The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 99

sn'iffrPPEVi Last Emperor Brilliant film chronicles aim leader By Stephen Hunter Sun Film Cntic The Last Emperor' Starring John Lone and Joan Chen. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci Released by Columbia. Rated PG-13. sense Bertoluccl's increased concentration in these sequences. Bertoluccl's principle mode, though, is Ironic: The movie tracks a circle.

Pu Yl begins as an emperor and we last see him in a crowd worshiping another emperor Mao. In seconds we discover that his interrogator has become a prisoner, while he himself, at last, has become a free man, if a humble one. Meanwhile, the new eunuchs of the Red Guard rule the new court, exactly as the old eunuchs had done six decades previously. What goes round comes round, seems to be the message, whether one is a man or a 1945, when he was captured by Soviet paratroopers who eventually turned him over to the Chinese communists. But here, Bertoluccl's interests far outweigh any historian's.

Bertolucci director, of course, of the famous or infamous "Last Tango in Parts" has a fascination with erotic involvements, and his account of the Manchuri-an court Is only remotely historical and only marginally political. Rather, Bertolucci focuses on the erotic byplay between Pu Yi, his wife (Joan Chen), and his wife's lesbian lover, a Japanese avia-trtx with a penchant for toes and opium. Though the movie is lyrical all the way through, one can 1 1 even treat his defecation as ma-na from heaven. But in fact, in 1913, the dynasty is overthrown and he Is kept on as a figurehead in the new republic. No one, alas, bothers to tell him this.

It thus comes as a shock to realize that his power is an illusion; he Is in reality a prisoner to his culture's need for an emperor figure. In the ornate Spandau of the Forbidden City. One of the extraordinary aspects of the movie is the way in which It glides through points of view, almost in the way Welles' "Citizen Kane" did all those years ago. The film opens, for example, in the year 1950, with Pu Yi a political prisoner in the hands of the Chinese communists. Locking himself in a bathroom, he attempts to commit suicide; he recalls his childhood as the blood runs from his wrists and the childhood sequence climaxes as he Is rescued.

The point of view then cleverly shifts to one of his interrogators, who Is reading the memoirs of his English tutor during his Richard Vuu portrays the young Pu Yi in "The Last Emperor." adolescence In the Forbidden City. Thus we see his teen years from the Englishman's point of view and Bertolucci subtly alters the sensibility of the film: We're seeing the goings on from an outsider's eyes, and everything seems strange. (Peter O'Toole, by the way, is brilliant In this small part.) Finally, we shift to the formal interrogation of Pu Yi by his communist captors for an account of his most controversial years his installation, by the Japanese, as puppet emperor of Manchuria, where he reigned, in a seedy, ersatz fashion, from 1931 until WA7 2W THE ON CERT MO VIE 1 1 a 1IHUKIWUIII I ftllVUL iii3nuiipWMRtiwawwiKinw -ir JF GLEN BURNIE B1A Blvd. at Ritclut Hw 761-03Q0 msTtBEO SECURITY MALL CINEMA Beltway tail 17 265-6911 STEREO UA MARLEY STATION Glen Bum, MO 760-3300 a EDDIE MURPHY almost seems a shame that "The Last Emperor" wasn't produced by the Walt Disney company Instead of Columbia; It Is, after all, a monument to a mouse. In the drama of history, the last emperor of China, Pu Yl, Master of the 10,000 Years and the Son of Heaven, was a small, furry rodent who nibbled at the Issues of his times but never took a bite out of anything.

Ever obedient In the smallness of his circumstances, he was turned this way and that by forces he never began to understand. He was as far from heroic as It was possible to be, a kind of Windsor without a Wallis who had the bad luck not to be exiled to some warm, undemanding land where he could go to a lot of parties. His most strenuous act: exiling 500 eunuchs from the Forbidden City, which changed the history of the 500 eunuchs forever. He is therefore a strange character around which to build an epic film. Imagine "Lawrence of Arabia" built around a Welk rather than a T.

and you get some idea of the peculiarity of tone, the strange perversity, and sheer weirdness of Bernardo Ber-tolucci's "The Last Emperor," which is finally opening today. Constructed on such a scale that It seems to cry out for heroic action, it is instead a chronicle of delusion and debauchery, of en nui and lethargy. But that not to say the film Is bad; in its way, it's brilliant, being unsentimental and majestic, beautiful and bold, completely formal In Its composition. It fascinating, tlrst and tore- most, In Its proximity to the plea sures once only available from National Geographic: the ability to recreate a wholly alien world. (For the record, the Chinese made the Forbidden City available to Bertolucci, and he exploits Its pictorial resources to the maximum, particularly aided by the muted colors of the great cinematographer Vittorio Stora-ro.) And It's dramatic, though its direction is down, not up, charting the trajectory of a man who began as a king and ended as a gardener you might say Pu Yi is the ne plus ultra oi Daa career moves.

But even by Bertoluccl's ac count and on the strength of an extraordinary performance in the title role by John Lone, it's difficult not to feel contempt for Pu Yl. He ascended to the throne at the age of 3, plucked from ob scurity by the dying dowager em press of the crumbling Chi'ing dynasty. The reasons behind her choice are not explained by the movie, which is unfortunate, for it seems capricious and surreal istic. Thus Pu Yi grows up, served bv eunuchs and allowed the pleasures of a petty, untram meled Id. under the impression that he is near unto a god; they m-j tI NOW SHOWING BOULEMUtO 3302 Grwmnounl 235-4923 IWSTCPEO ajijjijji JF REISTERSTOWN PLAZA TWIN 6500 Reitterslown Rd.

JF HIPPODROME 12 N. Eutaw Si 539-4775 UA HARBOR PARK Mart Lombard 37-35O0 amy 'iiatiK 'amm- JJUJfLLJ A ft "BIGGEST LAUGH AT THE MOVIES! AL NIGHT WAS fVV Joel Siegel, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, ABC-TV V. 1 Jr Throw Momma I From The Train -J ft S5 f-f PG-13 axon PICTURES ftoeast I V' -iT 1 1 W7 Orion Pcfuret Corpof nn nnU'T IF COLUMBIA PALACE 9 PERRINE PLAZA CINEMA starts UUN I 730-4600 HrcnEo 668-3111 I TODAY MISS IT! WESTV1EW CINEMAS TOLLGATE Istarts 747-38O0 stereo 879-4830 838-7077 1 TODAY 1 1 Ilia ki 15 I' l)1 TODAY! JF ROTUNDA 4DtklKeticli Bd STARTS JF COLUMBIA PALACE 9 RUMopf Phtlit Lack Or 7M 4tN The Sun, February 5, 1988 Maryland Live.