Napoleon (Ridley Scott, 2023)

[knives]

Harvey Keitel's Noo Yawk Judas remains my favorite interpretation of the character, and a welcome relief from the British RP avenue so many others have traveled down. I wish Phoenix were doing something with that level of brio here for one of history's most charismatic, bold figures.

I thought it was an inspired decision in that movie to have the Jews speak with American accents and the Romans British accents. It effectively conveyed a class distinction that's harder to do with American accents alone--certainly much harder than if the whole thing had been a British production.

The only person who's been able to get away with scrupulous linguistic accuracy on a large budget is Mel Gibson, tho' presumably the subject matter of the first papered over the risk, and its blockbuster status helped fund the second. I'd like to see more movies take that kind of risk and reproduce the linguistic context of its region and era. But I'm not some weird purist, either, and I appreciate the routes taken by Gorky Park, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Death of Stalin.

Basically I don't want to be so unimaginative as to confuse what's literal for what's true.

Though even Gibson didn’t please everyone. I remember a professor of Aramaic I knew railing on about how terrible the pronunciation was.

[Mr Sausage]

I have to say it was odd being on the other side of this language issue recently when watching Youssef Chahine's Saladin. There all of the western characters, including both the Kings of England and France, all speak Arabic (and look Arabic too given that they're just Egyptian actors with blonde/red haired wigs). It certainly threw me for a loop for a minute but I guess that's how all non-English speaking audiences feel when watching most Hollywood productions.

I had the same watching Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy. It was set in Victorian England (well, a steampunk version anyway), but not only did everyone speak Japanese, they acted Japanese, too (a little girl bowed instead of curtseying at one point, and a young boy stood to attention like a Japanese school boy when an adult addressed him instead of...not). It was a bit distracting but, like you said, this is how Hollywood must strike pretty much everyone else in the world. And it in no way stopped the movie from being terrific.

[MichaelB]

One of the best adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles is the early 1980s Soviet one, whose localised quirks extend beyond it being in Russian - for instance, Victorian London looks more like a medium-sized Central European town. But as drama, it’s smashingly effective (all the more so for being drawn from such a familiar source) and thankfully the subtitles in the version that I watched were drawn from the original (so you get “the footprints of a gigantic hound” rather than the equally legitimate “a massive dog”), so it wasn’t even especially distracting.

[feihong]

Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly is a linguistic disaster, featuring Japanese actors playing native Chinese characters, reciting lines in phonetic Mandarin, Japanese actors playing Japanese characters whose native language is English––but still speaking the English phonetically––Chinese actors reciting phonetic Japanese, English-language natives speaking Japanese awkwardly, actors whose first language is Arabic speaking garbled English and garbled Japanese, both too shyly to be understood...it features Chara singing Sinatra's "My Way," clearly not understanding the lyrics, it's just...a mess. And it's one of my favorite movies. I think the lines spoken are clever and interesting, and I appreciate the way the film searches for cultural understandings, even though the linguistic ambitions of the film fall far short of the execution. And yet, I've watched this with some Mandarin speakers who tell me the film is so incoherent (about 1/3 of the dialogue is in Mandarin) that it takes them entirely out of the movie. Now, about 1/3 of the movie is in incoherent English, but that doesn't take me out of the movie, so I don't know quite how to square that circle.

On the other hand, I think what I object to more than an inauthentic-sounding accent is when the actor makes no attempt to consider, when playing a character from another culture, what cultural differences they might want to account for in their performance beyond that, especially in terms of physicality (if that is part of the goals of the film––I wouldn't want more period authenticity from Ed Harris in the movie Walker, for instance––part of the point of the film was the confusion of "then" with "now"). It wasn't the English accents that so put me off of Scorcese's Hugo; it was the very British body-language of the actors––the very English sense of physical reserve, the quibbling way most of the performers had of attacking their lines. I began to feel surrounded...surrounded, in this movie about an essentially French subject, by English people...and this did disrupt the illusion of what I was seeing. There were a lot of things that could have mitigated that effect for me––details of performance, casting...and not every actor needed to seem French in the way they carried themselves, just enough that I wasn't overwhelmed by the cast's essential English-ness. But then in Memoirs of a Geisha, when Zhang Zhiyi, Michelle Yoeh, and Gong Li all seemed unable to replicate the very stylized body language of the geisha, I had the same feeling of alienation, coupled here with the feeling that almost any Japanese actress out there could have done a better job capturing the way a geisha would carry themselves––they had so much more cultural experience to draw from. The Chinese and Chinese/Malaysian actresses held themselves with such physical prepossession, they lacked almost any of the self-consciousness physical presentation a geisha would present.

