The Last Emperor - Essay
Asian Studies 102
“The Last Emperor” was a very interesting film, rich in historical truth and an accurate portrayal of past events that occurred in China during the 1900s. The story was very easy to follow and gave a more modernized approach to teaching the impacts of historical proceedings by using the English language but not forgetting to keep the facts in order. This approach gave me the opportunity to see the different actors as if it were truly identical to what this time period was all about. Given that the plot was centralized around Puyi, the last Emperor of China, and the director did an excellent job making the movie fit the timeline. The film moves back and forth from when Puyi was imprisoned as an older man and then to when he was just a child. The story starts off in Manchuria in 1950 near the Chinese-Russian boarder, where there are many war criminals exiting a train. The general orders the war criminals to line up or be punished. The importance of this scene was to show how stern the government was at this time. The men of order are demanding and it seems as though no one has even the courage to look them in the eye without the repercussions of being punished severely. Other prisoners bow to a man who seems to be someone of importance, not caring of the consequences of their actions. This man is introduced as Puyi later in life and arrested as a war criminal. Puyi, out of fear, cuts his wrists in the bathroom sink as a demonstration of how he knew he started the whole mess in Asia during this time. The story moves onto Beijing or as they call it “Peking” in 1908 where it shows the little boy with head shaven and pony tail in back. This immediately caught my attention from the very first reading we were assigned. A Manchu man’s hairstyle during this time was a shaved head in the front and the rest of his hair in a long braid called a “queue”, and this style had been around since the Jin Dynasty. Next the story introduces
“The Last Emperor” was a very interesting film, rich in historical truth and an accurate portrayal of past events that occurred in China during the 1900s. The story was very easy to follow and gave a more modernized approach to teaching the impacts of historical proceedings by using the English language but not forgetting to keep the facts in order. This approach gave me the opportunity to see the different actors as if it were truly identical to what this time period was all about. Given that the plot was centralized around Puyi, the last Emperor of China, and the director did an excellent job making the movie fit the timeline. The film moves back and forth from when Puyi was imprisoned as an older man and then to when he was just a child. The story starts off in Manchuria in 1950 near the Chinese-Russian boarder, where there are many war criminals exiting a train. The general orders the war criminals to line up or be punished. The importance of this scene was to show how stern the government was at this time. The men of order are demanding and it seems as though no one has even the courage to look them in the eye without the repercussions of being punished severely. Other prisoners bow to a man who seems to be someone of importance, not caring of the consequences of their actions. This man is introduced as Puyi later in life and arrested as a war criminal. Puyi, out of fear, cuts his wrists in the bathroom sink as a demonstration of how he knew he started the whole mess in Asia during this time. The story moves onto Beijing or as they call it “Peking” in 1908 where it shows the little boy with head shaven and pony tail in back. This immediately caught my attention from the very first reading we were assigned. A Manchu man’s hairstyle during this time was a shaved head in the front and the rest of his hair in a long braid called a “queue”, and this style had been around since the Jin Dynasty. Next the story introduces