Ridley Scott’s long-awaited novel Napoleon is out (it opens in Spain next Friday) and is enveloped in an exciting, acrid smell of gunpowder and controversy. The filmmaker has managed the feat of packing the Corsican’s entire life into one film and of course everything is sped up a bit (he is introduced to the Archduchess María Luisa and in the next scene they already give him the son he had with her; Waterloo It is a head-on clash in which there is no fighting for the Haye Sainte farm or the castle of Hougoumont and in which the Prussians arrive immediately. And with the haste and the excess of ellipses, some small subjects have fallen through: like the entire Spanish one War, although it is true that Bonaparte would have agreed to draw a thick veil over “the Spanish ulcer.” Regardless of this and a certain freedom, such as showing the emperor leading cavalry charges with saber in hand Borodino and Waterloo, where he suffered from hemorrhoids, Napoleon is a grand spectacle of battles, sex and hussars – the director prefers to recreate himself in Hippolyte Charles, Josephine’s handsome lover (a dangerous athlete), rather than the legendary hussars ( although he suffered from alopecia), General Antoine de Lasalle, who was in Wagram and didn’t fall out of bed) – and even mummies and cannons, lots of cannons to show. The director’s Napoleon does not put his hand in his shirt, but his iconic gesture is to cover his ears when the cannons fire.
Ridley Scott (South Shields, 85 years old), who shows the influence of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon in the film (the candlelight, the music, the care in the costumes), is particularly pleased with the interpretation of the protagonist, Joaquin Phoenix (in the title role) and Vanessa Kirby (Josefina), although some French media have maliciously compared her to Kent and Barbie (for adults, with a cross-legged moment in Fatal Attraction: “When you look down you’ll see a surprise that you won’t forget.” can, dear citizen”). Scott’s (British and Sir) response was to give all the critics hell, especially the French. “A film cannot be a history lesson,” he stressed in an interview with this newspaper this afternoon. Tonight he and Phoenix will attend a preview at the Prado Museum.
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Questions. Isn’t it a bit contradictory that in the film Wellington accuses Napoleon of being unable to defend himself from a frontal attack (at Waterloo) and that, on the other hand, he is so fondly shown attacking Josephine from behind?
Answer. Napoleon is a strategist, his greatest virtue is his great intuition. And in combat, intuition is everything.
Q Yes, but I was referring to the shocking and somewhat vaudevillian scenes where he is shown from behind having sex with Josefina. Then he will complain that the French are angry with him…
R. Ah, like a little dog! (laughs). We decided to do it like this, these scenes, so that not everything is military actions and battles and to remove a little meaning. With Napoleon there is a tendency to make everything very solemn and boring. In these sequences we aim for a humorous tone that does not reveal what is expressed in the intimate letters, some of which are very explicit about sex. I’m also very happy with the scene in which he goes under the table and approaches Josefina on all fours. There actress Vanessa Kirby didn’t know what Joaquin Phoenix was going to do and it came out like this, it came out very well! She is very good. Another scene where we introduced a touch of humor was the Brumaire coup, when the deputies violently attacked him. There’s great violence, but it’s also funny. We shot everything in one take with 8 cameras.
Q Napoleon endured many jokes; it was a golden age for cartoonists (especially those from outside France). Of course, if the English catch you with intimate letters telling Josefina not to wash, you’ll come…
R. Everyone wants to laugh at politicians, look at America now. You can laugh at everything except Israel and Ukraine.
Q The film seems to have failed to commit to a vision of Napoleon. “Corsican tyrant” or generous towards the enemy? Offensive – he slaps Josefina during the divorce – or romantic? Rude boor – “It’s a shame that such an important man has no manners,” comments the English ambassador – or a good intellectual? (He was a great reader, eventually a member of the Institut de France and author of the Civil Code).
R. Napoleon is a Corsican and the Corsicans are very tough. It has an aggressive character and lacks elegance. But I emphasize again that he was very intuitive, that is his main characteristic. Likewise his mother’s influence.
Q His speeches and speeches show that he knew the value of words. “Soldiers of the Grand Armée,” he wrote after Austerlitz, “before this day passes and sinks into the ocean of eternity, your Emperor wishes to speak to you.”
