Something I found interesting: China calls their rockets "Long March" rockets, presumably in tribute to the Communist Long March.
Rocket Launches Chinese Space Lab

The Last Emperor

The Last Emperor illustrates the paradoxical story of Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Chinese Ching Dynasty. At the age of three Pu YI is chosen to rule by Empress Dowager Cixi. Not only is it strange that such young boy is chosen to rule all of China, but as we know from class, he is also from Manchuria. Pu yi is not ethnically chinese, he is Manchurian. That is just the beginnings of Pu Yi's paradoxical existence. When the Republic of China is established in 1912, Pu Yi is locked in the Forbidden City, an emperor that can't leave his palace. Ruler, controller of only his palace, and not even that with respect to the corruption and thievery of the Eunuchs. After the Japanese take over Manchuria and place him as the leader, again he comes to realize he is just playing the part of a pawn controlled by the Japanese. Finally, his re-education, as the communists make him phrase it in Pu Yi's autobiography "from emperor to citizen" is ironic because while Pu Yi was an emperor he was never really the emperor of anything.

I thought the Last Emperor was a well done epic that changed, Pu Yi, a character I thought I never would connect to, into a very sympathetic person. While the cinematography, the picturesque moments, some unfortunately unforgettable were very artistic, the film's choppiness in its flashbacks in time made the film somewhat difficult to follow without knowing the underlying history of the film. But how does it compare to other epictales of people throughout history? In my opinion I didn't think The Last Emperor was as compelling as Lawrence of Arabia or Ghandi, mostly due to the to the movie's chopped up timeline. While the Last Emperor is not quite as good as its nine Academy awards would lead one to believe, it is a compelling and ironic movie that bestows an education upon a movie watcher of a time and culture not generally given very much attention.

The Last Emporer

I really enjoyed watching The Last Emperor. Not only was the movie informational, but very entertaining. My favorite part about the film was watching Puyi reflect back to his time as a child, his life in the Forbidden City, and to his days in Shanghai and as emperor of Manchukuo. This was a very creative way to illustrate the changes that China endured due to the Cultural Revolution. More specifically, those watching the movie can develop a better understanding Chinese people like Puyi, those who were against the revolution and wanted to maintain China's dynasty. However, China was changing quickly and leaders like Mao Zedong and Chaing Kaishek were not allowing and resistors to get in their way. Especially not Mao, who had traitors to the new Chinese government put in jail. This is were Puyi is while he reflects on his past.

By the end of the movie, I feel bad for Puyi. Although some may argue that he was an antagonist, I think that Puyi was a protagonist throughout the entire movie. Puyi was a tragic hero since the beginning, where he ascended the throne at age three. Throughout his development, the palace eunuchs raised him to believe that he was the "son of heaven," and that he could do whatever he wanted. Puyi kept this mentality through adulthood, and due to this, he suffered. People may argue that Puyi became the antagonist when he accepted the job as emperor of Manchukuo from the Japanese knowing that he was only a puppet because being an emperor was all he knew. He had always been an emperor and fought hard to maintain that status. However, he failed time after time. The Last Emperor was a fantastic movie, in my opinion. Personally, I had to watch this three hour movie in sections but filmmakers made great use of this time.

The Last Emperor Movie Review

For me, the Last Emperor was a very, very good movie. By the end, I actually found myself feeling bad for Puyi. This person, who has only known one way of life, who people thought was an actual descendent of the gods, is now an average citizen. He is not the Emperor of China, or of Manchuria; but simply citizen Puyi of the People's Republic of China. China used to be his country, and now he plays a very small, insignificant role within it.

More shocking for me, however, is the movie's ability to show how frightening Mao's Culture Revolution really was. The goal of the revolution, from my limited understanding, was to completely redesign China, and how China thinks as a country. It shook the core of China's hierarchy, turned it on it's head, and worked to erase thousands of years of history in an attempt to reform China in it's entirety. This system, that worked to reinvent the country through it's people, washed over Puyi. Mao's government forced him to change completely. He was a citizen, no longer an Emperor. Mao's revolution stopped for no one, it took the entire country by storm and the Emperor was no exception. It was the huge positive statement for the revolution, because if the Emperor could be reformed, then anyone could.

The Last Emperor Review

A train pulls into a station in Manchuria. Guards herd a bedraggled group of men into a waiting room. In a bathroom, one man attempts suicide. Thus begins Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film, "The Last Emperor." Bertolucci's film chronicles the life of Pu Yi, final ruler of the Manchu dynasty, from his childhood in the 1910s to his death in 1967. Through stunning footage, it exquisitely captures the lack of power Pu Yi had over his life, being moved from prison to prison. However, the ending of the film definitely leaves something to be desired. For most of the film, the plot consists of flashbacks between youth and middle age in a Communist Chinese prison. However, near the end, once we are completely in Pu Yi's middle age, the film rapidly loses pace and coherence. Frankly, Pu Yi's life as a gardener simply isn't interesting. After all the grandeur and excitement of his youth, we are left feeling cheated, thinking, "That's it?" In addition, the last scene, where a tour guide gives the date of Pu Yi's death, feels forced and unnecessarily tacked on. Altogether, though, most of the film is quite well done. Bertolucci expertly gives viewers a glimpse into a little-known period of Chinese history. Although quite imperfect, "The Last Emperor" is nonetheless a marvel for the eyes.

