Keywords: china, emperor, chinese history, based on true story, flash forward, symbolism, childhood, husband wife relationship, flashback, old man
Budget: $23,000,000
Plot:
A dramatization is presented of the near entire life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, the story chronologically starting from the time of his coronation at the age of three in 1908. Much of his story is told starting in 1950 when he is in detention under the rule of the Communist Party of China. From that point, flashbacks show his life in various time periods, in chronological order: his coronation and the events leading to it; his phase as emperor leading a shielded life confined to the Forbidden City, the only personal guidance provided by his tutor and friend, British Reginald Johnston, leading to him being enamored with a western lifestyle including speaking English; his abdication (really a deposition following a coup) and exile to Tientsin with his two wives, they leading an opulent western lifestyle; and the Japanese installing him as Emperor of Manchukuo in what is northeast China, it which ended up being a puppet state of the Japanese preceding the Sino-Japanese War and WWII, the fall of the Japanese leading to his detention as an enemy of the state ultimately ruled by the Communists. An epilogue of sorts shows his post-detention life as a peasant and how he viewed the world compared to his pre-detention life.
