The original version of The Last Emperor has a running time of 160 minutes, and in that time, the main character, Pu Yi, China's final monarch, never emerges as a complete human being. Like an existential anti-hero, Pu Yi lacks a series of personality definitions. He is an open-ended character, like Meursault in Albert Camus' L'Etranger, who confounds any attempt to pin him down. Now, eleven years after the original, director Bernardo Bertolucci has released The Last Emperor: Original Director's Cut. It is a blissful (and ass-numbing) 219 minutes long (nearly four hours long including the intermission). The new footage fleshes out minor characters and adds a few more vistas to its already plump visual cornucopia. But it doesn't offer anymore insight into the last emperor himself. In a film marked by doors opening and closing, Bertolucci keeps the door to Pu Yi resolutely shut.

For this, we should be thankful. Too many historical biopics fail because they over interpret their heros, resulting in narrative tunnel vision. Bertolucci, in contrast, insists on a cool and even brutal detachment. Without boundaries, Pu Yi is able to respirate in the audience's imagination, and the result is a freer movie.

The director's challenge is to transform the distant and amorphous Pu Yi (played as an adult by John Lone) into an empathetic creature. In short, Bertolucci must alienate and engage the audience all at once. He accomplishes this nearly impossible task through a sort of inverted character development. Instead of showing who Pu Yi is, Bertolucci shows who he isn't. Take for instance the famous coronation scene, with its bright yellow curtain revealing an even more brightly dressed sea of eunuchs, all kow-towing in ritual unison. The scene outwardly suggests reverence, tradition, and importance. But the subtext implies the exact opposite. The three year old boy, dressed in a robe too big for him, is dwarfed by his environment: his insignificance is, in effect, inverted and reflected back at him. The more visual splendor Bertolucci heaps on, the more insignificant Pu Yi becomes.

Herein lies the source of empathy. Because Pu Yi lives in a world in which his own worth is severely distorted, he assumes an automatic innocence. He cannot be held responsible for his self-delusions since no one has the nerve to tell him the truth. As a dupe for nearly every major political force to sweep through twentieth-century China, Pu Yi's astonishing gullibility makes him nearly unbelievable. He moves from one self-delusion to another, never learning, never questioning those who say they are his friends and who then rob him of his basic personal liberties. But these flaws are forgivable. He is, after all, a grown-up who can't even button his shirt properly. When he is finally forced to flee The Forbidden City, it is a veritable expulsion from Eden: he emerges, baby-like, into the harsh light of twentieth-century China, naive and unprepared.

The bulk of the new footage in The Last Emperor: Original Director's Cut focuses not on the emperor, but on his entourage -- his wet nurse, tutors, and valet. With scenes detailing their personal lives, these secondary characters take on a depth that they sorely lacked in the original. We learn of the sacrifices, the political intrigue, and the repressed anger they must endure for the sake of the emperor. As they emote as fuller characters, Pu Yi's own shallowness becomes more pronounced, and the entire film takes on an added layer of wasted glory.

The best scene of the new footage is perhaps the briefest. Ordered by Communist reformers to write the story of his life, Pu Yi pitifully stares at the blank pages of his shabby notebook. Those blank pages, arresting in their whiteness, are the most terse symbol in the film. At one level, they communicate the pristine emptiness of his life. On a higher level, they show what a risk Bertolucci took in making a four-hour film about a man whose life's work isn't worth writing about.

Still, the most resonating image remains that of Pu Yi writing his name: he scribbles the characters furiously, and then, ever so slowly, he withdraws his trembling hand. Like the audience, he is unsure of who he is.

Powerful images like these prove that The Last Emperor is a visual story. Its symbols and images, not its words, embody the most important points of the screenplay (by Mark Peploe and Bertolucci). The real power of Bertolucci's visuals lies in his skillful juxtaposition of opposites. There is opposition in color: the lush reds and golds of The Forbidden City contrast the icy blues of Manchuria. In clothing: the dilapidated Mao uniforms versus the intricate court costumes. In forms of transportation: a monstrous locomotive gives way to an imperial palanquin. And in scale: an epic-sized longshot followed immediately by a close-up of a child entranced by a cricket.

The last juxtaposition is the most thought-provoking because Bertolucci keeps returning to the human face. In a film of David Lean grandeur, he harbors a surprising intimacy. His close-ups don't reveal thoughts or sentiments in the usual cinematic convention. Rather, Bertolucci borrows, from the French New Wave, the use of the human face as an object of speculation. In his article on French New Wave close-ups, Iain Morrison writes that "the close-up is no longer a vehicle for confirming our expectations regarding the joy or distress of the character… we are forced to take note of it and not merely to that which lies beneath it." The face of Pu Yi is equally mysterious: it seals him off. The ambiguity of his expressions is frustrating (we're never sure how much he really knows) but fascinating at the same time. The poster for The Last Emperor has a close-up of Pu Yi as a child: his face registers a disquieting melange of confusion, delight, and awe.

Bertolucci also tends to visually upstage Pu Yi. In nearly every scene, there is something or someone louder, brighter, bigger, or weirder. This tactic becomes more apparent in the director's cut, especially when Vittorio Storaro's camera lingers lazily on anonymous ladies-in-waiting and faceless servants, while the emperor carries on off-screen. It is also no coincidence that Peter O'Toole, who plays the emperor's tutor, Mr. Johnston, is a good two heads taller than his teen-aged pupil, and almost as regal. The effort to visually marginalize Pu Yi reinforces his triviality. He becomes more inconsequential simply by his lack of screen domination.