Reflections on The Last Emperor

In his highly acclaimed film, The Last Emperor, Bernardo Bertolucci does a fine job of narrating the life of last emperor, Pui Yi and gives important insights into Chinese culture and history throughout the journey. In this epic of a movie, Bertolucci’s depicts Pui Yi’s life by a pattern of flashback to Pui Yi’s childhood and early adulthood to his final years which he served in a Chinese reforming jail. The story begins with showing recently inducted toddler emperor Pui Yi, full of promise and potential on his decided path as emperor. However as the film progress, we do not find our little Pui Yi as a successful and charismatic ruler of China, but rather as a teenage forbidden out of The Forbidden City and eventually as an adult serving as the puppet leader for the enemy Japan. Much action is not seen during these three long hours; however I believe the decision of no-action truly reflects Pui Yi’s character. The Last Emperor demonstrates that Pui Yi’s reign is not marked by drastic changes but rather the lack of action and unheard voice of the ruler.
The Last Emperor also proves to be a valuable film to watch to get general insight into Chinese history and culture. From the tremendous Forbidden City to the elaborate costumes and sheer number of eunuchs, the audience can really visually grasp this period of time in Chinese history.

The Last Emperor

The three hour movie describing the life of Pu Yi was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a documentary type movie but instead was blessed with a beautifully filmed presentation of Pu Yi's life in story form. Now, I use the term blessed lightly seeing how it was a lengthly three hour movie but I will admit I rather enjoyed it. What kept me most interested was the flipping back and forth between Pu as a child emperor and as an adult prisoner. It took me until the child Pu got glasses to figure out that the scenes with the prisoner were him. After I caught onto that, the flipping back and forth in between scenes helped fill in detail of the recalling of Pus life. To me, the scene when Pu meets his biological brother plays a crucial role in the movie. It is this scene where Pu realizes that he is only the lord of the forbidden city. He was told at a young age that he was ruler of 10,000 people and yet he was only the lord of a small part of China i.e. "he is the lord of all and nothing" (Criterion). From this point on, we see Pu feeling like a prisoner. Ironically, he feels like a prisoner as an adolescent and is a prisoner during adulthood. Despite the rough prison life Pu had to experience, it caused a change in Pu for the better. He went from a spoiled child who thought he was all powerful, to an old man that blended into China's population. He went from being involved in China's unrest, to watching it from a comfortable distance. Those are just some of my thoughts on the movie. Overall, I was able to enjoy watching the movie and learn from it at the same time.

The Last Emperor

The Last Emperor outlines roughly 60 years of China's political history in about 3 hours, through the experiences of emperor Pu Yi. It begins with a very charming exposition of Emperor Pu Yi's idyllic childhood in the Forbidden City of China. There is no better way to establish a character as the protagonist of a film than to introduce him to an audience with such adorable innocence. However, Pu Yi grows from an adorable toddler into an interestingly troubled and questioning teen, and then into a reclusive, reticent and boring shadow of a personality for the remaining 2 hours of the film. For someone who is not already cultured in Chinese history, the film may also grow from charming to confusing to boring as easy-to-follow history of a failing dynasty becomes a confusing mess of historical implications that skirt the edges of actual explanations.

This confusing aspect of the film, however, is partly because of one of the more successful parts of the film, which is its focus solely on Pu Yi and his family. The film does not follow story lines of Japanese characters or show other perspectives, so while the historical facts surrounding other entities become cloudy in the film, what is left is a pleasing and in-depth story of a man and his family.

Apart from the story, The last Emperor is very aesthetically pleasing. The forbidden city re-creation is wonderful and the beautifal mansions and fancy party scenes in the later section of the film interestingly contrasts the turmoil of the film's storyline.

The Last Emperor

I don't think that anyone can deny that The Last Emperor is a work of art. The opulence and gradual decay of the Forbidden City are magnificently displayed. The cinematic themes of red and gold illuminate scenes of both the decadence of his often wealthy life and the disaster of his ruby life in water of the sink. But is it a work of art that I want to look at for 3 hours? Probably not. For a movie that covers almost 50 turbulent and important years, I was left feeling like absolutely nothing was happening. Perhaps this is because Pu Yi really was doing nothing. He was a porcelain doll in his childhood and a puppet when he grew up. He yearned for power but displayed no characteristics of a good leader. He showed no proficiency in winning over others through his influence, or intelligence. Although his attitude seemed honest, his ongoing conceit and perceived self importance in the face of his utter insignificance did not encourage the viewer to see him as a leader. Although he continues to state that he wants change, he does not specify and he certainly didn't try to institute any of them during his pretend rule of Manchuquo. However, perhaps the idea of a very ordinary man in these extraordinary circumstances, expected to perform extraordinary feats is what manages to keep the story engaging, at least for some of the time.

