Emp
Latest work/acquisition: for Arrow’s release of THE LAST EMPEROR, available in 4K and Limited Edition Blu-Ray, Fiona and I put together a couple of video essays, with editor Timo Langer. We document Bertolucci’s career journey to the unlikely Oscar-sweeping triumph, and then tell the story of the production and the film’s achievements, as well as its sometimes lightly fictionalised relationship to history.
Available here.
shadowplay 
March 16, 2023 at 8:56 pm
“lightly fictionalised relationship to history”
Lightly?
March 16, 2023 at 9:03 pm
In movie terms, yes, arguably. The standards have not been traditionally very high. Put it this way: anyone watching the film assuming it was all true would be misled quite a bit about quite a few things, but the broad outline of the historical events wouldn’t be massively wrong. I think the film’s Pu Yee is pretty much a fictional figure slotted into an existing biography, though.
We dig into the differences between the film and the history as it’s known, leaving it for the viewer to decide if the artistic license involved was justifiable.
March 16, 2023 at 10:13 pm
“I think the film’s Pu Yee is pretty much a fictional figure slotted into an existing biography, though.”
An interesting take. Now I am going to have to buy something I was going to skip. Why couldn’t you and Fiona have been contracted for LITTLE BUDDHA, a.k.a, The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Architect–his best movie.
March 16, 2023 at 10:47 pm
I was kind of baffled by that one, so I might not be a good fit for it. We did previously do The Sheltering Sky, which is also a slightly tricky film to sum up.
Looking forward to seeing Last Emp on our friend’s 4K player sometime, it is an incredibly beautiful thing.
March 16, 2023 at 11:37 pm
“We did previously do The Sheltering Sky, which is also a slightly tricky film to sum up.”
I have that one, and will watch this weekend. I had no idea you and Fiona were in my apartment already.
I think some of the trickiness with Bertolucci comes from his embrace/fear of queer sexuality. He often de-queers texts and history, which then makes a hash of his sources. And then there is habiting of othering.
LITTLE BUDDHA is good since for once he leaves sex/Marxism/Western culture behind. He said he could go no further, and had to turn back to his world, but it was fun for a moment.
Interesting that Scorsese should also explore Buddhism in his work, though he went further, with SHUTTER ISLAND being his most Buddhist film, SILENCE a close second, and KUNDUN, his entry into that world, actually more indebted to Western tropes though it tells the story of the Dalai Lama’s early years.
March 17, 2023 at 7:36 pm
I’ve only seen Shutter Island once and never considered it in the light of Buddhism. Next time I’ll watch out for that.
Agree that Sheltering Sky is hampered by Bertolucci’s unwillingness to consider Port in particular as gay. We don’t slam the movie too hard for that, partly because it’s bad form to trash the movie the purchaser has paid for, partly because the film has other merits.
March 17, 2023 at 8:01 pm
A suggestion: when you watch SHUTTER ISLAND, think of Teddy Daniels as struggling to gain enlightenment (getting to the lighthouse), and the entire staff as a sangha trying to help him, with the head doctor as a bodhisattva. Also, the Buddhist notion of non-retrogression comes into play.
Ultimately, Scorsese gives the film a Christian ending–Teddy gets up on his cross/accepts a lobotomy, but the last shot suggests that there is an alternative.
March 18, 2023 at 9:39 pm
Also, though, he opts for a kind of annihilation of his personality, which I guess could be equivalent to getting off the wheel of life?
March 18, 2023 at 10:38 pm
Oh man, the Buddhist underpinnings make me hate SHUTTER ISLAND even more.
March 19, 2023 at 12:32 am
“he opts for a kind of annihilation of his personality, which I guess could be equivalent to getting off the wheel of life”
I would say annihilation of one’s personality is the same as the acceptance of impermanence. It has more a feeling of sacrifice/atonement for sins committed
March 19, 2023 at 12:33 am
“the Buddhist underpinnings make me hate SHUTTER ISLAND even more.”