In general, though, I think most movies aim to present a general sense of a removed time and place, without sacrificing coherency––usually, coherency is the main aim, to which the other, lesser goals are sacrificed. I wasn't surprised to see it happening here. The cinematography was what looked a bit of a letdown to me. I suppose I miss the haze of The Duellists, but beyond that, I'm just not thrilled how in-focus all the figures are. I know that's to be expected with digital photography, so maybe this is just my disappointment in that, focused on this one film which seemed like it could have felt like it was from another era.

[MichaelB]

I'd love to be able to watch Match Point through American eyes, as I understand it's got a substantial reputation on the other side of the Atlantic from where it was shot and set, but this native Londoner just can't. I'm baffled as to why Woody Allen didn't think to hire a more culturally sensitive co-writer for that one, as he's been happy enough to collaborate on scripts in the past.

[ntnon]

I'll lower the tone and suggest that a very minor part of the problems with From Hell, V for Vendetta and LXG were the unnatural 'English-English' phrases as written by tonedeaf Americans and then delivered by non-English actors trying hard to be. And then, even more egregiously, actually-British actors delivering American variations of British-English Britishly. "Eggy in a basket..." Pah.

[MichaelB]

Getting back to Ridley Scott in a vague attempt to get back on topic, here's an extract from my write-up of A Good Year:

Refreshingly, snatches of French dialogue are only subtitled when it’s narratively essential that monoglots understand it, although a couple of clunky touches have “calculatedly US-friendly screenwriting” stamped through them. For instance, would a Frenchman really refer to an aubergine as an eggplant? And surely the joke whereby Madame Duflot asks what a sodomite is and her husband replies “I’ll explain to you tonight” is undermined by the word being exactly the same in French? (She’s a married Frenchwoman of late middle age; no way is she that innocent.)

[Maltic]

I'd love to be able to watch Match Point through American eyes, as I understand it's got a substantial reputation on the other side of the Atlantic from where it was shot and set, but this native Londoner just can't. I'm baffled as to why Woody Allen didn't think to hire a more culturally sensitive co-writer for that one, as he's been happy enough to collaborate on scripts in the past.

At least they didn't go see the Spurs play in the film.

[yoloswegmaster]

#ReleasetheRidleyCut

[beamish14]

#ReleasetheRidleyCut

He has said the exact fucking thing about 1492 and Exodus

[Kracker]

Yeah but there was no real demand either of those to be over four hours long. Just like i have a feeling that no one is really going to be asking for two more hours of Josephine.

[brundlefly]

Second trailer, for those who prefer Black Sabbath remixes to Radiohead covers.

[Mr Sausage]

Second trailer, for those who prefer Black Sabbath remixes to Radiohead covers.

Based on the trailers, I wish Vanessa Kirby were playing Napoleon.

[Ann Harding]

Second trailer, for those who prefer Black Sabbath remixes to Radiohead covers.

Based on the trailers, I wish Vanessa Kirby were playing Napoleon.

Brilliant! I agree.

[Lachino]

The Guardian loves it.

[FrauBlucher]

Sony releases final trailer

[The Curious Sofa]

The Guardian loves it.

Always a cause for alarm.

[colinr0380]

In the meantime to tie in with this release there is a new Hard Sell episode out dealing with how Napoleon has been used in advertising. Which takes in trips to Iowa, Poland, Israel and Hawaii, with only a smattering of Rowan Atkinson!

