Napoleón

Ridley Scott sabe rodar estos espectáculos históricos con mucha seguridad, y Napoleon resultó exactamente como me la imaginé antes de la proyección: en lo bueno y en lo malo. Yo empezaría por lo malo. Desafortunadamente, incluso con el metraje de dos horas y media, la película es un recorrido tan rápido por la vida y la carrera de Bonaparte, que a veces salta demasiado de una escena a otra, mientras que las tramas y los personajes secundarios aparecen y desaparecen en él un poco, y las conexiones no se llegan a contar hasta el fin. Ese es un problema que espero que se solucione en la versión prometida de cuatro horas y media en Apple TV+. Las escenas de guerra son geniales, como ya estamos acostumbrados con Scott, y en general la estilización de la época funciona perfectamente en la película, que realmente sumerge al espectador en el entorno de la Europa salvaje de finales de los siglos XVIII y XIX. Joaquin Phoenix aborda la figura legendaria de la historia mundial con un concepto muy civilizado y su Napoleón cautiva cada minuto en pantalla. Y creo que es capaz de lograr lo mismo incluso en la versión que durará dos horas más que esta. Satisfacción con las reservas. (21.11.2023)

The cinematic cut turned out as it probably had to: as an obviously incomplete fragment of a larger work. It's hard to rate it, it's like reading a novel and skipping every ten pages. What is in the cinema cut is fine, but it doesn't coalesce into a comprehensive experience. Napoleon's personal life is there, the battles are there, but the "politics" between them are missing, so you don't really know why any given battle is happening. Quite absurdly, from the cinematic cut, the character of Napoleon doesn't actually strike me as an active instigator of all this wartime fury, nor as a figure that the rest of Europe feared. (23.11.2023)

Not any weaker than Gladiator (as we had hoped), but only a bit better than Robin Hood (unfortunately). Passages from the historical stages of Napoleon’s rise to power and “world conquest”, intimately interspersed with his relationship with the woman in his life. The film is entertaining with its actors and the occasional battle, but it is so inwardly reserved that it borders on being bland, with no interest or ability to find personality traits in Napoleon on which the psychology of his story or any other idea could be built. Nor does it make use of the possibilities offered by his personal confrontation with the supporting characters, which could have filled out the narrative with solid content. And Napoleon’s romantic relationship, which receives a great deal of attention, remains cold and thus fails to touch the fewer. The routine narrative raises concerns that the longer director’s cut will be richer in informational content, but equally soulless. Ridley Scott’s first historical film without a musical identity. (13.12.2023)

The quality of the material is undeniable, although (so far) rather tentative. The strangest edited film in a long time. One thing is that it's abridged to the point of shame, that even a layman feels that whole long passages are missing. Another thing is that even in the scenes that did make it into the theatrical cut, it's often obvious that those are also significantly cut; there's no continuity of shots, dialogue, logic, sequence. I have no doubt that when it is in its final, considerably longer form, it will be a very much improved and coherent experience that, while not historically faithful, will be spectacular in the best sense of the word. So far, however, these are merely impressive scenes with shoddy characterisation; more a feature length trailer than a film. (14.06.2024)

Rimmer may have traveled through Europe with the greatest general of all time and mowed down Belgians, but I suspect fraud in the movie theater admission fee that I decided to sacrifice despite the poor reviews. Visually, Scott still has it at eighty-six, and I caught myself thinking about who will shoot this once Ridley is gone. But there were more and more similar mental escapes from the movie, mostly into history class, where I struggled in vain to remember the reasons why defenders of the republic suddenly ended up with a royal crown on their heads, or when one dinner and one letter were enough to return from the Elba. The battles drew me in like nothing else. Damn the historical accuracy, because when the ice cracks at Slavkov, you go underwater with the stuntmen, while at Waterloo, you feel total despair and devastation that makes you physically sick. But instead of more military campaigns, and more of Napoleon's egoistically maniacal journey that tore Europe apart, we get completely senseless flirting with Josephine, and summarizing their relationship in letters would save screening time in favor of the aforementioned. The promised four-hour stream leaves me cold, partly because it's a deception against the viewer, and also because I probably don't have the strength to watch the cringe-worthy relationship of two people where one is enticed to sex by horny neighing while the other complains about freshly styled hair. (11.12.2023)