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My Favorite Napoleon

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It's an interesting year in cinema with so many biographies and true stories being brought to the big screen.  This past summer I was very much impressed by how Christopher Nolan handled Oppenheimer, and now find myself debating whether to try to sit through another 3+ hour epic this holiday season, given my tight bladder.  Reviews of Napoleon haven't been very good, much to Sir Ridley Scott's chagrin, but the same critics have been very favorable of Killers of the Flower Moon.  There's also Maestro for those who love Bradley Cooper, I mean Leonard Bernstein.

Part of the problem in Scott's epic is that he tries to span the entire life of Napoleon rather than focus on a particular aspect of it.  We all know who Napoleon is so it's not like Sir Ridley had to give us a refresher course.  Owen Glieberman notes that what makes a "biopic" good is when it explores the inner dynamic of its central character and uncovers something we weren't aware of before, not just reprise key scenes from their lives.  That is certainly what made Oppenheimer so captivating, as we see a man truly wrestle with his "creation."

I'm not sure Bradley Cooper will bring the same intensity to his turn at Leonard Bernstein, but it certainly won't be from lack of trying.  He apparently spent 6 years learning how to conduct for one pivotal scene in the movie.  However, the prosthetic nose raised some concerns.  This is what happens when you go Oscar chasing.  Prosthetics worked well in the past for Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours and most recently Brendan Fraser as "The Whale."  But, is it really necessary?  This movie also suffers from trying to take in too much from Bernstein's life rather than focus on a specific part of it.

What impressed me most about Scorsese is that he was willing to rewrite much of his script when DiCaprio pointed out that the focus was on the wrong person.  Scorsese had initially chosen to take the same point of view as the author of the book, but in going over the script with Leo he decided the focus should be on Molly, the Osage woman that Leo's character marries.  Lily Gladstone sounds like she is quite a find to put so much trust in her.  Leo can't stop singing her praises.  Unfortunately, the movie hasn't done so well at the box office largely because of its exceedingly long running time.  I think it will fair much better on television, where I plan to watch it.

Napoleon presented other problems.  Sir Ridley has never been one to let history or science get in the way of his storytelling and so we get an excessively brooding Napoleon that left many critics baffled.  Agnes Poirier asked, "how could so many talents behind and in front of the camera, such a rich subject and so many means lead to such a debacle?"  She found it terribly sad to see Ridley Scott meet his Waterloo on the screen.  French critics as a whole were antagonistic to the film, leading Sir Ridley to quip, "the French don't even like themselves," but the Paris audiences loved the movie.  Napoleon did do well at the box office its first week, but I think that is mostly due to the heavy promotion.  I don't think there are going to be very many return customers given its audience score is 59%, which is actually worse than the critics aggregate.  Sir Ridley clearly bit off more than he can chew but he is not one to question his prodigious filmography.

If nothing else the cinematic remake has instrumental persons talking about bringing Stanley Kubrick's gargantuan script to the screen.  Kubrick spent much of his adult life shaping an epic movie script on Napoleon only to never realize it.  Stephen Spielberg bought the rights to it some years back and has been shopping for a director to make it into a television series for HBO.  He too plans to cover the full life and breath of the great emperor but in a 7-part series that will give him much more room to operate in.

Personally I think one of the best characterizations of Napoleon was in Time Bandits. Sometimes the best thing to do is not take your historical figure quite so seriously 😉

 

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