my false belief that Last Tango in Paris is in the Criterion Collection, The Last Emperor proves to be our last Bernardo Bertolucci movie for the foreseeable future. The tale of Puyi, crowned emperor of China at the age of 3, just before a half century of political revolution, and eventually dying of old age while working as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Gardens. Bertolucci and the Chinese government may have different views of what that life trajectory means.