R. And his letters reveal a lot about him, many have been preserved, some very moving to Josefina.
Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte. KEVIN BAKER
Q He could be very inspiring. Identify with the Napoleonic quality you have in your films, in moments like replicant Roy Batty’s monologue of tears in the rain in Blade Runner, those of General Maximus in Gladiator, or Balian’s speech in The Kingdom of the Heaven? (“This is your oath, and this so that you will not forget it.”)?
R. There is power and beautiful metaphors in Napoleon’s texts; he had inspiring moments. As for Blade Runner, the original novel by Philip K. Dick [¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas?] There were already very nice dialogues with a melody that suggested what was going to be said in the film. I also have great admiration for the screenwriters. As for “Gladiator,” I remember that when I said I was making a film about ancient Rome, they thought it would be “Sword and Sandals,” a genre gem. “You were wrong.”
Q He has made many historical films.
R. The danger with this is that one fails to recognize that they cannot be a history lesson. They are films. The characters must communicate with each other normally. Things were going very well for Napoleon. I shot the dialogues with four cameras and the actors felt that they had a lot of improvisational talent and a lot of freedom. I warned her to be prepared for anything. And so the scene about Napoleon crawling under the table came about.
Q One sees the same fascination with the Napoleonic era, the uniforms, the weapons as in his first film, the unforgettable The Duelists (1977).
R. The fascination remains. You know, everything comes from Rome.
Q He says that because he’s in Gladiator 2.
R. No, no, Napoleon got all his inspiration from there. The eagles, the splendor of the equipment, the discipline, the esprit de corps. By the way, also the Germans in the Second World War. It’s interesting to see everything that started in Rome, Imperial Rome.
Q Napoleon is a cannon film.
R. ?
Q Of cannons and their bullets.
R. Balls?
Q Also (laughs). But I was referring to artillery. You have to see Napoleon’s cannons roaring. Enormous, in battles and also when he shoots mercilessly against the French people at the beginning of his career in the Vendimiario.
Joaquin Phoenix and Ridley Scott during the presentation of “Napoleon” in Paris.STEPHANIE LECOCQ (Portal)
R. Ah, he was a shooter, and that was always noticeable. He knew everything about cannons. How to place and shoot them, but also how to melt them. I show that he did this at the siege of Toulon.
Q This battle is very shocking, it shows a very human Napoleon hyperventilating before the fight, fighting hand to hand and killing his horse in a brutal scene (historical episode). A total of five battles are shown: Toulon, Pyramids, Austerlitz (based on the legend of the misfortune of the Russians and Austrians on the ice), Borodino and Waterloo. What is the secret of a good battle in the cinema, of which you have done so many?
R. Draw it beforehand. I draw and am very good at it. I went to art school, studied with Lucian Freud and had David Hockney as a classmate.
Q Well, here he is competing with another David, Jacques-Louis, and with Gros. I don’t know what he is accused of more, that he made the French shoot the pyramids of Giza (now that we had put an end to the myth that he shot the nose of the Sphinx!) or that the war did not leave Spain; Let’s see what Goya will say tonight at the Prado.
R. Look, I lived in Hartlepool in the north-east of England, a very industrial town that had a huge influence on me. There was a big cinema, the Odeon, and I painted the posters. I did one for Stanley Kramer’s Pride and Passion, which was about the war with the French, with Cary Grant, Sofia Loren and Frank Sinatra (as a guerrilla). So you could say I’ve already touched on this topic…
Q This 1957 film, about a large cannon, the largest in the world (a type of Navarone cannon on the peninsula), that the guerrillas brought in to tear down the walls of Ávila and help the English, was based on the novel “The Gun” by CS Förster.
R. I have always loved Forester’s stories, particularly those of his Nelson naval captain Horace Hornblower.
Q Wow, the throat-clearing lord of the seas! And Sharpe, the British gunman from Bernard Cornwell’s Napoleon novels? Napoleon’s scene in which a sniper pierces his hat at Waterloo seems like an homage.
R. I know him, yes, but I prefer Captain Hornblower!
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