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Definitely. I hate historical inaccuracy just so that we can have a "better" or "different" story. History is what actually happened, not what you wish had happened. Dramatists should tell the historical truth and nothing but the truth, should it shame the Devil.
My primary interest is that it is a Ridley Scott movie. So should he employ the stray gladiator, replicant, alien and/or jumbo space craft, I would probably give it a pass anyway ...
Opening tomorrow here in Montreal ...
Regardless, I hope by next weekend, I've gone to theaters to see this one. It looks like it demands a trip to the big screen.
For the past couple of weeks I have so-far disagreed with Scott's "intentions" in regards to accuracy, specifically with the canon firing into the Pyramids scene in particular.
However, this week, after seeing the constant "hot-take-isms" on social media in both directions, either for accuracy, or rather backing Scott's F-You attitude towards it with this film in particular, and suddenly find myself considering:
The artist paints Napoleon demolishing millennia of history in a single moment, with a single action, a strategic blow to signal to the world a new Empire is coming. For the movie, the benefit is this rather than depicting the entire war, where Napoleon invaded to mixed/failed results, committed genocidal atrocities, and robbed the region blind, which symbolically COULD BE sort of artistically represented as simple and petty of an action as shooting the Pyramids with a canon.
But personally, knowing Kubrick spent years researching and cataloging Napoleon's life for an eventual project he never got to complete in life, that I believe Spielberg is now attached to, I'd be much more interested in seeing that version of events, or Scott's take on Kubrick's setup.
The book is always better. Mein Kampf wasn't it?
By my bedside every night.
It's on my bookshelf in several editions along with Goebbels's Diaries and Bormann's Letters though I am a historian at heart so that's not so strange. The interwar period is my main area of interest historically. Having had a late father who was in the Home Guard here in the UK probably helped increase my interest in that time period and also bring it to life a little.
As it is, the film is split between the private story of Napoleon's relationship with Josephine and the public one of his battles and political rise and fall. The stories are awkwardly joined by the voiceovers of Napoleon's letters to Josephine. To be honest, I've never found Bonaparte's love life as interesting as his political/martial one. Apparently Scott feels the same way, because the film only comes fully alive during the battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo. The latter also benefits from Rupert Everett's Wellington, the only serious antagonist in the film (Everett is also the only cast member who looks like he's enjoying himself).
Joaquin Phoenix is miscast. He's excellent at getting across the Napoleon's petulant/petty side, but he's not convincing as a relentless man of action or warlord of enormous charisma. Too often he comes across as a dour, withdrawn weirdo who somehow wins lots of battles. This is also the film's main problem: it doesn't really get across what made Napoleon an epochal figure. It will give you a cursory look at the man's life and the important incidents in it--there weren't many major historical howlers--but not a profound one.
The running time also means that aside from Josephine few of the other characters register, despite the usually fine casting. Talleyrand's famous comment "What a pity such a great man should be so ill bred" is given to the English ambassador instead. One hopes the director's cut will give more life to the supporting cast.
Scott has produced a handsomely-made film, with appropriately lavish production values. Obviously the scale of the battles and backgrounds has been boosted by CGI, which takes away from the wow factor, but this is a blockbuster that feels more human than the standard product and old-fashioned in a good way.
The only great film I've ever seen about Napoleon is Abel Gance's visionary masterpiece from 1927. Unfortunately the Blu-Ray of the restored Napoleon is out of print and Region B only. Here's the trailer:
However, it's interesting to see some ideas in this movie that may have influenced Kubrick that, in turn, may have ultimately influenced Scott. I'm thinking about the link that Gance draws between Bonaparte's desire for conquest and his attraction for Josephine. You literally have a scene where Bonaparte is in front of a spherical model of Earth, sees the face of Josephine and starts to kiss the globe.
Obviously, such link between Josephine and Bonaparte's desire for conquest would have been the heart of Kubrick's project and such idea seems to have been used by Scott.
True--Gance never had the opportunity to make the three or four sequels he had envisioned (and in some cases scripted).
Yes, Scott's film leans hard on the connection and implies that after Napoleon divorced Josephine his days were numbered. I'm not sure if Kubrick was necessarily influenced by Gance, since the linking of Bonaparte's desire for conquest and his attraction for Josephine is a commonsense way of connecting two otherwise separate stories. This goes back to the central problem of Napoleon films: finding a dramatic connection between the Josephine story and the larger one of battles and politics.
Funny enough, Gance sold one of the scripts to German producers who adapted it to the screen. I guess the final product (Napoleon auf St. Helena, directed by Lupu Pick in 1929) doesn't have much in common with what Gance planned though. Gance directed a movie (Austerlitz) focusing of Bonaparte's coronation, culminating in the Austerlitz battle. It's far from being as good as his 1927 masterpiece but it could be considered as a loose sequel.
