Napoleon (2023)

Napoleon Blown Apart

or

Ridley Scott Tells Complaining Historians To "Get a Life" (Presumably One With Just the Highlights)
 

I'd been vacillating whether to see Ridley Scott's film of Napoleon (was it really originally called "Kitbag"?)—did I want to see the 2 hour 38 minute version in the theaters, or did I want to subscribe to Apple television and watch Scott's already-made "Director's Cut" which is more than 4 hours long?* 

 

I tend to favor "Director's Cuts" because a lot of movies cut to theater-length are sometimes near-incomprehensible once the connecting tissue of themes and sub-plots get eliminated for time. But then, some "Director Cuts" are just plain indulgent. A movie's "first cut" is always a disaster (Martin Scorsese has said “If you don't get physically ill seeing your first rough cut then something's wrong."), but films are supposed to find their shape and their rhythm during the editing process and sometimes the more brutal the better.

There's a "Hollywood story" where director Robert Rossen wasn't happy with the length of his film All the King's Men (and neither was the studio), so he merely took "the center" of each scene and cut 100 feet from the front of it and 100 feet from the back and released it like that. The film went from a length of 250 minutes to 109, and won the 1950 Best Picture Oscar (and was nominated for the editing).

The decision for me was seconds long in the thinking—all this other stuff was back-story—I went with the theatrical version (I could always look at the longer one) and Scott is usually pretty good at getting the gist of the story he wanted to tell in the shorter running times. And his films at the shorter length tend to be "snappier" and less padded and one doesn't get the sense that one is missing anything. With a subject like Napoleon Bonaparte (played byJoaquin Phoenix), though, there is bound to be omissions, whole swaths of them. Scott's film follows Bonaparte from the French Revolution in France in 1789 until his death in 1821.

 

Toulon

The highlights are his witnessing of the death of Marie Antoinette (didn't happen) during the Revolution, his Siege of Toulon, his controversial quelling of a civilian rebellion in 1795, his campaign against Egypt in 1798, his taking control of France in a coup in 1799, his coronation as Emperor in 1804, and a bit of the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the Battle of Austerlitz, and his ill-fated Invasion of Russia in 1812, leading to his exile in Elba, his subsequent return to France, the Battle of Waterloo, and his final exile on St. Helena. That's a lot of territory and politics to cover with a big gap in places before his becoming Emperor and during the Napoleonic Wars, although those battles listed are given quite a bit of depth.

Swirling around all of this is Napoleon's obsessive marriage to Joséphine de Beauharnais (played in the film by Vanessa Kirby), whom he meets at a Survivor's Ball after the Reign of Terror—her first husband was guillotined and she was in prison during it—and begins an affair that informs and influences some of Napoleon's decisions (yes to some, no to others the movie would have you think). Those scenes have less fire-power, but they're still battles of wills as they bicker and bite over who has control over the other, Joséphine's indiscretions (and Napoleon's, too), her inability to provide him a male heir leading to their marriage annulment and his subsequent political marriage to the Austrian Emperor's daughter, Marie Louise. (It's rather amazing that Scott's film is only 2½ hours long! Abel Gance's "definitive" cut of his Napoleon film ran for nearly 9½ hours and only got up to the marriage of Joséphine!)

Performances are good throughout, the standouts are Kirby and Rupert Everett's Duke of Wellington. The big pressure, of course, is on Phoenix, as Napoleon has always had a Sphinx-like quality to him, and what we know of him is his accomplishments, his many portraits, flattering and unflattering depending on the nationality of the painter, and his letters to Joséphine (many of which are quoted in voice-over in the film). Phoenix manages to keep his Napoleon as unknowable after the film as before—imperious in matters of State and war, but almost petulantly child-like in moments of lust or humiliation, very much in command backed by great numbers, but a bit panicky when having to act solo. There is the whiff of "keeping up appearances" when given to a grandiose equating of his fortunes with those of France, but, there are times in the private chambers when Phoenix can't overcome some lame dialog ("Destiny has brought me here. Destiny has brought me this lamb-chop.")

Some of Scott's more arresting shots are based on period paintings.

