james knight

I’m a student of the era. I have read multiple biographies of Napoleon. The film is visually stunning, and was as perfect a representation of the period as anything I have ever seen, and for that alone I think it deserves high praise. It is, however, wildly, unnecessarily, inaccurate. Of course the purpose is to entertain not to inform. And we should allow for some artistic license. It is a film, not a documentary. For me, there is a difference between historical inaccuracy that is intentional bc it lends drama to the story and inaccuracy that is just lazy. Napoleon leading a cavalry charge and Napoleon’s cannons pummeling the pyramids are both totally, absurdly, inaccurate. But, they actually don’t detract from the film for me. They arguably add excitement and only a history nerd is going to know or care that they never happened. What really really bothered me is that they often made seemingly no effort to have the “minor” characters resemble their real life counterpart. (I put minor in quotations bc these were major historical figures in their own right). The two worst examples were the Duke of Wellington appearing to be at least 60 when he was actually in his mid forties at Waterloo, and the actor cast to play Marshall Ney “the bravest of the brave” who had dark brown hair and one of those weird old timey beards with no chin hair. Marshall Ney famously had red hair and no strange beard. And you didn’t have to be there to know that. There is no way that Scott, the producers, and the actor playing Ney didn’t know this. They just decided not to care. Why not get that easy detail right instead? Isnt there a decent actor out there with red hair? If they insisted on using the same guy, why not get him a red wig and ask him to shave? Just lazy and destructive to the suspension of disbelief for no good reason. I think the challenge for Scott is that although he’s done period pieces before, he’s never done one where the history is so well documented. He’s wrong when he says we don’t know what happened. Much of the time when it comes to Napoleon, we actually do. I wanted to give this movie a 10/10, I can only give it a 7/10, and all 7 of those points are bc it is so visually impressive. The acting was just okay, and the script was garbage. If the 1970 Waterloo had the look of this movie, that would be 10/10. One day I hope the era will get better movie.