Questions of Reliability

About 18 minutes into the second video, I have noticed that the clip seems to have failed utterly in it's goal to " explain the mind-set that led to [the Rape of Nanking]." Instead, it only describes the atrocities of the Japanese, portraying them as mindless, racist killing machines. It does nothing to explain why the Japanese felt pressured to adopt so militaristic a culture. This leaves me wondering: what was the Japanese side of the story? If we cannot trust the clip to give us an unbiased account of the Japanese story, can we trust it to accurately describe the actual atrocities?

Irony

As we all agree, the atrocities that occurred during the Rape of Nanking are so grave we all questioned how this event could have happened without any foreign retaliation. And yet, both the interview and the documentary do mention the help of foreigner John Rabe. John Rabe, member of the German Nazi party, actually help create 2 by 2 square mile safety zone for Nanking residents against the immoral acts of Japanese. During the interview, author Irene Chiang even refers to the Rape of Nanking as a “holocaust” And this is when I became perplexed. An active Nazi member was helping to prevent a holocaust? This irony seems too illogical. Do the actions of Rabe shed new light on Nazi ideology?

Mao's Massacre

When I originally began studying Chiang Kaishek, after reading, watching, and listening to his life; I was convinced that it was his fault Japan was able to so brutally occupy Nanking. I believed that he was unable to act effectively as the head of state, and that he let the Chinese down by not even putting up the slightest amount of resistance. But, after watching this documentary, I believe my mind has changed. Chiang was not the person to give up, nor would he admit defeat easily. It is so out of character for him to simply allow the other side to win. Why then did Chiang, who had the support of powerful warlords and large numbers of soldiers, just let Japan invade his country?

In my opinion, it was because of the ever growing Communist threat led by Mao Zedong. To Chiang, though Japan was a large threat, dealing with them could wait. He knew he had the resources, and though the Japanese had superior technology, he could at least hold them off until the United States declared war against the Japanese. What couldn't wait to be solved, however, was the Communist problem. He saw that as his government was weakening, the Communists were becoming more powerful. Mao was attracted more followers and brining in more supplies, and he was then able to disrupt the Nationalist's power. Chiang was forced to quell these small, Communist lead revolutions in order to keep China united during war. He couldn't allow himself to lose thousands of soldiers in Nanking if right behind him Mao lay waiting to pounce. Mao knew that Chiang needed help, he knew that what China needed was one united front against the Japanese, but he didn't care. If Nanking had to suffer so that the Nationalist government would fall, in Mao's eyes, it was worth the price.

How Hidden is the Rape of Nanking Today?

Throughout her interview, Mrs. Chang made repeated statements that the Rape of Nanking was not widely known in the rest of the world, including America. This interview was made in 1997, and that leads me to question how true her statements are today. I certainly recall being taught about the Rape of Nanking in World War last year; I am pretty certain that it is mentioned in the History 10 textbook. Has much really changed in regards to the Rape that 1997 would be much different from today? How true are Mrs. Chang's claims?

Jaded

I found the atrocities in these videos so overwhelming that I became almost jaded. It seemed like the same horrific story over and over again. Watching these videos also brought to light the interesting way that the world perceives itself. Global history is often shaped by remembered horrors but is there room in the collective conscious to recall them all? Before I would have unequivocally said Yes. We need to make space to remember the things that have gone so horribly wrong. However, if that is true, why haven't we? At first I thought, well it must be a lack of publicity. This idea is counteracted however when the author of The Rape of Nanking notes that the incident made world headlines. If it came up, why was it so quickly forgotten? Well then I thought, it occurred during a period of such intense scrutiny on the Jewish Holocaust (which is still questioned anyway), there must not have been room in the global mind. But that can't be. The world still took note of the dropping of the a-bombs, which only collectively matched the death toll from Nanking (again, a comment from the author). Therefore, I was forced to conclude something I deemed quite upsetting. The Rape of Nanking didn't surprise anyone. The world was just as jaded as I had become. In the face of the Holocaust, it must have seemed minor. In the face of the atom bomb, unhistorical.

Why not?

Isn't it odd that there have been so many documents on the Nanking Massacre, yet it is not usually taught in school, and until recently has not been written about in books. Why would the world choose to ignore the incident for 40+ years? (14 minutes into the video)