Phoenix could have been a cardboard cut-out for all Scott cares during the battle sequences. They're staged brilliantly with the emphasis on numbers and the only identifiable character is Napoleon, whether he's catching a cat-nap on his feet before a battle or deciding the fate of many with just the drop of an arm. Scott has had lots of research to draw on, and one sees the way they unfold without any coaching about tactics. The Austerlitz battle is particularly impressive. Scouts signal by lights the positions of the enemy, which Napoleon enables to come to a seemingly sleep encampment. Then once his enemies are deep within their territory, he unleashes camouflaged infantry from the hills, provoking a retreat. But, the battle isn't over. The cannon are uncovered and fired deep into their own camp, forcing the troops into another direction...onto a frozen lake, allowing Bonaparte to unleash cannon-fire that either kills troops or breaks the ice, sending them to a watery frozen grave with no escape. Brutal.

The trap of Austerlitz

I'm always a little suspicious going into a Ridley Scott movie (violating a rule to enter a theater without prejudices). There are a lot of good ones and there are some quite bad ones. All are made with an attention to detail and artistic zeal—if I haven't written it, I've thought it: he's a better art director than a director, which is a little harsh—but, the quite good ones are those where the stakes might be a little lower than the "buzz"-generating ones. In one year, he made two movies—The Last Duel and House of Gucci—the first was quite good, but was little-seen, while Gucci was a self-generating publicity machine that was a mess. And one can go through his entire output and look at the ones that were triumphs (whether humble or not) and audacious failures, quite the checkered career. But, they always looked good. That much is consistent.

Moscow burns, but not by him.

And I tend towards saying Napoleon is good, despite its eccentricities. The battle sequences are amazing whether channeling the battle approaches of Kubrick, Welles, or Jackson, and some will be impressed with how Scott really goes for re-creating famous Napoleon tableaux into living, breathing set-pieces. But, I like it for following the Kubrick model** for considering Napoleon—the same theme that informed a lot of Kubrick's work: no matter how smart or able a human being might be, they can be undone by their own faults. Successful people can be destroyed by their very nature. Geniuses can be very stupid.

 "Well...shall we vote?" No recounts necessary.

It's a comedy. Not a very funny one, but certainly an ironic one. There is some black comedy to be had with such a person as publicly arrogant and as privately sniveling as Napoleon could be, whose ambitions were the world, but could be cowed in the bedroom. Scott follows that model to a fleur-de-lis. It is said that Scott considered making the Kubrick script, but passed on it for "creative differences", and made something of his own. But, it still has the spine and the thesis of the unmade Napoleon film at its core, and something of the French 2002 mini-series in its portrait recreations.

If I have a quibble it would be with the last scene, presumably showing Napoleon's death at St. Helena. Dramatically, it doesn't work, although it does work visually—Napoleon seen from behind, eating a mid-day meal, merely falls over out of frame. It's almost absurd. But, it does make a point: this powerful man, a former emperor of a great and powerful nation, who once had the world playing defense against his every move merely disappears, and the scene goes on—life goes on—as if he never existed. It visually makes the point that death makes us all equal, even irrelevant. Still, it's a bit underwhelming.

An underwhelming death for such a world-shaking individual. Irony, again. And then, Scott and his screen-writer (David Scarpa) tally up the deaths from his battles and campaigns. Three million. Three million souls. We know very little about them—their numbers are just too great—but they all have something in common. They were all people whose deaths were the results of the actions of one man, a man of consummate ambition, with his own vision of what the world should be, not satisfied with his own borders or the extent of his domain. They were caught up in the gears of one man's machinations.

And when given the first opportunity, when his reach exceeded his grasp, the world found a way to deal with him that was far less costly in political capital, and the various monetary denominations he would waste, and the blood that he would spill. They sent him away, exiled him, found a little rock that he could rule over, and when he escaped from that, they found a farther-away little rock with no rule at all and left him there to rot. After all, better him than them.

