Napoleon: blown apart by my scathing review

 

I have a soft spot for strange, awkward, not quite Italians that yearn to be dictator of France. My interest in Bonaparte is less grounded in historical fanboying, and more a way to use an impossibly lofty aspiration to beat myself over the head: until my self esteem is as lively as so many protesters after so much canister shot. Why am I not supplanting the directory? Why have I not pushed the Austrians out of Italy with an army that lacks for footwear? Oh woe Ect ect.

 

I watched the film Napoleon with a modest understanding of the events, and spent much of my time working out who was being depicted before the film name dropped them, and from that game I got a fair bit of enjoyment. In that regard the film is fine, stop reading now.

 

The film has two threads, one is that Napoleonic warfare looks fucking sick, and the other is that he really liked his hot poshGF. Somewhere in this mix, the myth of ‘master of Europe’ gets lost. The film is taking liberties with its depiction of events, I know I was there. Which is ‘fine’ each scene could be a film unto itself, some short hand there can be forgiven.

 

Though it commits the cardinal sin of making Boney boring. You don’t try to take over the world without a pretty messed up sense of self-worth, and ego. Write a megalomaniacal bratty sub and have it come out dull, how? His historical one liners are bitchy as hell. At a time of fervent nationalism this chucklefuck took the cake left to him by Marie Antoinette, and carried it to Moscow and back. Humanizing such a figure is of course an interesting endeavour, but making him feel like a sales director at a stapler company is certainly a choice.

 

I am a bit of a josey-stan, admitted. Aren’t we all? Josephine is, in my unqualified speculation, more influential in events than historical accounts imply. As good as Boney was in reading the battlefield, she was at reading people and the Parisian scene. The film is interested in her, but only insofar as it relates to her romance with napoleon, apart from her fucking; which the film even down plays. The fixation ends up flattening her interesting and complex personal character (the being limited scope, not the fucking)

 

The thing that I feel makes Napoleon interesting is his Rizz. Boy had no game, and had the diplomatic skills of a fermented herring. Though he was hugely popular both with the French people in general and his troops in particular. It’s hard to imagine exactly how a person must have acted in their day to day life, and to the film's credit, it doesn’t really try. I feel like they nailed the bully boy bluster, but not the personal magnetism, or headline grabbing fabrications he spun. The film knows these qualities exist, but tells not shows them. It is unable to reconcile them into its narrative.

 

The film's overarching conclusion is that Josephine was the beauty and he the beast, which does them both a disservice, and is more reductionist than the British tabloids of the day, at least they were humorous. It’s the lack of mannerisms that I found to be the lost eagle standards. Whether it was Boney rubbing his painful stomach, or Josephine covering her awful teeth these little character details are strikingly absent. In trying to ‘humanize’ these painfully flawed people they made them into other people. The only time he really felt like Napoleon was when he was going out his way to be a dick to other emperors.

 

A lot is done to create a man behind the myth, but I'd argue that the myth is an intrinsic element of the man. Imagine dear scholars A, D.J. Khaled: Beyond the hype.

 

So my question is why bother? A deconstruction is normally used to lay things bare, though this isn’t quite that. If we’re going to slot any-old awkward romance in there, rather than one plausibly theirs, we could have instead watched a two and half hour recreation of waterloo (i know it exists), or austerlitz or jena or leipzig. They’re all bangers, apart from borodino. Much as I long for big cannons, frontal assaults and total encircling’s of the left flank; I’m certainly not against cringe romance, in principle, and I’m not an expert (yeah, i know you knew that you smug pricks) but it feels like they read the letters but didn’t really understand them. Which I also didn’t, but I also don’t make films about the dude you ‘know.

 

Despite having warped the history to make these two threads complimentary, they end up being anathema. Each disrupts detracts and contorts the other. Though I have to give the film credit for its achievement, I never thought I'd find Napoleonic history lacklustre.

 

Okay, so that’s actually a lie, SHOCKER I know. The book that turned me onto reading about the period was called “Napoleon and the awakening of Europe,” published in 1954 and bought for a fifty pence in a second hand bookshop that used to be a public toilet: the book is weirdly paced and assumes, at least of the bits of it I read, a fair heft of background knowledge. So maybe out of the clear and chasmous gaps in the narrative of the film, other people will be inspired to learn more.

 

There’s a 2002 miniseries on Napoleon which is worth watching, it’s about six hours long and ends up being far more emotionally compelling, even if the budget is noticeably lacking.

Dynamite this film was not, get it? napoleon dynamite? Urghh. Not cool you guys.  

