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Napoleon - new Ridley Scott film

Nothing will surpass the epic and groundbreaking 1927 silent film version by Abel Gance. It's just stunning.
i hadn't heard of that - looks really impressive / 5 and a half hours though.... maybe one winters sunday
new restoration out there too
 
Too ambitious surely? 1793-1812 (snow) or maybe 1815 (squares*) in one film, with the romances, intrigues, revolution, wars etc? And yeah, 24 years old in 1793. Also Josephine was 6 years older than him, Vanessa Kirby is 13 years younger than Phoenix. Can't be perfect with the ages of course, but that's kind of the problem with biopics that try to cram large spans of time into a couple of hours.

*e2a: and a union jack, so yeah probably Waterloo? could be wrong. The snow assumption was wrong; Austerlitz because frozen ponds apparently.
 
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i hadn't heard of that - looks really impressive / 5 and a half hours though.... maybe one winters sunday
new restoration out there too


It is long but worth every single minute of watching. I've seen it twice and can honestly say it's one of the most brilliant movies I've watched. Made nearly 100 years ago, and still as groundbreaking now as it was then.
 
Looks fantastic, but does anyone else think that Joaquin Phoenix looks way too old to play him?


Facts! There was nothing wrong with his hand but it was deemed cool to have one hand in your jacket on portraits. He was a bit above average height for the time he lived too (1.68m).


 
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Too ambitious surely? 1793-1812 (snow) or maybe 1815 (squares*) in one film, with the romances, intrigues, revolution, wars etc? And yeah, 24 years old in 1793. Also Josephine was 6 years older than him, Vanessa Kirby is 13 years younger than Phoenix. Can't be perfect with the ages of course, but that's kind of the problem with biopics that try to cram large spans of time into a couple of hours.

*e2a: and a union jack, so yeah probably Waterloo? could be wrong. The snow assumption was wrong; Austerlitz because frozen ponds apparently.

I know you can't really tell from trailers, but he seems to be playing him very weirdly

The only thing I can think might be happening is that they are going to set this with him on St Helena, reminiscing about the significant moments of his life
 
Apparently some of the scenes for the film were shot at Somerset House in London, just heard this from one of the staff at my Opticians, he said when his wife visited last year she saw the gallows* and asked what was going on :eek: :D

*guillotine - sorry, must get that right, especially as it's Bastille day!
 
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a BBC article mentions that "biographer of Napoleon, Patrice Gueniffey in Le Point magazine, attacked the film as a "very anti-French and very pro-British" rewrite of history."
---a shame , I dont know enough about Napoleon to be able to pick up on the bias - Id like to see this though
then again who knows what Patrice's biases are! I expect they're right tho
 
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Saw it this evening. It’s not bad, not even meh but it’s not great. I wasn’t sure what it wanted to be and it was a bit all over the place. Perhaps the extended version will hang together better.

But it’s worth a look, didn’t seem like 2.5 hours. The two leads are excellent, most of the supporting cast great and some brilliant. Production design is amazing and the battle scenes are very well realised , even if not accurate.

It also made a strong point of the numbers of people killed in what was effectively the second ( or maybe third) world war. A horror that often gets overlooked in art about this period.

Probably worth seeing on the big screen for the battles and the pretty clothes. Not a masterpiece though.
 
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I’m not the first person to pick this up but it also has what might become one of the great quoted movie lines and comments on imperialism.

Napoleon to the British ambassador:

‘You think you are great, just because you have boats’…
 
I’m not the first person to pick this up but it also has what might become one of the great quoted movie lines and comments on imperialism.

Napoleon to the British ambassador:

‘You think you are great, just because you have boats’…

What he actually said was 'Tu penses que tu es si génial juste parce que tu as des bateaux'
 
Does he invade Italy under the impression that the Italians are all really tiny guys?

"Alexander the Great, five feet eight exactly. Isn't that incredible! I mean, Alexander the Great, who's empire stretched from India to Hungary, one inch shorter than me."

Screenshot 2023-11-25 at 11.34.43.png

"Don't stand so close to me, Neguy! I've told you about that before. You on one side and him on the other, it's like being on the bottom of a bloody well"
 
Didn't he say something about Britain being a nation of shopkeepers and he was going to close their shop :hmm: :D (vaguely remembered from History classes)
 
Saw it today. Ok but underwhelming
Certainly not pro-Brit: showed them as mostly upper class tossers, lots of Anglophobic digs. Even a know nothing film director must have known Wellington was Irish even though his accent may have been slight
Did not do justice to either the history (just showing revolution as mad thugs) or even him personally—his intelligence complexity and even wit not shown. Few laughs either.
His relationship with Josephine left me cold too.
Presentation of him as a maniacal Hitler-type unconvincing as no ideology shown really. Merely listing casualty figures is coffee table history
Might encourage some watching to read up on Napoleon I suppose….
Rod Steiger film far better
 
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Mmm,

Alien
Blade Runner
Gladiator
Thelma and Louise

To name just four, how many feature films of that quality and you made? Asking for a friend…
Very f...ing funny. Should have clarified to say know nothing about history, French especially.

Now, I really liked Gladiator, one of my favourite films, and the evocation of the Elysian Fields superb.

But the history therein? Laughable--eg Commodus was in fact killed by his wrestler, did not die in the Arena, and the idea his sisters speech at the end would have happened/been listened to is ludicrous.

So. he knows a lot about making films connecting to the audience: though for me Gladiator did, this not.
 
He comes across as a bit of a tosser in interviews but he has been responsible for some of my favourite films so ill forgive him. Gladiator was fucking brilliant. Is he getting Russell Crowe back for the sequel?
 
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