Posted on 11/26/2023 8:06:44 PM PST by Rummyfan
If, at 85, Ridley Scott has reached the final season of his filmmaking career, Napoleon is the ideal work of wintry grandeur to mark it. Scott’s 28th feature is a magnificently hewn slab of dad cinema with a chill wind whistling over its battlefields and round its bones: its palette is so cold, even the red in the tricolore is often the shade of dried blood.
Spanning 32 years, from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to its title character’s death on St Helena in 1821, it casts Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise, reign and downfall as both a prickly psychodrama and a sweeping military epic, in which the intimate lives of its central players and the fate of France itself become instantly and anxiously entwined.
Napoleon himself is played with startling blunt-force charisma by Joaquin Phoenix, who is working again with Scott for the first time since 2000’s Gladiator. Phoenix’s undisguised soft Californian accent is one of a number of details that might irk historical sticklers – television’s Dan Snow has already chimed in with a list of inaccuracies, to which Scott’s not unreasonable response was “get a life”. But on screen it’s oddly ideal, reinforcing the idea that this Corsican roughneck can never fully settle into the role for which history has him picked out.
We get the measure of the man almost instantly at the Siege of Toulon, as the French Republican forces lay siege to the British-occupied harbour fort. In the dead of night, as Napoleon leads the advance, a cannonball tears through the shoulder of his horse – the film earns its 15 certificate fast – though almost before he hits the ground he hurriedly barks “I’m OK,” and strides on, shaken but resolute, and smeared with the blood of his steed.
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One of my mother’s New Orleans relatives had come from Ajaccio Corsica and tried claiming a connection to Napolean. The rest of the family wasn’t having it and told him that he was just his tailor, if that.
Bingo!
I was sorely disappointed. The battle scenes were gripping cinema--and awful history.
The gratuitous sex scenes were also unnecessary.
Dear Ruy Dias de Bivar, have you run out of FAMOUS BATTLES and POEMS??
I don’t how many comments you send me...the answer shall be the same.
Surely there is SOMETHING that disturbs you, in some way, that makes you NOT want to see it. Like a Bud Light ad, a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, a Pride Parade??????
I was raised on a farm. I’ve seen it all.
Several bedroom scenes.
In some ways, Josephine was portrayed as damaged goods. In others, as grounding and graceful.
She was his Achilles heel.
Right on.
And for the record...I was using sarcasm.
I’ve seen leftist reviews praising this movie for “dismantling the idea that great men make history.” They love that Napoleon is depicted as a petulant soyboy. Someone in this thread marveled that Ridley is going strong at 85. Looking at his body of work the past 13 years, he just needs to go away.
“When it comes to Waterloo, the ABBA version is more accurate.”
I need to see “Waterloo” again.
“I bet you would not like THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE both the 1936 and 1968 versions.”
The charge in the Errol Flynn movie was terrific, even though the movie as a whole was silly even for its day. If you want British colonialism done right, you want “Gunga Din” instead.
The ‘68 version is awful through and through. It’s sometimes comic depiction of a perfectly stupid war is ham-fisted.
I had the pleasure of seeing the 1927 Abel Gance “Napoleon” in Radio City Music Hall with full orchestration composed and conducted by Carmine Coppola. Francis’s dad.
In the final scene, where Napoleon leads his army over the Alps into Italy, the curtains pulled back to reveal a spectacular three-camera tableau.
That was maybe 40 years ago but still quite memorable!
“The movie is bad, absurdly dark (why does every movie look like they could not afford lighting (Dune and BR 2049 has the same problem), Napoleon is a cuckold who apparently is trying to conquer the world for his slutty wife’s love, the battle scenes are just thrown in and give nothing on Napoleon’s battlefield genius - hand signals to direct large armies is laughable, soldiers hiding in trenches is just silly. I suspect Scott has something against Napoleon. Watch Waterloo instead.”
I understand that Toulon is given short shrift (and that many other significant battles are simply ignored,) but does Scott REALLY have Napoleon leading a cavalry charge??
Margaret Thatcher said that the French Revolution resulted in two things: a pile of headless corpses and a tyrant ruling France.
wow
How Napoleon Ended The Terror Of The Spanish Inquisition | Files of the Inquisition | Real History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDg2e1SdfkY
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