 

 

Thopa gunner: maverick, bitch

Thopa gunner: maverick, bitch

 

Bear with me a moment, I swear this tangent is going somewhere. So, there’s this Simpsons gag about military recruitment. Where the recruiter explains they use subliminal, liminal and super liminal messaging. When asked to explain what super liminal messaging involves, he leans out a window and screams at a passer by telling them to sign up. Ha. Ha.

 

If I was to try and slot top gun maverick into one of those categories, it’s got to be super liminal.  If only because everyone already is well aware the original was also a recruitment tool for the navy. 36 years down the line, the cat has had kittens and those kittens have had kittens, and the proverbial bag was recycled into a coke bottle that was then used as a gravity bong before being discarded into landfill. Yet Top gun refuses to move on, so much so the film’s theme (join the navy) was about how little anyone in top gun had actually moved on… from the navy, which they joined…

 

I appreciate the mental gymnastics a screenwriter today would have to go through to write anything as corny and un-ironic as a top gun film. Though in that regard I feel they fall a bit short in places. The film has more cheese than the US food stamp program in 1986. While I'm down for an 80’s cheese fest, my lactose intolerant friends will attest there is such a thing as too much cheese. So let’s examine the post pizza depression of Maverick.

 

Much as the film tries to convince that there are actual narrative stakes at play you can feel the kid gloves of the soft writing underneath. I’m not saying someone has to die a sudden dramatic death, but the film telegraphs itself as too much of a feel-good flick to really do that. The only death in the film, join the navy, is forewarned and the most respectful adoring funeral one could hope for.

 

The messaging across the film is not only can you return to the past, but it’s as vibrant and good as you remember it. Nothing exists there to fundamentally challenge you, your sweet heart is still waiting, and you can comfortably be a big fish in a small pond, sticking it to your old man (Jon Hamm) by joining up, shipping out and flying boats at mack too. Needless of me to point out, that isn’t how the 80’s was: I know I was there. Like a lot of media, it’s riding nostalgia for a time that never was, which isn’t what the nostalgia of my childhood used to be, it used to be good, you’know, it was a purer kinder nostalgia, people nowadays use it as an escape but.

 

 A good portion of the film is characters lining up to metaphorically jerk Thomas Cruisé off with flattery and praise. Which I’m chalking up to the military recruiters knowing that no one under the age of thirty five was ever led to believe that they were good enough. If anyone can be used to symbolize a black hole of praise seeking insecurity, it would be the now 61 year old Tobias Cruz.

 

Paradoxically, the sheer volume of affirmation that Tommy Crush, maverick, is in fact the best fighter pilot of all time forever and ever left me with lasting imposter syndrome. I am now resigned to never being a top of the line fighter ace. The worst part of that is I've never even flown and have a totally unrelated fear of heights. Though that might speak to the boat having sailed on my own sense of self-worth.

 

Speaking of, Tumnus Crash does have a boat sailing scene. Where it is revealed that he doesn’t know how to sail, so that his new old girlfriend can girl-mansplain the basics to him. Doesn’t learning to sail boats sound like a great idea for a date? A good way to learn those skills would be to join the US navy.

 

It has occurred to me that pointing out the film as propaganda isn’t particularly clever. Critics like to think of themselves as clever people, because they’re people and everyone does that. The sheer obviousness of it goes some way to neutralizing the criticism of it being propaganda. Hence making it more effective propaganda: this is a super liminal thing I was talking about; awareness of advertisement doesn’t neutralize the effectiveness when it’s not trying to be subtle. If anything the knowledge goes some way to encouraging the same complacent mindset that made the original so effective.

 

If we’re on the subject of criticism, and this being a review; I think we are, blowing your nostalgia song on the opening sequence is crumby as hell. I’m fairly sure, based on nothing other than my own notional sense of entitlement; that if danger zone started blasting during the maverick dog fight sequence, it would be incredibly cringe, over the top, and quintessentially 80’s nostalgia perfection.

 

The other easy angle with Cruise is his cult affiliation, which I'm sure I could be scathing about, but I'm not putting in the research (reading wikipedia) to get enough material for a paragraph on the subject. I can stomach reading about the US navy, but thinking about that other aquatic organization gives me the ick.

 

I’m fairly sure Maverick won’t have the same lasting impression as the original, but I also know it’s not trying to. A sequel in the narrative sense moves the story on; keeping some underlying themes and concepts, whilst developing them. Ultimately they aim to supplant the original, successful or not. Tenga Topa gun maverick isn’t interested in moving forwards, it and a lot of modern sequels to 80’s classics have got more in common with a prequel if anything, ticking off a set of references and nods to the status quo. This is how modern ‘generative AI’ works; a scatter shot approximation of what it was fed. If the machines were trained on our cultural, no wonder they’re not creative.

 

Tron legacy was more forward looking. Yikes.