Napoleon

Not any weaker than Gladiator (as we had hoped), but only a bit better than Robin Hood (unfortunately). Passages from the historical stages of Napoleon’s rise to power and “world conquest”, intimately interspersed with his relationship with the woman in his life. The film is entertaining with its actors and the occasional battle, but it is so inwardly reserved that it borders on being bland, with no interest or ability to find personality traits in Napoleon on which the psychology of his story or any other idea could be built. Nor does it make use of the possibilities offered by his personal confrontation with the supporting characters, which could have filled out the narrative with solid content. And Napoleon’s romantic relationship, which receives a great deal of attention, remains cold and thus fails to touch the fewer. The routine narrative raises concerns that the longer director’s cut will be richer in informational content, but equally soulless. Ridley Scott’s first historical film without a musical identity. (12/13/2023)

A return to a classical theme that never gets tired. In my preparations, I watched the films Conquest and N (Io e Napoleone) and the series Napoleon and Love. There are, of course, other phonebooks of Napoleonic films, but we'll talk about them some other time. Ridley Scott understands Joaquin Phoenix as an actor, so they are an ideal combination. The battles of Slavkov and Waterloo are excellent but should be watched in a movie theater, as I assume that watching them at home will slightly reduce one's adrenaline. As for the selection of other chapters from Napoleon's life, it is somewhat surprising how exclusively David Scarpa focused on Empress Josephine, as if other women did not influence Napoleon, although he had three children with three other women and of course a whole range of other relationships. However, within the whole, this main relationship with the empress is functional and creates a certain framework. The events from the Reign of Terror are hectic, as well as the Congress of Vienna, but there is also enough room for Egypt and Russia, so most viewers can enjoy it. Films of this kind need to be made every generation. (11/23/2023)

Ridley Scott is a master of these historical spectacles and Napoleon turned out exactly as I imagined it before the screening - in the good and the bad. I'd start with the bad. Unfortunately, even with a two-and-a-half hour running time, the film is such a fast-paced tour through Bonaparte's life and career that at times it just jumps around too much from scene to scene, with secondary storylines and characters sort of appearing and disappearing again and connections left unfinished. That's a problem that will hopefully be solved in the promised four-and-a-half-hour version on Apple TV+. The war scenes are great, as we've come to expect from Scott, and overall the period stylings work perfectly, really throwing the viewer into the setting of wild Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Joaquin Phoenix approaches the legendary figure of world history with in a very civil way, and his Napoleon is engaging every minute he's on screen. I believe he will pull it off in the two hour longer version. Satisfaction with reservations. (11/21/2023)

The cinematic cut turned out as it probably had to: as an obviously incomplete fragment of a larger work. It's hard to rate it, it's like reading a novel and skipping every ten pages. What is in the cinema cut is fine, but it doesn't coalesce into a comprehensive experience. Napoleon's personal life is there, the battles are there, but the "politics" between them are missing, so you don't really know why any given battle is happening. Quite absurdly, from the cinematic cut, the character of Napoleon doesn't actually strike me as an active instigator of all this wartime fury, nor as a figure that the rest of Europe feared. (11/23/2023)

Sadness and disappointment. At times, with the often empty and self-serving droning of Josephine and Napoleon, I thought I was watching a compilation of Bridgerton instead of Ridley Scott's new masterpiece. That's how bad Napoleon is dramaturgically: disjointed, inconsistent, fragmented in plot. Decently filmed bloody battles are interspersed with an odd, para-romantic level, and if you thought it would be saved by at least a rich factual-informative level, an analysis of the personality of the brilliant warlord, you are left halfway there – which may be the only reason to watch the director’s cut, to get a larger and more detailed overview of what Napoleon actually accomplished during his time. That is, assuming you accept the medium of film and don’t want to look at Wikipedia or history books. But I highly doubt it the director’s cut will give the film any specific shape or identity. Scott's worst historical major historical film, along with Robin Hood. (02/17/2024)