Did you have a problem with "The Godfather", or "Blazing Saddles"?
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.style.yahoo.com ...
It was an excellent movie. I encourage everyone to try to see it. The battle scenes are epic. The only CGI in the movie are the visible cannon balls. Scott hired thousands of extras.
This movie is very very shocking.... in that they did not find a black person to play napoleon.
Lol
Excellent point 👉
My grandfather was named Napoleon.
My father in law was named Lafayette.
Yeah ... we are an odd crew for down here in the old south.
Or a woman. If Disney made it, they’d put a chick in it and make her gay...
I’m a huge Ridley Scott fan, especially The Duelists and Bladerunner. He did get a bit sidetracked with CGI for a while, but still one of the greatest visual film makers.
They would if the movie was on Netflix!
🤔🤪
Oddly, the soundtrack does not contain Eroica.
I’ve read about the praise for the battle scenes, but a noted Napoleon historian did not give it high praise for accuracy.
I have a feeling I will find its ‘liberties’ with history offensive.
There’s a town in Louisiana called Napoleonville.
I love Ridley Scott and I have great interest in the French Revolution and Napoleon, BUT
IF THEY HAVE TO KILL A HORSE AT THE START OF THE FILM, LIKE ANOTHER POPULAR SERIES, I HAVE NEITHER TIME NOR INTEREST IN IT.
Ridley, you disappoint me. Even if what happened was true...it is just too barbaric to depict.
I know, I know...this is real life...grow up.
Some things I just cannot take.
Yea I read that about the historian. Scott’s response was to him was get a life or something like that.
Lots of French named places in Louisiana
since it was originally a French Colony.
“...is just too barbaric to depict...”
-
Killing a horse is barbaric,
but killing thousands of humans is OK?
(war is hell)
Are you NUTS.
Is that what you got out of an expression of terrible barbarism which is a thousand times worse than the savagery of WAR.
Thanks, Repeal
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