Waterloo

What else could they do with such a man? His punishment and possible execution would have caused too much unrest, and might have even made him a martyr to his supporters. No, the best punishment was to get him out of their sight and out of his spheres of influence. For such a man of power, the worst thing they could do was take his power away. Napoleon was just one man who so destabilized the world that he was just too dangerous to the peace and tranquility to not be exiled to a place where he could do no harm. The world would be better off without him and there would maybe be better things to think about and act on. The world might actually be improved, rather than merely re-shaped to suit a man's ego. 

Wellington and  Napoleon 

St. Helena is still out there, and I'm sure it has some vacancies.

Got anybody in mind?

Napoleon and Joséphine

* I still find it unfair that George Lucas has perpetually been criticized for tinkering with his movies (usually because the special effects looked sub-par on better TV's, or because he wanted to add things that he didn't originally have the budget for). But, Scott's been doing it for years and years and years, and because he always had to shred his movies to get them to an acceptable run-time in theaters...or because he was dithering with them long after the fact. See also Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, and Zack Snyder.

 

** Stanley Kubrick worked on a screenplay on the life of Napoleon for some ten years. He did extensive research, logistics, costume tests, location scouting, and had a full screenplay ready to shoot.*** He'd just had two successful films with Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey and negotiating with M-G-M to finance it. They rejected it. The reason? The financial failure of the film Waterloo. Kubrick abandoned the idea, but it influenced his next two films: he made A Clockwork Orange to use the new wireless audio technology in audio, and to really make an independent film with a minimum crew, and Barry Lyndon with the idea of trying to achieve painterly compositions photographically, simulating the pace of the 18th century, and staging large artillery battles. Steven Spielberg is executive producing a mini-series for HBO, and (as of this writing) it's still on track, with Cary Joji Fukunaga directing. We'll see if the project gets derailed again by a rival production (as it was the first time). However, if one checks out their movie history, there's usually some "take" on Napoleon every decade or so. 

*** The screenplay sits on my home-screen half-read, but a deluxe box-set of the script and all the pre-production material can be purchased.

Stardust (2007)

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Getting killed by pirates...heart eaten by a witch...meet Victoria--I can't seem to decide which is worse!"

Matthew Vaughn's film of Stardust is so far removed from his last film, Layer Cake, that it would take a Babylon Candle to bridge the two (Don't know what a "Babylon Candle" is? Then you'll have to see the film. You should anyway). 

Layer Cake (an updated aside—it's the film where, suddenly, Daniel Craig, managed to emerge from behind the furniture into a eye-catching starring performance) was a whooping, swooping kitchen-sink-and-Porsche's story of drug-dealing in contemporary London. And while some of the stylistic touches are the same for Stardust, the story couldn't be more different. For instead of modern-day Britain, he is spinning his camera through Neil Gaiman's Faerie-Land.

Gaiman's reach is all things mythical, from the twee to the atrocious--across the stars, underground, beyond the pale and underneath your fingernails. He borrows from all sources, and puts them through his own personal salad-shooter and spits them out with his own dressing. In his work you'll find echoes of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton, G.K. Chesterton and Jorge Luis Borges and the Brothers Grimm, Greek mythology and Roman gods, History and Urban Legend, The Arabian Nights and the Book of the Dead, The Bible and the DC/Marvel Multiverses. 

I've been reading Gaiman with delight (no pun intended) for years, starting with his "Sandman" saga, which dragged on for maybe a dozen more issues than necessary because he had so many stories he wanted to get to, but I also love his "Violent Cases," and much of his book-work. It is with some trepidation that one watches his forays into film--Jon Peters owns the film-rights to "Sandman," for instance, and Gaiman wrote the English translation for Princess Mononoke, and worked on "Mirrormask," and there's talk of filming "Good Omens," the book he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett.* That's scary talk. For what it's done to the works of Alan Moore, Hollywood looks like a gold-plated abortion clinic, and one wonders if they could do any justice to Gaiman's work. Even to attempt to film his "Signal to Noise" would be to destroy it.

