#crazy posting

If Luigi’s line in the trailer is “I was wrong! People don’t change!”…

Uh… hmm…

I finally caught another aspect in Napoleon's standard characterization in movies that bothers me.

Notice how in most of the movies he's a main character, most of his lines are focused on the broader context, whether it's discussing political situation, or a war plan, or battle orders.

In movies and series such as the Guitry one, Joséphine ou la comédie des ambitions, the 2002 miniseries or Waterloo, most lines are generally loaded with exposition for the audience. For example, in Joséphine ou la comédie des ambitions, the title character and Alexandre Beauharnais make a recap of their entire relationship in ONE excruciatingly long dialogue. Guitry's movie isn't a movie as much as it's a history lesson. So is the 2002 Napoleon miniseries.

It's a overall problem across these movies, where realism and entertainment is sacrificed for the sake of clarity, given how complex the actual socio-political context was. It's as though people from today only talked like the breaking news even in private gatherings.

You don't get to know characters in a story, you don't get to know people with lives. You get to see vectors of history in constant action without any humanising pause.

Take Game of Thrones instead; I know it's fictional, but the world building is solid and the main focus is the political intrigues. Every main chatacter is fully immersed in intrigues and the Game, yet you get insight on their personality, on their lives, their feelings and inner conflicts.

Imagine watching a Napoleonic movie where Talleyrand and Fouché are fully fleshed out like Littlefinger and Varys! They would be obsession-inducing.

(Then there's Ridley Scott's poop-length film, where history is for those who must "get a life", hence why nothing gets clarified and everything gets drown in shit.)

Hope you get my point. You don't get to see Napoleonic characters living a life, only names from history books historying.

Napoleon is the one of the characters who suffer most. In movies, he's very rarely focused on trivial or everyday-life matters; he rarely talks about anything that isn't politics, wars, and battles. Even when he cuddles the Eaglet, like in the 2002 miniseries, he compares him crawling on his dad's body to a siege. God Naps give yourself a break🙄

The few genuinely humanizing and trivializing moments you can catch in these movies are stamped in my memory, because there are so few! Like him thinking again about his child in Waterloo; Letizia mocking him for his pants full of ink because he keeps polishing his pen like that in the 2002 miniseries; the moment he cuts his hair in the Guitry movie. I don't recall any moments like that in Joséphine ou la comédie des ambitions.

The only exception is Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story. Of course I would mention it once again.

Everyone knows the historical accuracy isn't the best asset of this miniseries, even if it's full of interesting references to niche real facts, so it makes sense that the writers didn't hold expositions at heart when the script had to be created. More on this post.

Hence you get a Napoleon who's much more focused on trivial things, like meeting a beautiful woman when he's presentable, remembering how badly he learned to dance at military school, randomly expressing his devotion to Cologne, mistaking Italian painters for musicians by a slip, arguing with a unhibited teenage sister. Assante's Napoleon is a person and a weird, intense man in love, much before being "Napoleon Bonaparte, General of the French Republic, then First Consul, then Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Rhin Confederation, Corsican Ogre and Public Enemy of Europe #1".

Just like in GoT, where Daenerys is Dany before being "Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains, and the Mother of Dragons".

The shark and dragon are married now uwu

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