Napoleon

Year 16, Day 237 - 8/24/24 - Movie #4,822

BEFORE: Well, it sure does seem to be my year for long movies, doesn't it?  The longest movie I've watched this year, so far, is "1900", which I think I watched over two days.  Here are the Top 12 by running time:

"1900", 5 hr. 17 min.

"Babylon", 3 hr. 9 min.

"Oppenheimer" 3 hr.

(tomorrow's film) 2 hr. 59 min.

"Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium", 2 hr. 54 min.

"John Wick: Chapter 4", 2 hr. 49 min. 

"Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One", 2 hr. 43 min.

"Dragged Across Concrete", 2 hr. 39 min.

"Napoleon", 2 hr. 38 min.

"Tár", also 2 hr. 38 min. 

"The Square", 2 hr. 31 min.

and for some reason "The School for Good and Evil" was 2 hr., 27 min. long. 

At least four of these were longer than they should have been and could have used some serious editing.  I'll let you guess which ones. By the way, the five shortest films watched this year were "The Strange Name Movie" (52 min.), "Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer" (1 hr.), Elton John: Becoming Rocketman (1 hr.), "David Bowie: Out of This World" (1 hr.) and "An Imperfect Murder" (1 hr. 11 min.)

Vanessa Kirby carries over again from "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One".

THE PLOT: An epic that details the checkered rise and fall of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his relentless journey to power through the prism of his addictive, volatile relationship with his wife, Josephine. 

AFTER: Well, any historical inaccuracies aside, I'm here to learn about Napoleon today. Like, what do I even already know about him?  He lost at the Battle of Waterloo, sure, everyone knows that, and he was exiled twice, once to Elba and once to St. Helena, where he died.  That's the factual stuff, let's get some details, for God's sake.  

When we first meet Mr. Napoleon, it's the time of the French Revolution, and he's got a front-row seat for the beheading of Marie Antoinette.  Probably never happened, historians may tell us that he was busy that day somewhere else, I'm betting.  But for dramatic effect, he's RIGHT THERE as her head falls in the basket. Hmm, is this a precursor of his own fate, metaphorically speaking, or just a warning that this is how kings and queens will be treated from now on?  Oh, if only he could learn a lesson from this event.  

The leader of the Revolution, Paul Barras, then sends Napoleon to the Siege of Toulon, a port city, and Napoleon realizes that if the Republic forces can take the fort from the Royalist rebels, then they can take the harbor, so he orders his men to scrounge the discarded cannons from the beach and the loose metal to melt down and make cannon balls, and all goes as planned.  The Republic forces take the fort, control the harbor and they take back the city, the British ships are repelled and Napoleon is regarded as a strategic genius. Shortly after this, Maximilian Robespierre, a progressive statesman who had advocated for the voting rights for all men, the right to bear arms, and the abolition of slavery, had the other members of the Convention turn against him, because they thought he was trying to establish himself as a dictator, or form a triumvirate to run the Republic.  He was taken to prison, tried to commit suicide, but in the end it was the guillotine for him.

This left an opening in the leadership role in France, and since nobody wanted another king or anything like a dictatorship, France was ruled for four years by The Directory, a five-member committee.  Rebellions and coups were fairly common, and it seems these five people running things often disagreed, but hey, at least somebody was running the country and they managed to have elections in 1798.  But during these years Napoleon was waging one campaign after another in various countries, taking over Italy and Egypt when he wasn't putting down one revolution or another somewhere in France. 

He'd met Josephine de Beauhamais, an aristocratic widow whose husband was killed in the revolution, and then had sex with men while in prison in attempt to get pregnant because people might think twice about executing a pregnant woman.  Napoleon married her anyway, but this was apparently a recipe for disaster, because he was always working, running a war in Egypt or stopping some minor revolution here or there, so he was almost never home, and Josephine started sleeping with Hippolyte Charles the moment he walked out the door.  After hearing the rumors about his wife having a lover, and coming back from Egypt to find her not there, Napoleon apparently invented that move where you put your unfaithful spouse's clothes out on the front lawn when it's raining.   

Can this marriage be saved?  Napoleon and Josephine have a long talk, during which it's reveald that Napoleon hasn't been faithful, either.  But hey, that's different, he's a guy, and he didn't love those other women, but come on, he's French, what's he supposed to do, remain faithful?  Suddenly they both realize that they're both French, so they're just going to have affairs, and that''s that, I guess. Josephine stays with Napoleon because he might be in charge someday, and Napoleon stays with Josephine because either he thinks he can't do any better, or he's just really messed up in the head. Maybe a bit of both.

Sure enough, in November 1799, there was another coup d'etat and The Directory was overthrown, and replaced by the French Consulate. This was meant to be a triumverate, with three people in charge, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes and Roger Ducos along with Napoleon.  But they were provisional consuls at first, then Napoleon had a coup-within-a-coup and was named First Consul, with two nobodies in the other two positions, and then basically Napoleon said he didn't need the other two guys and declared himself Emperor.  There was a new Constitution that got approved by votes in February 1800, and it's now believed that Napoleon's brother, Lucien, tampered with the votes and doubled the "yes" votes just to be on the safe side. 

