He was the last emperor of China, Ai Xinjueluo Puyi, who succeeded to the throne at the age of three, and was a young Tianzi and a legend in his life.
He was the peak of Asian beauty 30 years ago, his parents abandoned, exiled to a foreign country, alone in Hollywood, famous in the film world.
The sparks of the collision between the last emperor and the Asian continent grass across time and in the air merge into a classic work recorded in film history - "The Last Emperor".
The film itself is as legendary as the life experience of the last emperor, and its director is the world-class director Bernaldo Bertolucci, starring Zun Long, who can charm thousands of girls.
It was the first feature film to be shot inside the Forbidden City with the permission of the Chinese government, and it was also the first Western film on Chinese subjects to be fully cooperated by the Chinese government since 1949, in which ying Ruocheng, the vice minister of Culture of China, was played as the prison chief.
It is worth mentioning that a small role that appears in this film- the chief who guards the city gate, has grown into a director who is famous in the south and north of the river, guess who he is?
It is said that during the filming period, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited China, but because the filming team received the priority of the government, the queen missed the opportunity to visit the Forbidden City.
After the film was released, it won 34 awards such as best film and best director at the 60th Academy Awards, and 12 nominations for best actor at the 45th Golden Globe Awards.
The film tells the tragic life of Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, under the great changes of the times.
After the deaths of Guangxu and Cixi, the three-year-old Puyi ascended the throne as emperor. While the old ancestors left him with unlimited wealth and status, they also left him with a qing empire that was full of holes and unable to return to heaven.
At this time, he was still a child, and he did not know the world in his eyes, and he did not know the chair sitting under his ass, which was a "treasure" that many people dreamed of but could not get.
He only knew that he missed his mother outside the palace, only knew how to suck the full milk of the nursing mother, and only knew how to play with the cockroach in his hand.
But the times will not be kind to him because he is a child who does not understand the world. When the Xinhai Revolution broke out, Yuan Shikai stole the fruits of the revolution on the condition of deposing the emperor and became the president of the Republic of China.
The Manchu nobles all retained the royal treatment, and Puyi was imprisoned in the Forbidden City.
Although his diet and living were still as usual, he was like a bird trapped in a cage, unable to fly out of the Forbidden City for half a step. Even when his mother died, he could not go out of the palace to see him.
In the Forbidden City, Puyi only had two moments to be happy.
One is to play with his brother Pujie, who is the only family and friendship he can feel.
Because of the disparity in status, his biological father did not dare to cross the thunder pool and always maintain a monarchy relationship with him.
Because the emperor grew up and had to be weaned, the nursing lady who grew up with him was forced to leave the palace.
In the vast Forbidden City, only he was alone, and only the moment he saw his brother could he see the innocent smile on his face.
The second is to learn Western knowledge from the foreigner teacher Johnston, in which he has gained a lot of knowledge, and his life is no longer the way of Confucius and Mencius, Cheng Zhu Lixue.
He was full of curiosity about the West, and he began to wear glasses and ride a bicycle, even if he was opposed by the empress dowager and the ministers, but he was stubbornly willful.
This scene is very similar to when we were young, our parents did not buy this toy, we had to stand in front of the toy store crying and shouting to buy it.
Even he has his own childlike heart, but unfortunately, his only remaining childlike heart has been snuffed out in the cradle by the times.
Growing up a little longer, he heard more and more, and although he was young, Puyi also had ambitions, and he wanted to take power.
But the outside world had already been turned upside down, and he could only have some majesty in the small imperial court of the Forbidden City. But in this small court, no one really believed him, and even the eunuchs around him were full of deception.
When he proposed to check the bills for daily expenses, the eunuchs burned everything in the storeroom with a fire, and the flames soared into the sky, reflecting on Puyi's young and childish face, and a closer look was full of helplessness and heartache.
Even he could not decide his own marriage, and he longed for free love in the West, and he was forced to marry an unmasked woman. Fortunately, the woman was super good-looking, gentle and gentle, and also learned chinese and Western, and had similar interests with him. This is a gift to his tragic fate.
Zhang Xun led the "Braid Army" into the palace and supported him as emperor for the second time, but Zhang Xun only wanted to "blackmail the Son of Heaven to order the princes", Puyi still had no right to speak, or could only eat, drink and have fun in the Forbidden City, and spend his days
Growing up, listening to Mr. Johnston's description, he was more and more eager for the Western world, he wanted to study in the West, and he wanted to see the outside world.
In order to show his determination, he painstakingly cut off the custom of his ancestors - long braids, wearing a suit, combing up oily hair, a Chinese student posture.
However, his identity is sensitive, and in the end, he can only be imprisoned within the black tiles of this red wall, and he cannot go anywhere.
Although he was not free, he still knew how to entertain himself, and he traveled with his queen and concubine, three people, played tennis, tasted food, played music, and had fun. Since you can't change the status quo, it's better to enjoy the status quo.
However, the good times did not last long, the warlord Feng Yuxiang attacked And Zhang Xun was defeated. Feng Yuxiang didn't care if you were a Manchu Qing royal family or a prince or nobleman, he directly expelled Puyi and others from the Forbidden City.
Puyi thought that he had left the Forbidden City and had been liberated, but he did not know where there was room in the vast world and the earth.
Later, the Japanese found Puyi and wanted to cooperate with him to establish Manchukuo. At this time, he had no choice but to come to the northeast to cooperate with the Japanese.
He had thought that with the help of the Japanese, he would be able to complete the great cause of restoring the country, but he did not think that he was just a pawn in the hands of the Japanese, with no real power, no military power, and limited everywhere.
With no hope of recovery, he began to indulge in alcoholism, self-paralysis, and eventually his concubine divorced him and left him. The queen, who had been in love with him, was infected with opium, betrayed him, and was secretly knotted with his driver.
