I went to see Napoleon with such high hopes.
My brother and I used dialogue from Ridley Scott's first movie, The Duelists, to add color to our shouts while drinking in bars, and conversations with friends at dinners, since we first saw it in 1977.
We saw Blade Runner five years later, and agreed that Scott was in our top five movie Directors of all time.
The Duelists is as vibrant and wonderful today as it was then. As they say, 'it holds up'.
Based on a Joseph Conrad tale and a series of actual duels that took place between two officers in Napoleon's La Grande Armée through victory and defeat between 1801-1815.
A duel that began over a misheard insult to a lady.
The duel continuing over personal honor, however mistaken the initial cause actually was.
The attention to period detail impressive. The uniforms of the La Grande Armée's soldiers and officers change as they did during the time. From duel to duel, battle to battle, soiree to soiree they become more magnificent and glorious and indicate how grand France became while Napoleon defeated the armies arrayed against France again and again.
Then defeat.
First in Russia. Then at Waterloo.
Napoleon is never seen in The Duelists.
But, the unseen Napoleon is a titan. Loved. Feared. The author of the Napoleonic Code which created written guarantees of civil law and equal justice for the first time in history. A Code that was an existential threat to the European monarchies. A code that remains in France today.
A warrior. A military genius.
I had such high hopes.
Do you remember Dick Shawn in The Producer's? Playing a camp, fey Hitler for laughs?
Ridley Scott decided to cast Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon to play a similar version of a historic figure.
A dull, mumbling, stone faced, jealous, randy fop of a Napoleon.
A Napoleon that elicits not laughs, but groans.
And, grim incredulity. Laughs maybe, but laughs of derision.
In a scene reminiscent of Dick Shawn dancing on a map of the Europe he planned to conquer, Scott has Joaquin unfurl a giant map Europe that he stands on, as he off handedly discusses a mumbled, dispassionate strategy for blunting the gathering armies dedicated to defeating France.
Ah, France.
Remember France?
The Revolution that overthrew the monarchy? The Revolutionary army of common citizens that became the first mass army of citizens not conscripts who fought with vigor and courage and élan for fifteen years under their charismatic Emperor, Napoleon?
The 'jour de gloire' and all that stuff?
No, this Napoleon and Napoleonic Era is all about Josephine's private parts.
She purposely displays them early on to Napoleon and tells him of their power. This Napoleon plays Adam to her Eve, Paris to her Helen.
The scenes of Joaquin rogering Josephine, as a stallion to a mare, are embarrassing to the audience, the actors, and probably, to the crew. Joaquin's facial expressions reminding me of the absurd acting poor eye fluttering Richard Burton had to do in The Exorcist Part II.
The uniforms change a bit. The military tactics displayed in the battle scenes are of the Andy Hardy movies trope:
Hey! You go get your dad's trombone, I'll get my cousin's trumpet, we can use a trash can as a drum! We can form a band for the dance tonight!
Battle after battle staged as if Napoleon won through paper thin ruses.
Toulon: Hey, let's heat up shot and use mortars to set fire to the English fleet! Scale the walls at night when the drunken Englishmen are asleep and I, Napoleon, will lead the charge and swordfight on the walls!
Austerlitz: We'll do an ambuscade and then trap the Austrians on a frozen lake and, get this, use our artillery and break up the ice to drown them!
And on and on, and dismally on.
Scott's Napoleon, Joaquin Phoenix's Napoleon, the actual Napoleon in command at Toulon when just twenty-four, First Counsel at thirty, Emperor and the most powerful man in Europe at thirty-five, a Joe Biden version of Napoleon.
Too old. Too clueless. As if our President, out of the blue, to the English Ambassador, dismisses the Royal Navy as a bunch of boats.
Thank goodness Napoleon had Talleyrand, not Karine Jean-Pierre as his spokesperson to clean things up after he waddles from the room.
The one costume choice that rankles throughout the movie, like Kenneth Branagh's inexplicable interpretation of Hercule Poirot's mustache, is Napoleon's famous headgear.
Worn cartoonishly where hats aren't worn. An in joke or worse.
We know how it looked from countless heroic paintings. Scott opts for a ridiculous variation with strange wings jutting this way and that, and as much gold braid as a contemporary American Army general wears.
Another, inexplicable ongoing decision as to how to portray L'Empereur: he covers his ears as the cannons fire.
Again, and again.
Where every scene in The Duelists, made when Ridley Scott was forty, was magnificent, there isn't a single scene in Napoleon, made at age eighty-six that achieves even:
Hey! Cool!
One can only conclude, sitting in a theater at the first showing of Napoleon with five other people, the empty seats stretching away on both sides like the vast empty steppes during Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow, that the Napoleon of The Duelists, circa 1977, is no more.
Movie spoiler alert: La Grande Armée was defeated and decimated by ambushes!
And, as an alert to my brother sitting in some heavenly movie theater watching a Samurai Film Festival with Wayne, about one of our heretofore favorite Directors, based on his latest movie:
Ridley Scott?
Ridley Scott?!?!!?
I SAY HE NEVER LOVED THE EMPEROR!