[Vincejansenist]

Why are there a million scenes in this movie and how is it that none of them are of any consequence?

[hearthesilence]

I haven't seen it, but I'm not surprised by the negative reviews when the trailer was so ridiculously insipid to the point of self-parody, from the "War Pigs" cover to the anachronistic sarcasm they shoved into Napoleon's dialogue in smug satisfaction of their own cleverness.

[Toland's Mitchell]

While I was certainly never bored, Napoleon is overall a middling film.

I'll start with the positives. It's pleasing to the senses, especially in the theater. The technical aspects successfully bring the past to life in exquisite detail. From the palace where The National Convention met, to the society ball where Napoleon and Josephine met, to the European battlefields where Le Grande Armée and its enemies met, I get the sense the production design team and costume design team gave all their effort (aided of course by Apple's generous budget) here. The camerawork, sound design, and editing further enhances this realism. As other reviewers have mentioned, the battle scenes are quite loud and riveting (for those who deemed the detonation scene in Oppenheimer too loud, you may want to cover your ears during the cannon fire in this film; Heck, even the titular character does it). I also want to commend the performance of Vanessa Kirby as Empress Josephine, whose character is unfortunately underutilized, yet she makes the most of her screen time.

And now for the negatives. Well, for starters I don't care for Napoleon's form/structure. It falls into a common flaw seen in biopics/historical dramas...it's way too truncated. The film covers Napoleon's life from 1793-1815 in just 2.5 hours. As rich as his life, and that period of French history was, it's near impossible to do that in any sort of insightful way. Thus, we're given a 2.5 hours of selected events of his life. History buffs would be able to connect the dots, but also be left wondering why some information/events are excluded (not one mention of his domestic reforms, or the Napoleonic Code, really?), while non-history buffs may be left confused as to how these events relate to each other. Ridley Scott's 4-hr director cut will probably be more seamless for the storytelling aspect, but I doubt it will feature scenes of him as political leader with domestic achievements as well as military, and how/why he was beloved by his people. I say this because Ridley Scott, given the way he directs Joaquin Phoenix, doesn't seem the least bit interested in that. Together, Scott and Phoenix depict Napoleon as a guy who just loves war, power, and sex (which may be true, but it's an incomplete portrayal). This results in many scenes where they allow Napoleon to become goofy with his insecurities, exemplified by making animal noises during his love scenes with Josephine, and his "You think you’re so great because you have boats!" jab at a British ambassador. It's all for humor, and it's certainly funny at times, but it's no wonder French critics can't stand the film.

Personally, I prefer the biopics/historical dramas that focus on a few key elements and fully explore them, as opposed to skimming over numerous elements, as this film does. This film had an opportunity to explore the Napoleon-Josephine relationship. As I said, I liked how Vanessa Kirby played the part. This probably would have been a better film if that story-line had been 75% of the runtime instead of 25%. But then, the great battle scenes of Toulon and Austerlitz would have been cut or shortened (and that may not have sold as well at the box office). Oh well, we couldn't have everything here. It's too much content for a feature-length film (maybe Apple should have adapted it into a TV series instead). Nevertheless, I was casually entertained, and impressed by the visuals. I'd be fine if Napoleon scored some technical noms, but nothing else.

[Walter Kurtz]

I agree with this review 100%. BTW for you history buffs the Musée de l'Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has Napoleon's grey greatcoat, black bicorne hat, uniform, sword, shoes, tent, desk, compass, etc etc etc and even his white horse all in one small area of this large museum. This museum is much more interesting than his tomb/crypt/casket whatever you call it.

[tehthomas]

'Napoleon' is Ridley Scott on auto-pilot (not necessarily a bad thing) with some lush set-pieces and stunning battle sequences. But I have to say Joaquin Phoenix felt incredibly miscast and uninspired, truly sleepwalking and mumbling along, 'something something England something something.'

[Noiretirc]

Edit: nvm. Too many negative thoughts prior to further consideration.