Napoleão

Não é um pouco mais fraco do que Gladiador (como esperávamos), mas apenas um pouco melhor do que Robin Hood (infelizmente). Fragmentos das etapas históricas da ascensão da carreira de Napoleão e da sua «conquista do mundo», intimamente intercalados com a sua relação com a mulher da sua vida. O filme entretém com os atores e as batalhas ocasionais, mas internamente é distante ao ponto de ser insípido, sem interesse ou capacidade de encontrar em Napoleão os traços de personalidade sobre os quais se pode construir a psicologia da sua história ou qualquer ideia. Também não aproveita as oportunidades para o seu confronto pessoal com os personagens secundários que poderiam ter enchido a narrativa de conteúdo denso. E o caso amoroso de Napoleão, ao qual é dada uma atenção considerável, permanece frio e não examinado pelo espetador. A narrativa habitualmente rotineira suscita preocupações de que a versão mais longa do realizador, embora mais informativa, continue a não ter alma. O primeiro filme histórico de Ridley Scott sem uma identidade musical. (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)

Actually, it's not easy for me to say this, but even though, in terms of spectacle, Napoleon is a totally classic Ridley Scott film, I simply don't see it as more than three stars. And the problem is probably mainly in the script. While for the first almost hour I didn't really understand what political machinations were happening on the screen and how Bonaparte actually got to that throne, in the second half Ridley just skimmed the surface and showed the most fundamental moments of the famous military leader cut with moments from the life of Napoleon and his wonder Pepička. But technically, it's great. In my opinion, no one can portray the chaos of battle as perfectly as Ridley. Maybe it's just a shame he didn't go to Slavkov personally. Maybe he would have then placed that battle in a more believable space than the hills that are there. But otherwise, I have no complaints. I would like to have as much energy at 85 as Ridley, who effortlessly directs these spectacular stories that today's directors can't even match. (13/03/2024)

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)

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)