“Napoleon” by Ridley Scott, the crash of the emperor – Libération

Biopic

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Clumsy and deliberately unworthy of its poorly crafted subject, the biopic with Joaquin Phoenix offers no point of view, neither on the man, nor on the myth.

White noise, sweat down your back, intense laziness. Want to hide your eyes in front of the cocked hat on the head of the one who interprets it (Joaquin Phoenix, American accent included and assumed), neither better nor worse than before him Marlon Brando, Albert Dieudonné, Patrice Chéreau, Christian Clavier… A film dedicated to Bonaparte and which is only called Napoleon worried: as if he aspired to sweep away all those who preceded him (more than 1000 appearances in cinema and television), who almost did so (Kubrick and Chaplin) or, worse, to include them entirely the legend, the entire Memorial and the infinitely extended notional field of Napoleon in its project and its duration (two and a half hours in this theatrical version, at least two hours more in the version that we will soon see on Apple TV+).

Too much lunch

Fortunately for our little head, Napoleon is a very small film rather than a recollection of amphigouric aspiration on the man, the autocrat, the nose in the middle of the figure of French political life for 202 years. Taking facts and deeds that he would not take any idolator of Bonaparte (his British nationality being proof of his de facto hostility?) and, perhaps, of such a volatile character of the character that his tombstone remains devoid of any inscription , Ridley Scott does the opposite with Napoleon in Napoleon

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