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Interdisciplinary analysis often means bringing together an unusual range of subjects that are allowed to coexist, to be examined in one spectrum. The radical gesture consists primarily in breaking down barriers between the subjects of various disciplines rather than their methodologies. It is rare, then, to find an interdisciplinary study that focuses on a single object and examines it in depth from multiple points of view and with different methods. Bertolucci's The Last Emperor explores the possibility and validity of such a closely focused study. This collection of fourteen essays by psychoanalysts, film scholars, filmmakers, and cultural historians turns attention to a single film by the renowned Italian director.
Released in 1987, the film is based on the autobiography of China's last emperor Aisin Gioro Pu Yi From Emperor to Citizen. Pu Yi's life, begun spectacularly in the Forbidden City at the age of three and ended desolately in Communist China just before the Cultural Revolution, is ideal material for reflecting on the fate of the individual in history. It is also rich in psychoanalytic themes, posing the question of the extent to which an individual psyche as well as the situation of analysis can be kept separate from sweeping historical processes. Perhaps this is why Bertolucci, famous for his explicit fascination with psychoanalysis, chose Pu Yi's life story for this epic film.
The anthology, however, strives to focus on the film and the filmmaker. And yet, made to cohere through the common psychoanalytic approach, the interdisciplinary essays perform double work of interpretation. The subject of the film is not easily extricated from the process of filmmaking; the figure of Pu Yi from Bertolucci's interest in his life; the emperor from the auteur. The photograph chosen for the cover of the book betrays this entanglement: Bertolucci stands behind Pu Yi (actor Wu Tao) dressed in imperial costume on the set of The Last Emperor. This is neither a film clip