My brother and I used dialogue from Ridley Scott's first movie, The Duelists, to add color to our shouts while drinking in bars, and conversations with friends at dinners, since we first saw it in 1977.
We saw Blade Runner five years later, and agreed that Scott was in our top five movie Directors of all time.
The Duelists is as vibrant and wonderful today as it was then. As they say, 'it holds up'.
Based on a Joseph Conrad tale and a series of actual duels that took place between two officers in Napoleon's La Grande Armée through victory and defeat between 1801-1815.
A duel that began over a misheard insult to a lady.
The duel continuing over personal honor, however mistaken the initial cause actually was.
The attention to period detail impressive. The uniforms of the La Grande Armée's soldiers and officers change as they did during the time. From duel to duel, battle to battle, soiree to soiree they become more magnificent and glorious and indicate how grand France became while Napoleon defeated the armies arrayed against France again and again.
Then defeat.
First in Russia. Then at Waterloo.
Napoleon is never seen in The Duelists.
But, the unseen Napoleon is a titan. Loved. Feared. The author of the Napoleonic Code which created written guarantees of civil law and equal justice for the first time in history. A Code that was an existential threat to the European monarchies. A code that remains in France today.
A warrior. A military genius.
I had such high hopes.
Do you remember Dick Shawn in The Producer's? Playing a camp, fey Hitler for laughs?
Ridley Scott decided to cast Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon to play a similar version of a historic figure.
A dull, mumbling, stone faced, jealous, randy fop of a Napoleon.
A Napoleon that elicits not laughs, but groans.
And, grim incredulity. Laughs maybe, but laughs of derision.
In a scene reminiscent of Dick Shawn dancing on a map of the Europe he planned to conquer, Scott has Joaquin unfurl a giant map Europe that he stands on, as he off handedly discusses a mumbled, dispassionate strategy for blunting the gathering armies dedicated to defeating France.
Ah, France.
Remember France?
The Revolution that overthrew the monarchy? The Revolutionary army of common citizens that became the first mass army of citizens not conscripts who fought with vigor and courage and élan for fifteen years under their charismatic Emperor, Napoleon?
The 'jour de gloire' and all that stuff?
No, this Napoleon and Napoleonic Era is all about Josephine's private parts.
She purposely displays them early on to Napoleon and tells him of their power. This Napoleon plays Adam to her Eve, Paris to her Helen.
The scenes of Joaquin rogering Josephine, as a stallion to a mare, are embarrassing to the audience, the actors, and probably, to the crew. Joaquin's facial expressions reminding me of the absurd acting poor eye fluttering Richard Burton had to do in The Exorcist Part II.
The uniforms change a bit. The military tactics displayed in the battle scenes are of the Andy Hardy movies trope:
Hey! You go get your dad's trombone, I'll get my cousin's trumpet, we can use a trash can as a drum! We can form a band for the dance tonight!
Battle after battle staged as if Napoleon won through paper thin ruses.
Toulon: Hey, let's heat up shot and use mortars to set fire to the English fleet! Scale the walls at night when the drunken Englishmen are asleep and I, Napoleon, will lead the charge and swordfight on the walls!
Austerlitz: We'll do an ambuscade and then trap the Austrians on a frozen lake and, get this, use our artillery and break up the ice to drown them!
And on and on, and dismally on.
Scott's Napoleon, Joaquin Phoenix's Napoleon, the actual Napoleon in command at Toulon when just twenty-four, First Counsel at thirty, Emperor and the most powerful man in Europe at thirty-five, a Joe Biden version of Napoleon.
Too old. Too clueless. As if our President, out of the blue, to the English Ambassador, dismisses the Royal Navy as a bunch of boats.
Thank goodness Napoleon had Talleyrand, not Karine Jean-Pierre as his spokesperson to clean things up after he waddles from the room.
The one costume choice that rankles throughout the movie, like Kenneth Branagh's inexplicable interpretation of Hercule Poirot's mustache, is Napoleon's famous headgear.
Worn cartoonishly where hats aren't worn. An in joke or worse.
We know how it looked from countless heroic paintings. Scott opts for a ridiculous variation with strange wings jutting this way and that, and as much gold braid as a contemporary American Army general wears.
Another, inexplicable ongoing decision as to how to portray L'Empereur: he covers his ears as the cannons fire.
Again, and again.
Where every scene in The Duelists, made when Ridley Scott was forty, was magnificent, there isn't a single scene in Napoleon, made at age eighty-six that achieves even:
Hey! Cool!
One can only conclude, sitting in a theater at the first showing of Napoleon with five other people, the empty seats stretching away on both sides like the vast empty steppes during Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow, that the Napoleon of The Duelists, circa 1977, is no more.
Movie spoiler alert: La Grande Armée was defeated and decimated by ambushes!
And, as an alert to my brother sitting in some heavenly movie theater watching a Samurai Film Festival with Wayne, about one of our heretofore favorite Directors, based on his latest movie:
Ridley Scott?
Ridley Scott?!?!!?
I SAY HE NEVER LOVED THE EMPEROR!