This gem of a film deserved a far wider release than it got --
shame on Paramount for not daring to place this gem in theatres.
In a year where "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" occupied some small
theatres for months, I had to wait until October to see "The
Emperor's New Clothes," a far better movie and not at all limited to
art-house appeal, as the studio seemed to think.
Sir Ian Holm is brilliant, affecting, and engaging in his third turn as
the diminutive Emperor, and relative newcomer Iben Hjejle is a
perfect foil as the sweet yet tough-skinned "Pumpkin." But what
makes this film is not so much its wonderful cast and perfect
period settings, it's the visual magic of Alan Taylor, who opens and
closes the film with the candlelit wonder of an antique Magic
Lantern. In that nineteenth-century version of visual narrative, great
men rose from humble origins to "GLOIRE" in a few hand-painted
frames -- only, as Holm's Napoleon insists, "that's not how it
ended." It would be a crime to reveal how this film ends, but it's
how it unfolds which makes it shine -- what, after all, is an
Emperor? Is he a suit of clothes? An attitude? A pose? Holm's
double role as the emperor's doppelganger shines a new, comic,
yet serious light into this more than twice-told tale.
shame on Paramount for not daring to place this gem in theatres.
In a year where "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" occupied some small
theatres for months, I had to wait until October to see "The
Emperor's New Clothes," a far better movie and not at all limited to
art-house appeal, as the studio seemed to think.
Sir Ian Holm is brilliant, affecting, and engaging in his third turn as
the diminutive Emperor, and relative newcomer Iben Hjejle is a
perfect foil as the sweet yet tough-skinned "Pumpkin." But what
makes this film is not so much its wonderful cast and perfect
period settings, it's the visual magic of Alan Taylor, who opens and
closes the film with the candlelit wonder of an antique Magic
Lantern. In that nineteenth-century version of visual narrative, great
men rose from humble origins to "GLOIRE" in a few hand-painted
frames -- only, as Holm's Napoleon insists, "that's not how it
ended." It would be a crime to reveal how this film ends, but it's
how it unfolds which makes it shine -- what, after all, is an
Emperor? Is he a suit of clothes? An attitude? A pose? Holm's
double role as the emperor's doppelganger shines a new, comic,
yet serious light into this more than twice-told tale.