Napoleon then sets out on a campaign for peace with other nations, by sending them letters of peace, and any country that turned his offer down soon found themselves at war with France.  Yes, that was the plan, to create peace by going to war, again and again, with Austria and then Italy and then Russia.  I guess that kind of makes sense?  No, JK, it does not, but Napoleon worked that angle for 8 years, from 1804 to 1812.  Meanwhile Napoleon's mother was getting tired of waiting for Josephine to have Napoleon's child, which should have happened because of all the sex they weren't having.  But really, at that point she would have settled for Josephine to have anyone's baby, because she was clearly having sex with someone.  So Napoleon's mother made her son take a mistress, who got pregnant right away, thus proving that it was HER fault for being infertile.  (Not true, it could have just been bad luck, but back then people didn't understand about ovulation days and when women could get pregnant, or who knows, maybe Josephine just couldn't have another kid?). But making your son cheat on his wife to prove that his wife is doing something wrong is a bit like a country going to war to create peace, isn't it? 

Not having a child, or not being able to have a childe was apparently grounds for divorce back then, because Napoleon divorced Josephine shortly after he got that mistress pregnant.  (Yeah, I know...). But hey, they stayed in touch and wrote letters to each other, so that's something, right?  Napoleon asks various world leaders if he can marry their younger sisters, you know, again in the name of peace, and if they say no, then France goes to war with them, in the name of peace.  Eventually the leader of Austria realizes the plan here, and he allows Napoleon to marry his sister, which brings about peace. Yay?  Marie Louise of Austria bears Napoleon a son, one year into the marriage. 

This craziness continues until 1812, when Napoleon invades Russia to fight the Cossacks, and wins at the Battle of Borodino, but then finds Moscow empty, despite having 300,000 people in it shortly before that.  They all left, and then someone set fire to the city, which burned for four days, and forced Napoleon to return to France having lost half a million men. For this the Coalition forced him to abdicate the throne and exiled him to Elba in 1814. 

He still stayed in touch with Josephine, though, and almost a year into his exile he got her letter saying she was unwell, so Napoleon ended his own exile, commandeered a ship and returned to Paris, only to find that she had died before he arrived.  The new King, Louis XVIII sent the French 7th Regiment to stop Napoleon's march toward Paris, however apparently Napoleon talked to the army and charmed them into following him instead of the King. This was the start of the Hundred Days, during which there were several wars like the Neapolitan War and the Waterloo campaign, and by the end of these 100 days, the King would be back in power and Napoleon would be exiled again.

But this is what we all came here for - Waterloo, which became Napoleon's own personal, umm, Waterloo, a symbol for facing defeat over these past two centuries.  If the film got this right, then the Duke of Wellington was aware of Napoleon's usual tactics, and knew that he could not resist a frontal assault, so apparently Wellington told his men to hold their line, and wait for that to come, once the rain finally stopped.  The rain stopped, Napoleon's men advanced, and the British army only had to hold them in place until the Prussian army of 50,000 men arrived to flank the French, and that was it.  By the evening Napoleon was forced to send his last reserves of infantry battalions to attack the Anglo-Prussian line, they were repulsed and the French army was routed. 

I'm sure there was more to it, any battle's probably more complicated than all that, but these are the simple facts.  Napoleon couldn't pull a fast one that time like fixing up a bunch of old discarded cannons or shooting cannonballs through the ice on a frozen river to drown the enemy.  England got together with Prussia and the French army was outnumbered and outflanked.  Napoleon returned to Paris and tried to work out a new government with his brother, but to no avail, he got exiled again, and for good this time. 

Perhaps there are two kinds of people in this world, those who are successful and are afraid of failure, and those who are, umm, not so successful and are afraid of success.  Perhaps. Look, I know which kind I am, and I'm OK with it - and the fact that I'm OK with it kind of clues you in on which kind of person I am.  But Napoleon was clearly the first kind, very successful, rising from an Army officer all the way up to French Emperor.  Very successful at winning battles, but also successful at getting his soldiers killed, which was taken as a form of success, until it wasn't. And so we can assume he was secretly afraid of failure, to the point where he couldn't bring himself to admit it when it happened.  

(Hmm, does that sound like anyone else we know?  Someone who couldn't admit that only a few people attended his inauguration, someone who now says he beat inflation, beat COVID, won two elections even though he didn't, someone who never did anything wrong despite multiple felony charges and two impeachments against him?  Just saying, there's a possible connection or through-line here, even though Trump never fought in a war or played any sport other than cheating at golf, which he of course has been very successful at. Hey, great idea, could we exile Trump to a tiny island somewhere?)

