The last emperor told the story of Pu Yi, but it was not the real historical story of Pu Yi as a person.

Although this movie is based on Pu Yi's autobiography The first half of my life, since it is an adaptation, there must be apocryphals, otherwise it is not called a feature film but a documentary.

Even if the documentary is apocryphal.

If you want to understand the real historical events through movies, there must be deviations, because a movie will have some jokes, and a good movie must have the director's personal emotions and private interpretations, that is, this perspective and point of view has a position and bias.

The original version of the Last Emperor is a Chinese historical film shot by Italian director Bertolucci, and the audience is also Western audiences, so this film is naturally interpreted from the perspective of Westerners to understand Pu Yi's unusual life.

has some beautification and sympathy for Pu Yi, but his position will be relatively objective, which is qualitatively different from the fire dragon photographed by Li Hanxiang.

It is objectively impossible for Chinese to talk about Chinese affairs, especially in an era like 86 and 87.

Especially in the mainland, the audience at that time could not accept the sympathy of a Manchu emperor like Pu Yi.

So even if the last emperor won nine Oscars in 88, there were still very few viewers who really watched it in the mainland at that time.

However, this film was a hot mess when it was released in Taiwan, with a box office of more than NT$100 million, and it was the first film to break through NT$100 million at the box office in Taiwan.

And in Hong Kong, the film also performed very well, and won the tenth place in the annual box office that year, with a box office of more than 10 million.

Just winning so many awards, the artistic achievements are high enough, Qiao Feng has never been interested, because I have never heard of a movie that has a profound and huge impact on the film industry because of its artistic achievements are high enough.

The only thing that has an impact on the film industry and has a forward impetus is the box office.

From Star Wars to the era of special effects, to Jurassic Park, the big ship to open the door to film markets around the world, to the release of Avatar to usher in the 3D era of movies, it is all huge box office revenues that are driving the revolutionary development of movies.

If it weren't for the more than $2 billion box office, 3D technology might only be used in documentaries and a few films.

But it is Avatar's box office of more than two billion US dollars that has made 3D technology the standard for future movies, whether you need it or not, if you don't have a 3D version, you are embarrassed to say that you are making a movie.

The artistic achievements of the last emperor are high, but the key is to make money, which is why Qiao Feng wants to shoot him.

Taiwan got more than NT$100 million at the box office, Hong Kong got more than NT$10 million, and more than $40 million in North America, plus more than $10 million in Europe and other markets, as well as in the video tape market.

Since there is money to be made, there are awards to be awarded, of course, it doesn't matter if you don't have an award, you can be nominated for the Oscars, which is also a very good thing for Chinese films.

Why not do such a good thing?

The Last Emperor is a story about "barrier and confinement", and the metaphor of a "door" runs through the whole film.

The door, as the most common signifier, points to the connecting passage of the spatial boundary, implying the barrier between the inner and the outside, and contains the functions of blocking and closing.

The film looks at Pu Yi, a "victim of the feudal system" and a "war criminal", from the perspective of a "person", and tries to restore Pu Yi to his historical moment and interpret his predicament surrounded by "doors".

The film begins in flashbacks after the arrest of middle-aged Pu Yi. He was escorted back to the railway station on the Sino-Russian border as a war criminal. The picture is filled with smoke, and the war criminals and the soldiers escorting the war criminals are uniformly iron gray.

In this oppressive atmosphere, Pu Yi in a suit and coat seemed at a loss, and he felt helpless in the face of several "courtiers" who came to kneel, and in the doubt of reality and fear of the future, Pu Yi fled to the bathroom of the train station and tried to commit suicide by cutting his wrists.

Pu Yi decided to end his life in this almost romantic scene, and the scarlet blood gradually bloomed in the hot water of the washbasin, staining the narrative environment wrapped in iron gray and dark green.

In the almost silent layout, the silence was broken by the shouting of the escort's hammer door.

"Open the door!"

This familiar cry, this familiar voice, stirred up Pu Yi's memories of his own experience.

So, a cry of "open the door" pulls the reality in front of you back to the starting point of the story, Pu Yi's early enthronement.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Guangxu died, and the three-year-old Pu Yi was forced to leave his mother and enter the palace to succeed to the throne. At the enthronement ceremony, the young Pu Yi had no intention of changing his identity, and his eyes were attracted by the wind-blown yellow curtains of the temple: the thin yellow curtains were rusted with delicate royal totems, and the fine silk danced like butterflies in the wind.

This curtain as light as a cicada's wings is the first door in Pu Yi's tragic life, and it is also the most important door. Outside the door, the civil and military officials, the emperor and the queen of heaven, all of this has to be borne by this ignorant child. Through a child's point of view, thousands of heads outside the door curtain fell down with brushes, accompanied by the sound of "kneeling-kowtowing-", all beings worshipped, and the visual impact of this shot was huge.

The main line of the story is revealed under the director's exquisite scene design: Pu Yi, before he could understand the reason, walked into the door of the emperor's identity and walked into his life of imprisonment.

If the yellow curtain is a hidden gate in Pu Yi's life, then the gate of the Forbidden City is the most familiar hard gate in the first half of his life.

He was trapped inside the door from the age of three, and it was not until 1924 that he had to leave, "Open the door!" The heartfelt cry of "Open the door!" stayed with him for almost the rest of his life.

After his nurse was suddenly sent out of the palace, Pu Yi's psychological and physical attachment to her was instantly severed.

Pu Yi shouted the name of the nurse while running, and was finally put in the imperial city.

Later, after Pu Yi's biological mother committed suicide by taking opium outside the city, he came to the city gate and hoped to go out to visit.

But the words of the Son of Heaven are useless here. Anger and sorrow poured into his heart, and the young Pu Yi smashed the pet mouse he had stolen in his arms to death on the vermilion gate.

After that, the cry of "open the door" occurred in the puppet state of Manchukuo a few decades later, when his wife Wanrong was forcibly transferred to an insane asylum after giving birth to a child. When Pu Yi learned about it, he rushed downstairs and followed him to the gate.

Once again, history played out, and the vermilion gates were closed again. Faced with the separation of life and death from his family, Pu Yi's heart was already overturned, but his body just trembled and said to the guard, "Open the door--", and then gave up.

This scene was too familiar to Pu Yi, so familiar that it scared him. He knew that no matter how fierce his struggle was, the door of confinement would not open to him. He's just a puppet emperor within the city walls, and he can't even hold the power to open and close doors.

This is the first half of a life for a poor, hateful and helpless man.

Pu Yi's whole life has been intertwined with the picture of memories and what he sees in reality, especially after ten years of prison life, under the communist labor reform, Pu Yi has been using memories to criticize and deny the first half of his life.

The end of the movie is moving: Pu Yi, who has become a citizen of the Republic, spends a dime to buy a ticket to enter the Forbidden City to visit his former home.

Because at this time, he has crawled out of his identity as emperor and from the gate of the Forbidden City that confined him.

he

Finally free.