Napoleon 4K 2023 2160p WEB-DL

A biographical movie about the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon 4K Review
1793. Queen Marie Antoinette is executed by guillotine. From the crowd, officer Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) watches the murder of the country's last monarch. A few years later, the military man acquires an impressive resume: he besieges Toulon, suppresses the royalist uprising and even attacks Cairo. Successes on the battlefield and the love of the people allow the man to become the First Consul of France. But on the way the hero faces several problems: unfaithful wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), who, among other things, can not get pregnant, as well as the exorbitant ambitions of the politician to conquer the world.

"Napoleon" - the benchmark movie of the master of historical dramas Ridley Scott. Habitually sprawling, lush and loud. Here crowds of people run screaming at each other and cover the fields with human bodies, here the sounds of cannons tear eardrums, and in the Battle of Austerlitz under the soldiers and at all the earth opens up: the ice is cracked, and thousands of Russians are drowning in icy water. In between action hit-parade pathos pick up luxurious palaces, French nobility in expensive suits and Napoleon himself: he is always looking into the void and thinking about great things.

Fortunately, Scott himself - the owner of the honorary title "sir" - is still talented in combining bravado and farce, directed against the powerful and any social hierarchies. In the first important battle, Napoleon loses control and wrinkles his face in horror. And a few scenes later he enters into a co-dependent relationship with the unfaithful and unloving Josephine (Vanessa Kirby): for her sake he interrupts the campaign to Egypt, because of her he sheds tears, and in spurts of anger he throws fruit from the bar table at her. A great master of physical comedy Joaquin Phoenix, as if contrary to the historical material, turns his hero into a clown with a ridiculous hat and abnormally high libido.

For a complete deconstruction of Napoleon's image, however, there are a couple of tricks missing here. First, the abandonment of the meticulous style of the Wiki movie. Ridley Scott can sarcasm all he wants on the subject of historical assumptions in the picture, but he again extremely academic screen real stories. Bonaparte may not have fired cannons at the Egyptian pyramids, but really went through a series of political intrigues, commanded troops in decisive battles, and in the finale of his life went to St. Helena.

For a sprawling movie 2.5 hours long, "Napoleon" has too many creative tasks: it is necessary to show the real formation of the politician, and at the same time to reassemble the familiar image of the great figure from school textbooks. As a result, the hero's extremely inexpressive conversations about state affairs are given more time than, for example, scenes of ridiculous sex with his wife under the table surrounded by servants. Unfortunately, so far the pendulum has swung in the direction of a decent biopic rather than a punk deconstruction. The situation may be remedied by a four-hour director's cut of the movie, which is about to be released on Apple TV+.

Another problem with "Napoleon" is the optics. "The Last Duel" Ridley Scott successfully reinterpreted chivalric plots: the story was told from the point of view of not only two masculine warriors, but also a victim of sexual assault. The movie about Bonaparte and all could be a boomer version of "Priscilla" Sofia Coppola - tape about the wife of Elvis Presley, where the musician himself only rarely comes home, behaves like a pig and again leaves the estate for concerts and love affairs. The complexes and problems of the famous figure in the picture become clearer from the outside: Elvis is a charming but rather silly man who easily feels what people need. If on stage this skill makes him a star, then in life brings a lot of pain to his loved one. David Scarpa's script, on the other hand, is too conventional: the origins of Napoleon's traumas, as well as his inner turmoil, are explained with just one phrase - "He just longed for love."

Thankfully, in a pessimistic finale, Scott and Scarpa seem to decide to deliver a scathing slap in the face to the French military man. Once again banished to a godforsaken island, Napoleon discovers that a new generation knows next to nothing about his great campaigns. And soon after the authors display the statistics of soldiers who died in all of Bonaparte's battles. And by doing so, as if to say: behind the mania for glory and victory are always colossal human sacrifice, and former feats are erased from the memory of people as easily as the inscriptions on the sand during the storm. If history is written by the victors, Napoleon is certainly a loser.