Ridley Scott's Napoleon

[Myrddin]

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

A slight exaggeration. A lot of one-star generals get that rank by mid-late 40s, at least in the US.

But yeah, it's been a long time since someone like Galusha Pennypacker could become a brigadier general at the age of 20.

Wow. He must have been some kind of leader to be basically given a series of battlefield promotions across a hos of battles.

Or someone just wanted the world to have a General Pennypacker in it.

[Ran]

14 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

Wow. He must have been some kind of leader to be basically given a series of battlefield promotions across a hos of battles.

Quartermaster at 16, raised a company and got made a captain, sort of just climbed upward until some near-fatal heroics at the Second Battle of Fort Fisher led him to get brevetted as a brigadier (because they thought he'd die). 10 months later, comes back into action and they make it official.

But then, the Marquis de Lafayette was made a major general at 19, with very literal practical experience... but he had oodles of cash and wouldn't take a salary, and that ended up working out pretty well.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Ran

[Veltigar]

Let's also not forget that all these wunderkind generals got a shitload of people killed when they started to believe in their own hype. There is a reason we have checks-and-balances in place for the military  

20 hours ago, Werthead said:

Out on 24 November.

This article is pretty good, incorporating Scott's whole career, his work on Napoleon, his (questionable) decision to make Gladiator 2 and the tragic suicide of his brother (I didn't know Tony called him from the bridge as he was about to jump off).

 

Thanks for sharing the article, it was indeed very insightful

 

[The Bard of Banefort]

I’m planning on seeing this one in-person. I haven’t seen a movie in theaters since before COVID. 

[Feologild]

Joaquin Phoenix is a great actor, but he is to old to be playing Napoleon, also Vanessa Kirby is to young to be playing Josephine 

[Zorral]

And again, the story of Napoleon is the story of Napoleon and Josephine because the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era years are just too complex and complicated a history, covering so much territory, so many major figures, that on screen it always reduces to a couple of battles and love and sex. Feh.

At least ... if there's LOTS of Talleyrand? W/o Talleyrand, Nappy just can't rock, ya know?  

Edited November 14, 2023 by Zorral

[Martell Spy]

Just saw a good review. This is must-see for me. Genuinely excited to go to the cinema for once.

[BigFatCoward]

5 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Just saw a good review. This is must-see for me. Genuinely excited to go to the cinema for once.

i've seen seen nothing but good reviews. 

[Which Tyler]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/15/napoleon-review-joaquin-phoenix-emperor-ridley-scott

[TheLastWolf]

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/napoleon-movie-review-2023

 

https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/napoleon-review-ridley-scott-joaquin-phoenix-1234926076/

 

Only Kermode left to change my mind

[Durckad]

This sounds promising. I might have to drag my dumb, lazy ass to the cinema for this one.

[Zorral]

https://slate.com/culture/2023/11/napoleon-movie-2023-joaquin-phoenix-ridley-scott-gladiator.html

 

[Zorral]

Bret weighs in:

https://acoup.blog/2023/11/17/fireside-friday-november-17-2023/#respond

Quote

 

.... For this week’s musing, I want to comment at least briefly on dust-up surrounding Ridley Scott’s latest film, Napoleon and historians. As was evidently heavily reported, Ridley Scott responded to historians doing critiques of the film’s historical accuracy by telling them to ‘get a life‘ and suggesting that the earliest works on Napoleon were the most accurate and that subsequent historians have just progressively gotten more wrong.

I think there are two questions to untangle here: is the film accurate and does it matter? Now I haven’t yet seen the film, I’ve only seen the trailer. But my response to the trailer seems to have been basically every historian’s response to the trailer: Napoleon shows up at all sorts of places, doing all sorts of things he didn’t do. In particular, the battle scenes I’ve seen in the trailer and other snippets bear functionally no relationship to either Napoleonic warfare in general or the Battle of Austerlitz in particular (the bit with large numbers of soldiers drowning in a frozen lake was disconfirmed at the time; the lake was drained and few remains were found).

All of this is not a huge shock. All of Ridley Scott’s historical movies take huge liberties with their source material. Sometimes that’s in the service of a still interesting meditation on the past (Kingdom of Heaven, The Last Duel), sometimes in service of just a fun movie (Gladiator). Ridley Scott, in particular, has never mastered how basically any historical battle was fought and all of the battle scenes in his movies that I’ve seen are effectively nonsense (including Gladiator, which bears functionally no relationship to how Roman armies actually fought open field battles). Cool looking nonsense, but nonsense. Heck, Gladiator‘s entire plot is basically nonsense with some characters sharing historical names and very little else with their actual historical counterparts (the idea of Marcus Aurelius aiming to restore the republic in 180 is pretty silly).

So it isn’t a surprise that Ridley Scott’s grasp on Napoleonic warfare is about at the level of a not particularly motivated undergraduate student or that he has finessed or altered major historical details to make a better story. Its Ridley Scott, that’s what he does. Sometimes it works great (Kingdom of Heaven), sometimes it works poorly (Exodus: Gods and Kings). ....

 

 

[Veltigar]

On 11/15/2023 at 9:30 AM, BigFatCoward said:

i've seen seen nothing but good reviews. 

The Economist is quite scathing, but indeed, most other outlets I follow seem to be big fans.

Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” cuts the emperor down to size (economist.com)

[Veltigar]

10 hours ago, Zorral said:

Bret weighs in:

https://acoup.blog/2023/11/17/fireside-friday-november-17-2023/#respond

 

I found this bit particularly on point:

Quote

Frankly, I find the defensiveness of ‘get a life’ more than a bit surprising, as I assumed Ridley Scott knew he didn’t have much of a grasp on the history and was OK with that (or better yet, did have a grasp on it, but chose to alter it; I do not get this sense from his commentary), but it rather seems like he thinks he does know and is now very upset with the D+ he got on his exam and has decided to blame his ‘nitpicky’ professor instead of his not having done the reading.

As a great admirer of Sir Ridley Scott, I always thought he operated under the idea of "Never letting the truth come in the way of a good story", so his pettiness on this front is somewhat of a disappointment.

[Ran]

Reading the full interview, and others recently, Scott just sounds rather ornery these days and isn't interested in arguments -- he's entered the Logan Roy phase of his career where he's happy to just say "fuck off", even when (maybe especially when) he's wrong about something. 

[Zorral]

Ya, what happens when everyone kisses your ass for decades and always respond "How high?" when you say, "Jump."

The belief among directors that making films is the same as generally armies is rife in Hollywood. 

The first time I heard this expressed by a director was from Sydney Pollack, at a summer Sundance Film Institute, which brought together a variety of artists to learn how to service films, whether as composers, choreographers, writers, etc.  Actually, the coolest guy, with the most useful things to say, as a director, was Robert (Bob! -- uttered breathlessly)  Redford.  And of course, those who have successfully serviced several films, such as composers like Dave Grusin.  The directors were childish jerkwaddies generally. though there were, of course, the exceptions, like Jonathan Demme, and of course Bob himself.

[Corvinus85]

I don't know what the studio is doing but it doesn't look like it will have a big theatrical distribution. I base that off just on the fact that neither of my two local theaters will show it for the big Thanksgiving weekend which is ridiculous. It's The Last Duel all over again, and I'm sure Scott will misplace the blame again.

[Ran]

That said, Scott was right that Blade Runner 2049 was too damned long! 

[Nictarion]

Stuckmann liked it. Might try and see it this week since we’re off for the holiday.