Stardust makes the transition fairly well, though it eliminates the faeries and sprites that populate Gaiman's world like smoke, dust and flotsam do in Ridley Scott's (they also serve as little "Rosencrantzes" and "Guildensterns"). They throw in a sock-o finale, and the film has none of the delicacy of Charles Vess' illustrations from the graphic novel that Gaiman expanded to book-length. In fact, it has the sensibility several refinements up from Monty Python-design. But it does retain Gaiman's special form of "myth-busting," the wink-and-a-nod to the "real" world that suffused The Princess Bride, but without the Borcht Belt cinched around its waist.

What's interesting is how Paramount is selling it...or not selling it, as the case may be. Looking at the poster, you'd think it was one of the endless string of pre-teen or teen fantasy novels adaptations that are filling the Previews, or as reverent as Chronicles of Narnia, when nothing could be further from the truth, (but there are enough spinning helicopter shots of big landscapes to reassure the Suits that it has a "Lord of the Rings" quality). It's frequently hilarious in surprising and snarky ways, especially in the casting. 

Michelle Pfeiffer may not be the best at holding an accent, but her comic timing, and willingness to play against her looks is delightful. Robert DeNiro makes an entrance and you worry that he's been put in the wrong movie, but then he comes through with flying colors. Peter O'Toole does wonders with his limited screen-time as the Lion-King of a family of blue-bloods, and Rupert Everett shows up long enough to tweak his image hilariously. It's a fun, fine, un-gooey fairy tale that charms and delights. It's not doing well at the theaters, so do yourself a favor and go. Don't wait for Paramount to get their act together to convince you.

* "Good Omens" was made into a TV Mini-series in 2019 on Amazon Prime.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Just Dementia...
or
Practically Peculiar in Every Way

I'm sure that every Tim Burton film is, to him, a labor of love, so particular to his dark sensibilities and interests are they, in whatever manner he chooses to create them, whether live-action or animated, drama or comedy. Though others have tried to tap into his sensibility (see Into the Woods or Maleficent), Burton is unique, an adolescent-director of Hallowe'en tastes, who is as capable of going overboard into parody as he is of doing serious work. The latter, though, are few and far between, because the kid in Burton is just too jovial to take anything too, too seriously.

But, when he does, it is something magical. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (based on the novel by Ransom Riggs, adapted by Jane Goldman—who wrote Kick-Ass, Kingsmen, and the first young X-men movies) is so very much a concoction for Burton, it might as well have been written with him in mind, the same way "D'entre les Morts" had Hitchcock in mind in the writing. 

Jacob Portman (Asa Butterfield, who was Martin Scorsese's Hugo) is a stocker at a large convenience store. He's a loner, an introvert, not well understood by his parents—in other words, your typical Tim Burton hero. When he finds his beloved grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp), murdered in the woods by his house, Jake is devastated, because the older man paid far more attention to him while he was growing up than his self-involved parents, and intriguing him about adventurous stories from his youth. During the second world war, Abe was sent by his parents in Poland to Wales, where he lived with an extraordinary gaggle of children—an invisible boy, another who was full of bees, a girl who could manifest fire and another who could float in the air and was only kept on the ground by her heavy metal boots. The house was run by a Miss Peregrine, who protected the children from the vagaries of a world at war.

When Jake finds grandfather Abe, he is dying, his eyes ripped out of their sockets, and some strange creatures have been seen nearby in the fog. But, those are just oddities to Jake. For him, the most important thing is his beloved grandfather is dead. He is inconsolable. His parents, worried that the traumatic event will take him down a depressive road, take him to a shrink (Allison Janney), who notes Jake's close ties to Abe and even suggests sending the boy to Wales as a way to connect and find closure. Jake's parents think that's a crazy (and inconvenient) idea, but, reluctantly, they agree and Jake's father makes arrangements to take the mournful boy to England.

Both males are fish out of water in Wales. Dad wants to keep his head down and let Jake make friends with the locals, but the boy has his mind set on visiting Abe's old haunt, Miss Peregrine's school, which he finds is now a bombed-out ruin from a German bombing in 1943. But, as he picks through the rubble, he is shocked by things going "bump" in the shadows and mysterious figures that glow in the shafts of light that blast in from the crumbling walls of the formerly grand house. Not wanting to end up like Abe, he runs back to the public house he and his Dad are staying at, and is stopped from going up to his room by the bartender, who's not the same one as he remembered. Seems there aren't any rooms to let up there, but his big clue is that the jukebox is playing "In the Mood." 

