It is a popular and well-known fact that Senior Seminar at Moravian is done in the Fall Term. However, due to a series of events (maybe I’ll delve into them in a later post, maybe not, I dunno), I am doing my project in the Spring Term under Dr. Lempa. It will be on the intersection between codified law and honor culture in 19th century Germany. This topic interests me on a variety of levels: not only is it related to the history of law, but it will aid me in my personal worldbuilding project: 19th century Germany can act as a model from which I can base aspects of 16th century Vascossia (for those who aren’t aware, I will explain in a follow-up).
In unrelated news, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender. (Andersson and Ulvaeus, 1974) Oh, yeah, and Ridley Scott’s met destiny in quite a similar way. His latest film is a baffling, boring, cinematic trainwreck on every level. Normally, one would give a synopsis of the plot, but the plot (in theory) follows the career of Napoleon Bonaparte from Gunner to General to Consul to Emperor to Exile, and you’d find this story better told in countless history books and documentaries.
No, the film’s real plot is about how Napoleon, played by Academy Award-winner Joaquin Phoenix in the least passionate performance of his entire career, being a simp for noblewoman (and eventual Empress- for a time) Josephine. Their romance has zero chemistry, and I was able to count eight pointless sex scenes between the two, all revoltingly shot for the immense displeasure of moviegoers everywhere.
The pacing is nonexistent: things just happen with no cohesion between story beats. It was Hegel who called L’Empereur “the world soul on horseback,” and Napoleon’s life is endlessly multifaceted. Scott tries to give moviegoers a look at Napoleon’s life as broad as the ocean, but he ends up giving them a look shallower than the puddle I stepped in on a night walk last weekend.
Furthermore, the talent of the actors and actresses that aren’t Academy Award-winner Joaquin Phoenix has been thoroughly squandered. Every other scene I would see an actor I enjoy and fear that this will be the one to kill their career. But considering how one-dimensional everyone in this film- bar Napoleon and Josephine (who are two-dimensional)- they might as well be glorified background extras in the melodramatic relationship between the leads.
The cinematography can be described thusly: high contrast, low saturation. “Napoleon” is a deeply unpleasant film to look at, even setting aside the pointless CGI gore. One would think a $200 million budget might be able to hire a good or even passable cinematographer, but apparently not. On the CGI, it is obvious, jarring, and used to excess. But what really gave me a headache was how the film chooses to transition between scenes: by rapidly fading to white. This is a legitimate technique, but considering how artificially darkened every shot is, the end result in Scott’s case is akin to a flashbang going off.
I could delve into a scene-by-scene breakdown of the historical inaccuracies, but this is the same director who did Gladiator (which also featured Phoenix, as Emperor Commodus), so going into this movie expecting anything even resembling fidelity is like going into a Roland Emmerich disaster flick and… actually, this is considerably worse than your average Roland Emmerich disaster flick, since at least you can go into one of those and get your ticket’s worth in sheer spectacle. My friend Giara and I agreed that the two and a half hour runtime of Napoleon was two and a half hours wasted. At least 10,000 BC or Moonfall (for Emmerich) or Gladiator (for Scott) are fun. This is a slog. It wasn’t even fun to make fun of. It just sucked.
Sierpinski Tetrahedron 