As I have been on Santa's "nice list", I have received pretty much exactly what I wrote in my letter to the North Pole. All books in fact. So, having done the "tell", here is the "show".
First up a couple of hobby reads:
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| All 5 volumes. |
I should preface this short post by saying that having taught Napoleon, Napoleonic France and Napoleonic Europe to 18 year old students for over a quarter of a century, I was under no illusion of the impossibility of representing his life and times in two and a half hours. With that in mind I found the film rather amusing. Any comedy that makes me laugh out loud can't be bad. Who can resist the line, "destiny has brought me this lamb chop," or the great man's comic death slide at the end.
I also enjoyed the relationship with Josephine (played by Vanessa Kirby, who was the stand out actor in the movie), and wished the film was better focused on this. In this respect, the film tried to do too much and ended being neither one thing nor the other.
The chronology was "creative" and provided no real context for anything really. I was quite impressed with the uniforms. Plus, the battles were a bit of a spectacle which I enjoyed for both their historical invention and relative brevity.
Joaquin Phoenix's portrayal was so laughable it became, for me, an unintentional comic masterpiece. His talent was wasted.
Should I have been disappointed by the battles? No. What mattered was it told who won and lost. The film was not made for wargamers in mind. It was for a wider, less historically literate audience. If this production makes someone want to find out more, then that's great. They will realise what a fantastic, wide-ranging, complex and fascinating figure Napoleon was, and what an interesting period this was in European history.
Were my historical sensibilities offended by the film? Yes. Of course.
Did I enjoy it? Yes. It was about a relationship, and was funny... albeit unintentionally.
Will I ever watch it again? Never!
