Rasmus Wiseman

This movie made me ask myself if I’d ever seen an American show about Europe that had anything like the right tone. It reminds me of when Richard Gere suddenly showed up in a beautiful, subtle Kurosawa movie. You hear the loudest record scratch sound in your head, ever. In order to see “Napoleon” as good, you have to imagine it’s post modern (whether it is or not). A very wacky American with an American accent and who is not short playing Napoleon is pretty far out. It’s like playing with the inputs of the diegesis and you’re being asked to lean into it. The relationship with Josephine has decent amounts of development although fairly general in their interactions even so. Europe of that period was about social hierarchies and how they might or might not be elided, friction therein, and energy in movies comes from the shock of what happens within and in between those class levels. Even in revolutionary France, if the classes had been levelled, that would still be something you need to portray. How might they linger? Americans can’t even really conceive of this apparently. They can sort of do power and “being number one”, and quirky individuals, but quirky, American style…. This movie is bizarre.

Helpings of fake cheese on the acting, writing that doesn’t have much nuance or unexpected story elements, good special effects.