I really stopped being interested in his output after diminishing returns, and also when he relatively recently said he should have in fact directed BR2049 (inferring instead of Villeneuve) and I lost a lot of respect for him. I'm not picky about professionalism but you don't give up a project to a young artist and then say that about their work, even if you meant well. It's just selfish thinking and tarnishes an otherwise great movie for no reason, even though I know he just meant he sort of regretted not doing it, not that DV did bad. I get that. Still bothered me.
That said I am hype for Gladiator 2.
It's worth a viewing. I'll always prefer the original though.
Also, in my opinion, the first Blade Runner works better is there no ambiguity about Deckard being human.
The ambiguity of what it means to be human.
If a super-sophisticated bioengineered replicant thinks & feels (and even dies) just like a human, than how is it any any different from us essentially?
Or, conversely, what are we? Is there anything about us that gives metaphysical value to our lives?
Eternally relevant questions, now more so than ever ....
The film suggests there is no fundamental difference between a replicant and a human being. If the film implies Deckard might be a replicant, it just muddies the waters of the point it's trying to make. Because if he is a replicant, it is obvious, in the bluntest possible way, that there is no fundamental difference between him and the replicants he is chasing, since they are all literally replicants! If he is a human being, however, the idea that there is no difference between him and the replicants he is chasing isn't obvious or blunt, but more provocative and interesting.
To be fair, the original poses all of these questions depending on what cut you watch. I also find the original to be "one of those films" that gives you a different question to ask yourself depending on the mood you're in when you watch it.
The sequel aims to do the same, and is a great film in its own right, but perhaps isn't quite as effective. Such is the nature of attempting to recapture that lightning that appears in the bottle. Still, it beats almost every other adventure in the legacy sequel genre that I've seen - bar, maybe, the 2018 Halloween.
I am talking about the original film. It's a shortcoming of it that they wanted to suggest Deckard might be a replicant. The sequel can't be held responsible for that.
Did the original or even second cut suggest it? I have only seen the final cut, and while I was aware that the uninteresting, point-missing question of Deckard possibly being a replicant was out there, I didn't feel the movie suggested anything in that vein, apart from the unicorn bit that I knew had been added.
Anyway, with the "Final Cut" (2007), Scott is on record as stating definitely that Deckard is a replicant. But, really, I think that the unicorn element only more strongly suggests that possibility, it's hardly definitive proof, whatever Scott says. So, for me, the ambiguity (leaning towards human) remains and the movie is stronger for it.
In this sense, Blade Runner may be a case of trusting the tale and not the teller. Like I think Harrison Ford said about the film, "I don't have any trouble with ambiguity, it's the certainty that bothers me." Or something like that ....
FWIW ... Paul Sammon, author of Future Noir, who's been writing/talking about the film for those forty years, and who was on or around the set back then, claims that Scott initially intended ambiguity and either forget that he did so (!) or evolved his interpretation over the years.
May be worth a listen ...
https://bladerunnerpodcast.com/home-episodes/2022/11/28/131-40-years-of-blade-runner-with-film-historian-paul-m-sammon
Ah, sorry. I thought you were referring to the sequel!
It concerns me a littlebit that reviewers say his relationship with Josephine is one of the main focuses of the film. The story about Napoleon is incredibly interesting, but the probably least interesting part of it is his marriage, honestly.
I realize the film has been heavily shortened and I look forward to the 'director's cut' edition when it arrives, but the film as it is feels rushed except for the marriage which is portrayed in detail. I suppose it's an attempt to give the film heart and delve into more sensitive aspects of the character and I understand modern films need to have notable, strong female characters at all costs, but it's still an odd focus to me.
That being said it's an epic and very enjoyable film, and those who choose to sit it out will definitely be missing something. Don't be stupid guys, it's worth a watch. Ridley Scott seems as energetic and technically astute as ever despite his age.
8/10
It’s curious that Scott hasn’t done much TV, in spite of being a producer of several very successful shows for the last 20 years. I just got into THE GOOD WIFE and it’s pretty solid, so far. The only shows of his that he actually had a hand in directing are the first two episodes of RAISED BY WOLVES.
His representation of Napoleon is so horrifically deglamorized, completely devoid of charisma, frequently ridiculous, and repulsive even, that it only dawned on me 30 minutes into the film that this must have been a deliberate semi-satirical intention and political choice on the part of Scott and his screenwriter to present him that way.
I don't really associate Scott especially with political filmmaking [Thelma & Louise and a few others like The Counselor notwithstanding]; but in 2023 it's impossible not to view this movie and see his Napoleon as anything other than the first in a long line of horrific dictators, one leading directly to Stalin & Hitler and beyond to our own era of authoritarians [like Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Orban, etc.] and various antidemocratic movements.
That Napoleon is presented here as sociopathically narcissist, and monstrously so, I can only view it allegorically as a cautionary tale, something underscored by the body count of all his battles and wars that literally concludes the film ... ie. the millions of lives sacrificed for no other reason than personal vanity and ambition.