Watching the Japanese pull the half-stupid and half-crazy queen away in a car, Puyi chased after her like crazy. But when he came to the gate and looked at the Japanese soldiers with guns, he silently retreated.
Just as when his mother died, he ran to the palace gate and was stopped by a guard armed with a large knife.
The same scene, the same palace gate, the same helpless Puyi, perhaps the difference is only the service of the guards and the weapons in their hands.
In fact, what hindered Puyi was not just a palace gate, but that era.
In that chaotic world of war, he could never escape the cage of the times, was firmly bound by the shackles of fate, and became a puppet of others.
After Japan's defeat, Puyi became a war criminal and was imprisoned in prison. At this time, he was still waiting, helping him squeeze toothpaste, helping him tie his shoelaces, and even someone brought food to his room.
But now it is no longer a feudal society, now everyone is equal, no one is a slave, and his former subordinates are no longer willing to serve him. His former privilege, the emperor's afterglow, was gone.
Gradually, Puyi has changed, and once he thought that he was not wrong. All he did was for the restoration of the country, not for his own selfish interests, but for the glory of the entire royal family.
Even if everyone scolds him for being a traitor, he is willing to do so. At this time, he became a war criminal and was imprisoned, but he was only a king and a loser.
He was shocked to learn that the Japanese invaders had burned and plundered the land of China, done all kinds of evil, were extremely cruel, and had committed heinous crimes.
Enjoying the life of an aristocratic prince in Manchukuo, he had no idea that the Japanese were so brutal that they were still experimenting with live Chinese in the northeast.
He was kept in the dark, and even if he knew about it, there was nothing he could do, because he was just a pawn of some use.
So he began to confess, even if it was not his own crime, he wanted to confess, he wanted the government to kill himself, in order to comfort the innocent people who died. But the government opened up to him and let him reform well.
After being imprisoned as a war criminal for 10 years, Puyi was pardoned for his good performance and finally became a free man.
At this time, he was 56 years old, past the age of knowing his destiny. Think about his more than 50 years of years, from the Forbidden City to Manchuria City, from the imperial palace to the prison, he has always been like a fish in a fish tank, seemingly carefree, but in fact depressed, trembling all day.
At this moment, he finally stopped worrying, because he was a legitimate citizen of the People's Republic of China, he no longer had to shoulder the task of restoring the country, he could freely walk through the streets and alleys of Beijing, he could breathe the air of any part of Beijing, and he could do what he liked freely.
When he returned to the Forbidden City again, he was already full of white hair, staggering, trembling and majestically walking towards the imperial throne that once belonged to him.
Who would have thought that in the past, their own home would have to buy tickets to enter. But at this time, Puyi has experienced vicissitudes, and the past has been like a cloud of smoke, all of which are in laughter.
He took out the jar of cockroach that he had hidden under the emperor's throne as a child and gave it to the son of the gatekeeper of the Forbidden City to prove that he had been emperor.
The child opened the cockroach jar, and a cockroach magically crawled out of the jar. According to common sense, the cockroaches have been hidden in the jar for decades, and they have long since starved to death and become a pile of debris.
But the director still gave the cockroach a close-up shot and made it magical, in fact, it was alluding to Puyi's magical life, like a cockroach, always imprisoned in a small world.
At this moment, near the end, the clams escaped from the jar, and Puyi also lived freely. Not only physical freedom, but also spiritual freedom.
After reading "The Last Emperor" for more than two hours, I couldn't help but think of a sentence in the novel "Three-Body Problem": "Destroy you, and do with you." "The times chose to abandon Puyi and have nothing to do with him."
Puyi's life was so brilliant, and it was so depressed, and between the ups and downs, it was the sad and helpless life of the last emperor of China.
He could not choose in this life, it was all the big hand of fate, pushing forward mercilessly behind his back. How fortunate he was to become emperor, and how sad he was to be a prisoner of the order. The double heavens of ice and fire tormented his whole life.
In the first half of his life, he enjoyed glory and wealth, good wine, extreme material wealth, and extreme spiritual scarcity.
In the second half of his life, he was displaced, deeply imprisoned, plain, extremely poor in material terms, but extremely rich in spirit.
Zun Long's acting skills really exploded, playing Puyi's heroism in his youth, nobleness in middle age, twilight in his later years, and the loneliness that accompanied Puyi's life. Between the trances, as if on the screen, is Puyi's real life.
It is said that Liang Chaowei's eyes can act, and I think that Zun Long's eyes are not inferior, so deep, so charming, as if those eyes can speak, directly hit the audience's heart.
In addition to the superb acting skills of the actors and shocking people's hearts, the portrayal of the background of the Chinese era is also quite powerful.
One of the things that struck me the most was the film's depiction of the "Ten Years of Catastrophe," in which the Red Guards flaunted their mighty power in the streets, dragging a group of people to demonstrate and criticize and insult.
It was a time of black and white, good and bad, cruel and dark. Such a naked and bold plot can no longer be presented.
The greatness and classics of "The Last Emperor" are not only the countless honors it has achieved, but also that this film has both an international perspective of humanity and a unique charm of China.
It describes the legendary life of the last emperor into an ordinary individual, allowing the audience to see the life of pain, growth, confusion, helplessness, flesh and blood.
There is a line in the movie: "The emperor is the loneliest child on this earth." ”
The emperor who is high above, the legendary figure who looks so far away, seems to be close at hand, so that the audience can truly feel the loneliness and helplessness of the protagonist's heart.
I think this is the charm of a good movie, the combination of light and shadow, passing on your facial features at the same time, directly hit your soul, let you think about life, feel the meaning of life.