When this film played at the theater where i work, last November, I think, I made the mistake of sticking my head in to check on the film's progress.  And I saw the ending, with Napoleon exiled to St. Helena, and having breakfast while watching two little girls play with sticks as swords.  Spoiler alert, this was the death scene, and it's not played for humor at all, but it's really just him sitting there, and then falling over to one side.  What a shame, he probably really deserved to be killed in battle or shot by a firing squad at some point, and the film brings this point home before the closing credits by posting the number of soldiers who died in all of the major battles he commanded, and it's staggering, the total is somewhere north of 3 million people who died in his wars.  Well, it's a good thing that Napoleon never failed at anything, because I'd hate to see the death toll if he had.

I was going to complain about this movie being one of those inaccurate films that attempted to show a past society being more integrated than it actually was, like there's a black general seen in this film, but apparently that's historically accurate. The character is General Dumas, who was a real bi-racial general who did command troops during the Napoleonic Wars, and also he was the father of the famous writer, Alexandre Dumas.

Also, it seems that Stanley Kubrick had been fascinated with the life of Napoleon, and planned a grand epic film about it, he had massive plans but never got around to it.  Ridley Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa rejected his script, but apparently used his development and structure, so this is (kind of) based on the film that Kubrick wanted to make at one point.  

The real historical winner here might be Josephine, though she never had children with Napoleon, her children from her first marriage went on to greatness. Josephine's daughter, Hortense, had a son, Napoleon III, who became French emperor himself.  Josephine's son, Eugene, had a son, Maximillian, who married into the Russian Imperial family, and Eugene's daughter (also Josephine), married King Oscar I of Sweden, who happened to be the son of Napoleon's former fiancée.  So the heads of the royal houses of Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg and Sweden are all descendants of Josephine de Beauharnais.  Napoleon, meanwhile, named his son as his successor, but his son was only four years old at the time, and so nobody took him seriously as a possible military or government leader.  He had an honorary title and died at 21 with no children.

It did strike me as a bit strange that almost nobody in this film had a French accent.  Joaquin Phoenix didn't even TRY (probably for the best) and looking at the cast, there were only two French actors used.  Almost everyone besides Napoleon has a British accent, which now seems wrong, and that makes me realize that also, everyone in a movie about French people is speaking English!  Doesn't that bother anyone else but me?  Sure, I get it, most of the American audience is never going to watch a film where everyone speaks French, God, reading subtitles, what a chore!  (It's really not...). Phoenix just spoke normal, and of course he's got an American accent (wait, I forgot, American people don't have accents, they just speak "normal") but this makes him sound like a common thug in comparison with the Brits.  Really, none of this makes any sense when it comes to language and accents, and now that I'm aware of it, it's a big problem.

Also starring Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Tahar Rahim (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Rupert Everett (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Mark Bonnar (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat"), Paul Rhys (last seen in "Saltburn"), Ben Miles (last seen in "Red Joan"), Robin Soans (ditto), Riana Duce, Ludivine Sagnier (last seen in "The Devil's Double"), Edouard Philipponnat (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Youssef Kerkour (ditto), Catherine Walker (ditto), Miles Jupp (last seen in "Rosewater"), Scott Handy (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), John Hollingworth (last seen in "Rebecca" (2020)), Abubakar Salim, Thom Ashley, Jannis Niewöhner (last seen in "Mute"), Julian Rhind-Tutt (last seen in "Blithe Spirit"), John Hodgkinson (last seen in "Skyfall"), Erin Ainsworth, Isabella Brownson, Benjamin Chivers, Sam Meakin, Sinéad Cusack (last seen in "Eastern Promises"), Harriet Bunton, Charlie Greenwood, Audrey Brisson (last seen in "W.E."), Matthew Needham, Sam Crane, Sam Troughton (last seen in "Mank"), Edward Bennett (last seen in "War Horse"), Julian Wadham (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Phil Cornwell (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Harry Taurasi, Edward Mercieca (last seen in "Paul, Apostle of Christ"), Arthur McBain (last seen in "Judy"), Andy Burse, Jonathan Rice, Michael O'Connor, Dominic Coleman (last seen in "Wonka"), Ian McNeice (last seen in "Conspiracy"), Richard McCabe (last seen in "Cyrano"), Tom Godwin (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Gavin Spokes, Catherine Harvey, David Verrey (last seen in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"), Benedict Martin, Edward Hogg (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Ed Hughes, Jonathan Barnwell, Abigail Weinstock, Bart Lambert (last seen in "Overlord"), Anna Mawn, Imogen Slaughter, Mitchell Baggott, Ned Costello, John Mula (last seen in "Risen"), Kevin Eldon (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight"), Richard Leeming (last seen in "Dumbo"), Billy Byers, Tim Faulkner, Peter Sandys-Clarke, Tim Delap, Charlie Barrett, Olivia Juno Cleverley, Sophie Wohlfeld, Michael Nardone (last seen in "Child 44"), Sophie Lund, Diego Barraza, Ed Eales White, Zina Esepciuc, Scotty Gelt.

RATING: 6 out of 10 swords without names on them