Why?
March 20, 2023 at 3:32 pm
I suspect this isn’t an anti-buddhist sentiment, rather a dislike for the film which is intensified by it tying up to something that doesn’t deserve to be tainted in that way.
I felt a similar unease, though not as strongly. I find Scorsese’s violence appropriate to his non-genre movies, but in Cape Fear and Shutter Island I feel like the supporting structure isn’t credible enough to sustain an argument of “we’re just being realistic.”
March 20, 2023 at 3:51 pm
“I suspect this isn’t an anti-buddhist sentiment”
I did not think it was. But since I am including SHUTTER ISLAND in my book about Buddhism and film, I am always curious to other cinephile’s reactions, and what thoughts they stir in my brain.
“but in Cape Fear and Shutter Island I feel like the supporting structure isn’t credible enough to sustain an argument of ‘we’re just being realistic.’”
CAPE FEAR is not a favorite, but I find SI to be restrained, actually. For me it is a credible account of what happens when a person leaves the Eightfold Path, and stops attending to his environment and responsibilities with mindfulness.
Also, two people close to me have both been in mental wards for treatment. Each one saw the film, liked it, and said that they never wanted to watch it again, as Scorsese perfectly captured what it is like to be in such a place.
March 21, 2023 at 3:06 pm
I’ve also been close to such places, visiting friends and loved ones. Hard to get past the gothic(k) trappings in Shutter Island, the real places are distinguished by their utter drabness, which seems calculated to thrust the depressed person deeper into misery.
March 22, 2023 at 1:51 am
“Hard to get past the gothic(k) trappings in Shutter Island”
SI is maximalist–but I take that as a metaphor for the world that must be unattached from.
“their utter drabness”
One person who spent time in one told me that there was not a single non-recessed screw on the entire ward, and he had run his fingers along everything.
March 23, 2023 at 12:40 am
It’s one of the most anti-cinematic films Scorsese has made. And the competition’s pretty fierce. I was referring to pretentiousness of implied Buddhist meaning, but come to think of it, since the Dalai Lama’s a war criminal…. Y’know? I like the film now.
March 23, 2023 at 1:22 am
Are you aware, by any chance, of this strange tale called “The Twitter Files”? And of the ongoing controversy stirred up by the Dems? I won’t try to persuade you that arresting Trump’s a mistake. I’ll just say that the context created by Matt Taibbi’s appearance before Congress is a strong one. Taibbi was actually labeled a “threat” by Democrats during an embarrassingly dumb, Neo-McCarthyite rage-fest. The guy’s a prolific author, celebrated by NYT and other mainstream papers; he published with Rolling Stone magazine for 15 years, and has won several prestigious awards for journalism. He’s also a standard Liberal Democrat.
Seemingly endless years of false promises, autosuggestion and outright lies characterizing “COLLUSION!” have poisoned our dubious democracy. Please, don’t cheer-lead for more dead-end spectacle. Check Taibbi on what “the good guys” are up to.
The Party, in other words, has so thoroughly and intentionally destabilized democratic debate that this zillionth tired maneuver to jail Trump (on risible bullshit) — well, the aftermath will be easier to watch from afar than to endure here, on the spot. The heat generates no light. Dems are abidingly committed to censoring online speech: repealing Section 230, and the critical protections it provides; collaborating with the FBI, CIA, DSA to silence dissent; and labeling anyone who disagrees (Glenn Greenwald)… a “Trump/Putin supporter” — so my sole point is that Trump’s arrest (if it happens) will fuel the rage EVERYONE in America already feels.
Dems will slobber over the deliciousness of their revenge, since justice ain’t on the menu, in mean and reality-denying late-night comedy.
The rightwing response? More victories. They already wiped out black history in schools around the country, abolished Roe…
You’re thinking too abstractly from where I sit.