2023-11-22 22:06:42
Artillery shells tearing apart horses and turning soldiers into pieces, corpses floating in the snow – all these are scenes from a battlefield full of artillery, bloodshed and chaos.
Between these scenes, scenes of Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Josephine de Beauharnais appear. The great French Emperor was as fond of his wife as he was of power.
The film “Napoleon,” directed by Ridley Scott, is a picture that draws a parallel between Napoleon’s thirst for power and his troubled relationship with Josephine, who was six years older than him.
The film began showing in the United States and the United Kingdom yesterday.
Scott (85 years old) told the film magazine Deadline: “Napoleon conquered the world in order to win its love, and when he did not succeed, he invaded it in order to destroy it.” In the process, Napoleon destroyed himself.
With a budget estimated at $130 million, Scott drew a great battle, and in addition to actress Vanessa Kirby, Scott re-teamed with actor Joaquin Phoenix following 23 years. Phoenix played a supporting role in the movie “Gladiator” in 2000, when he played the role of the crazy and cruel Emperor Commodus.
“For him, only Phoenix might embody Napoleon,” Scott said. Scott added, “In (Gladiator), Phoenix embodied the character of one of the most complex emperors in the history of cinema. And now, with the film Napoleon, Phoenix has been able to do it once more.”
Phoenix (49 years old) plays a stern and gloomy character on the battlefield, in a role similar to his character in “Gladiator.” But at the same time, he plays the role of a clown when he flees from politicians or looks deep into the eyes of a Pharaonic mummy. Phoenix skillfully embodies such contradictions.
Scott is famous for his historical works. In addition to the movie “Gladiator,” which also starred actor Russell Crowe, there is the movie “1492 – The Context of Paradise,” starring actor Gerard Depardieu. Through “Napoleon,” Scott presents a visually powerful epic, albeit through less impressive filming locations compared to “Gladiator.”
The film shows battle scenes that made Napoleon famous, such as his victory over the British at Toulon in 1793, the Egyptian campaign, the coup in 1799, and the fateful Russian campaign.
Anyone working to portray a prominent historical figure like Napoleon on the movie screen inevitably risks judgment from a wide audience and an endless number of experts. Napoleon specialists criticize, among other things, the film’s opening scene showing Bonaparte during the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette, as he was not supposed to exist at the time.
Scott presented a film that crosses the boundaries between history and fiction. Napoleon is not a historical biography. During the film’s premiere at the Army Museum in Paris, Napoleon’s tomb is located beneath the cathedral adjacent to the Army Museum, Phoenix said: “The film focuses on the main characters and their emotions.”
Scott said that he had long been interested in Napoleon, who crowned himself Emperor of France when he was 35 years old and spent his last days in exile on the small island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Scott added, “The Emperor is a wonderful character who embodies everything, good and evil.”
Napoleon met Josephine, a 32-year-old widow with two children, at a party in 1795. He immediately fell in love with her, and a year later they were married. Because she did not have children by him, Napoleon divorced Josephine in 1810 in order to marry Marie Louise of Austria. Napoleon wrote more than 200 love letters to Josephine, many of which are mentioned in the film.
The film’s running time is 158 minutes, but it is not enough to show the details of Napoleon’s rise and fall. However, the Apple TV Plus platform is scheduled to show a four-hour version of the film featuring the director’s vision. “The full version is ‘fantastic’ and contains more details regarding Josephine’s life,” Scott told Empire magazine.
• The movie “Napoleon” is an image that draws a parallel between Napoleon’s thirst for power and his troubled relationship with his wife, Josephine.
• The Apple TV Plus platform displays the director’s vision in a four-hour version of the film.
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