He has, somehow, managed to go back in time to 1943. But, before he can register that idea, things start flying around the room creating chaos and he's dragged from the pub by some children (one of whom starts a distracting fire for the locals to contend with), who take him back to the peculiar home, which, now, is fully restored—it being September 3rd, 1943, the very day the house was bombed.

He is introduced to the woman Abe told him about, Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), an "Ymbryne" (magical beings who can transform into birds) whose charge is to take care of the children in a time-bubble that she has created that must re-set before the bombing occurs. They all live day-to-day in one day, never aging, never dying either, but taking life one day at a time—only it's always the same day.  

He's introduced to the kids—Millard the invisible boy (Cameron King, although we'll never know for sure), Hugh the bee boy (Milo Parker), Bronwyn, who is super-strong (Pixie Davies), "the twins" (Joseph and Thomas Oddwell)...

Fiona, who can control all things vegetation (Georgia Pemberton), Olive the pyrotechnic lass (Lauren McCrostie), Horace who can project his dreams (Hayden Keeler-Stone), Enoch who can animate anything, including the dead (Finlay McMillan), Emma who floats and has control over the air (Ella Purnell) and then there's little Claire (Raffiella Chapman) who has an unusual eating disorder...

Jake spends some time with the group, getting to know their "peculiarities," their gifts (if you would), making friends—all the kids like him, but Emma has a strong attraction to him (Enoch, on the other hand, distrusts Jake as he came to distrust Abe). It's fortuitous that Jake arrives when he does—the other "homes" scattered throughout the world in their own time-loops are under attack by a villainous group of "peculiars" led by Barron (Samuel L. Jackson), who, in an experiment gone awry has turned them into bizarre manifestations called "hollowgasts" who can only return to some semblance of normal appearance by plucking out and eating the eyes of peculiars. 

Abe was one of their victims and another Ymbryne, Miss Avocet (Dame Judi Dench) has already come under attack and is seeking shelter in Wales. Jake will play an important part in defending the house, despite his protests that he isn't "peculiar" at all. But, Miss Peregrine insists that he is "peculiar," and that his own talent will manifest itself—as it did with Abe—when the time is right. And Miss Peregrine knows all about time.

That is a lot of back-story, and a lot of challenging exposition that has to be carefully disseminated and illustrated. But, Goldman deftly structures the film to make it go by quite breezily, and Burton is as scrupulous and disciplined in his editing as he's ever been—there's not a lot of dilly-dallying with this one and no pointless distractions that take away from the story-telling—and if there is (like a telling chalk-mark in the grounds of the Home) it gets utilized very quickly and without slowing down the pace of the film one iota.

A "Hollowgast," straight out of a Burton nightmare.

If Burton is more disciplined, it doesn't hem him in for doing that one thing he does best—creating startling, haunting, and even strikingly beautiful images that are startlingly evocative and and make for the purest form of movie-magic. One looked at the previews for Miss Peregrine with a certain amount of...well, horror (one should be cautious about expectations caused by previews...always) that the story-line would just be a cluster-muddle with bombers and creatures and sunken ships and just too much going on to be enjoyable—not unlike, say, Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Not here. Up until a rather chaotic battle royale (that might have been edited a bit too tightly for its own good), Miss Peregrine is one of Burton's best, even lovely, films, with images that stick in your mind at the wonder of it all.

There's a moment when Horace is entertaining the children with projections of his dreams, some scary, some beautiful, but entirely his, streaming direct from his mind and consciousness, and I thought "Yeah...this is when Burton wanted to do this." All of his films are labors of love, and, with his focus on outsiders and fringe-dwellers, entirely personal. One can't see that image and think of the director seeing a projection of himself, inviting patrons to a showing of what's in his own head.

Miss Peregrine, Jacob, Emma and Enoch

illustrated tin-types from Tim Burton.