Criterion's The Last Emperor.

"In the 1980s, when the Chinese government granted Bernardo Bertolucci unprecedented access to the Forbidden City, an entire nation that had been ignored in popular world cinema suddenly became a new frontier for Western viewers," writes Andrew Chan, at the House Next Door. The Last Emperor "became an international hit and a whirlwind success at the Academy Awards... But behind the silk veils and looming structures of Bertolucci's biggest blockbuster remains one of the strangest mainstream epics imaginable, a film that wears its compromises of style and perspective on its sleeve."

"Last Emperor is most decisively a lesson of nobility: The most destitute in a society is nobler than the one living in unimaginable privilege and wealth," writes Arthur Ryel-Lindsey in Slant. "In this way, Bertolucci's most awarded film is also his signature."

"It's tempting to dismiss the film as mere pageantry, a sumptuous one-of-a-kind tour through the Forbidden City that makes up in ornate costumes and exotic ritual what it lacks in historical or emotional resonance," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "The new four-disc Criterion edition makes an imposing and mostly convincing argument for the film as a truly great epic, one which attempts to capture the political turmoil that gripped 20th-century China without getting too reductive or bogged down in minutiae."

Peter Becker responds to queries about the aspect ratio of Criterion's release: "This is the way the filmmakers want the film to be seen." Glenn Kenny, who's impressed with both the package and the film, elaborates - while Sean Axmaker delights in all the extras.

Posted by dwhudson at February 27, 2008 2:42 PM