Is The Last Emperor secretly sci-fi? Hear me out...

Okay, film nerds, KevinMovies here. I just rewatched The Last Emperor and I have a theory, a weird one, but a theory nonetheless. Stick with me. On the surface, it's a historical drama, right? Puyi, the last emperor, his life, etc. But what if we look at the Forbidden City... not just as a historical place, but as a constructed environment? Total isolation, artificial rules, a completely manufactured reality enforced by basically a bunch of robots (eunuchs!). It's like a giant, ornate biodome, designed to cultivate one specific individual. Think about the scenes inside the city, the rituals, the sheer unreality of it all. Isn't that what good sci-fi world-building does? Create a believable, yet totally foreign society with its own internal logic? The teachers who come to tutor Puyi, especially Reginald Johnston... he's like an alien anthropologist trying to understand this bizarre species. He's introducing foreign concepts, infecting the biodome with outside ideas. When Puyi is finally kicked out, it's like he's being released from a long stasis sleep into a world he doesn't understand. And even later, in the prison camp? It's another constructed environment, another attempt to mold him, this time by the communist regime. The whole film becomes a series of societal experiments imposed on one guy. Maybe I'm reaching, but the film's emphasis on the artificiality of power, and the way societies are created through rules and control, strikes me as deeply resonant with a lot of science FICTION themes. What do you guys think? Am I insane? I know it's directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, not some hack sci-fi director, but the film resonates with me in ways similar to movies like Gattaca or even The Truman Show, but on a much grander scale. Also, side note: the score is absolutely incredible. Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, and Cong Su knocked it out of the park. Okay, rant over.