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 ...
In disgust, Beethoven blotted out his original dedication on the score, "To Napoleon," and replaced it with, "To a Great Man."
So: fitting, that Eroica was not featured.
Regards,
Im not a chick flick guy, but that Napoleon-Josephine relationship was very odd indeed, on many levels, and Josephine was a truly complex character. And it was pretty fundamental in explaining Napoleon, who was even more complex.
His mind was, in many ways, superhuman. We normals struggle to get our minds around what was in his.
If Scott wanted to stress Josephine in his biopic then its his legitimate call.
There is just so much that could have gone into 2.5 hours that its hard to quibble.
Prurient junk is rather fundamental to a lot of the personal relationships and characters in that story. For goodness sake, they were French. Everyone involved was very, very human, flawed, distracted and messed up.
Truth isn’t PG.
Napoleon quasi scholar here as are my boys
We are gonna wait for the fervor to wane and go to an imax
Ridley like Mike Mann can damn well make this type movie
The sorta original with Steiger as napoleon and Plummer as Wellie was damn good too
The duellist is so good
Only flaw is keitel accent
Did they actually kill the horse ?
That disappoints me too
He was hardly French when he first started
Had to learn the language
Wish they could have gotten the English girl
I like her
Sure looks like that buff dies In apocalypse now too
Or Coppola had a helluva veterinarian on hand
I doubt that anyone in France would have been playing Beethoven at the time. Not in the French court, opera, or in the armies.
I would count it a plus if they play “l’oignon”, “Chant du départ” or “La Victoire est à Nous”.
Or a fair bit of Italian opera! Perhaps something by Paisello, who is today quite unknown. He also seems to have been fond of this -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhPfq5MkqU0&pp=ygUNb3NzaWFuIGxlc2V1cg%3D%3D
A very interesting article on Napoleon’s musical tastes - https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/air-and-graces-napoleon-and-vocal-music/#:~:text=Napoleon%20especially%20loved%20Italian%20vocal,%2C%20Paisiello%2C%20his%20official%20musician.
I’ve seen many unfavorable reviews about this movie....
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.
From what I’ve gathered it might be better named a version of Romeo an Juliet as the focus is on their relationship.
Unfortunately the bull does really die in Apocalypse Now.
I wonder if Scott’s Napoleon shows him returning to Christ before his death. Probably not, since Ridley seemed to have issues with Christianity in some of his past films.
Its was a relationship, but it definitely wasn’t Romeo and Juliet.
The guy had - issues. The woman had - issues. And that mess certainly did affect what happened in the larger world. If one wants to get into his other woman troubles, women had a crucial role in getting him his jobs in the first place (check out Désirée Clary).
Yep. I’ve been to his birthplace in Ajaccio, Corsica. The revolutionary/separatist spirit was still very evident there.
Lots of LaFayettes in the midwest and south. Several in my family beginning with the first gen born after the revolution.
I too love animals and seeing an animal either in life or on film hurt, or killed, mistreated, really bothers me. So you aren’t alone here.
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