On December 1, a blockbuster biopic in the New Year's Eve file,An audio-visual feast for the big screen, a movie that can be called "epic"."Napoleon".Released in domestic theaters. 
Who is Ridley Scott?Even in China, this legendary figure in the history of contemporary cinema has a strong fan base that does not need much introduction. Affectionately called "Lei Gong" by many Chinese fans, he is not only the founder of the "Alien" series and the "Blade Runner" series, but also has a wide range of genres from science fiction themes such as "The Martian" to the historical war film "Gladiator" to the adventure crime film "Flower of the End"."One of the directors who can make Hollywood blockbusters the most". Even though he is 86 years old this year, there have been such prolific and out-of-the-circle masterpieces as "The Gucci Family" and "The Last Duel" in the first two years. This time, can "Napoleon" become Lei Gong's representative and iconic work in the later stage of film creation?The most extraordinary thing about Lei Gong's "Napoleon" is that he deeply explores the love history of Napoleon, the "French God of War", and his first wife, which makes the whole film retrospective and will give people a feelingWar romanceimpressions. The cohesion of the dramatic tension of the script often relies on the core lines and the basic situation. In the film, Napoleon's feelings for Josephine are closely linked to his intense and turbulent life. Josephine was the one who threaded the needle throughout Napoleon's life, and in a sense, Josephine was also the one who threaded the needle throughout the film. 
From "You should love you more than I love you and love me" when you went on an expedition to Egypt, to "You are nothing without me" when you were cheated and betrayed by your wife, to "You are sacrificing for this country" when you had to divorce because your wife couldn't get pregnant, and then to "You are far more symbolic to my life than a best friend" when I was exiled after divorce. Stringing together the history of conquest with the emotional thread of Josephine is not only a hero who has been sad since ancient times, but also the drama of the intersection of film and history. I privately think that although the movie is mixed with a lot of emotional lines to broaden the audience, it is very gratifyingNapoleon's self-destructive state of life in his search for himself is still the main thread of the filmAmong them, the pull of immediacy is actually the outline of the film, and its role is far more than the "secondary creation" of the love of great historical figures itself. Napoleon's extreme fear of losing or not being able to fully possess Josephine is a portrayal of the fragility and sensitivity of his heart, the desire to be loved, and to be loved passionately and wholeheartedly, that he tried to hide as a cold and selfish monarchAlsoA metaphor for his inflated ego and uneasy self that can never be completely filled under the shell of that inflated conceit and ambition。All this, biting Napoleon back and forth, is like a conquila biting the internal organs of Prometheus. The shaping of the emotional line creates a metaphor and atmosphere that envelops the whole film:A tragic tone of sacrifice behind greatness, and an epic metaphor that success and failure are always at both ends of the scales of life. But this is not to create an image of Napoleon's greatness and heroism, but to deconstruct the background of his fateful tragedy. 
In his playwright reading, Ray discovered that Josephine had a blatant affair with a hussar in her husband's army, and that Napoleon's lifelong attachment to Josephine was very different from his image of fighting on the battlefields of Eastern Europe. This angle aroused Lei Gong's curiosity, and he tried to explain the understanding he had obtainedJosephine was the cause of Napoleon's vulnerability. So we have the "Napoleon" we see now. mentioned the motivation for filming "Napoleon" in a previous interview, and Lei Gong, who is 86 years old this year, explained. After consulting many experts and professors in Napoleonic studies, including the Western European History Professors at Oxford University, he came to an exclusive conclusion about Napoleon's conquest that changed the course of history and the world mapIt was a protracted 'romantic war' between him and his wife, Josephine. She commits adultery, and he conquers the world just to win her love. When he finds that he has failed to do so, he intends to destroy her by conquering the world, and eventually destroys himself. "Empress Josephine was not the only one who saw through Napoleon's appearance as the destined ruler of France, but she was the only one who knew how to challenge him. If the panoramic real-life battle scenes and immersive visual effects are the stable play of the film within expectations, then the romantic relationship full of infatuation and distortion is the key element that constitutes the banter of this film. It can be said that it was not until the appearance of "White Widow" Vanessa Kirby as Napoleon's first wife, Empress Josephine, that the film presented a unique love chronicle temperament, and then unfolded and presented, Lei Gong seems to have full interest in exploring the female perspective that has been ignored by history. 
Although it is true that the female characters do not have many scenes, and they still occupy an auxiliary position in the narrative order of the male protagonist, makeup and casting are inevitably clichés are glamorous vases, but it is not difficult to see thatThe excavation of women's awakening consciousness and the spirit of independent resistance is slightly better than "Oppenheimer".。The addition of female profiles makes it possible for "Napoleon" to make the stories of those magnificent characters who affect the fate and direction of mankind so subtle and delicate, and also drag the unimaginable funny and funny behind his majesty to the front of the stage. Fortunately, Vanessa, who plays the heroine, can be gentle and violent. Josephine's loneliness and depression when she lived alone in the suburbs after the divorce, her cold face and anger that was neither humble nor arrogant, and her restraint on the verge of hysteria several times were all unforgettable. Biopics are very popular, but biopics are also extraordinarily provocative. If Napoleon's life is only connected with a pure running account-style roll-out narrative, it is simply a tyrannical thing for such a character. Biopics are also a kind of artistic creation of reproduction, but reproduction is always just a form, and even if it is accurately reproduced, it cannot guarantee that the artistic expression will touch the soul and reach the audience on this side of the screen. When it comes to biopics, it is unavoidable that this year's "Oppenheimer", which is also written by the director. 
Nolan once said of the filming method of "Oppenheimer" as a biopic that every film is different, and the shooting method is "uncertain": ".What you'll find good about them is that they hardly feel like biographical films. Lawrence of Arabia is an adventure film, and Citizen Kane is like a suspense film, and I've watched a lot of these movies over the years. Whether or not, as Nolan puts it, "make a biopic with a thriller", as he dissects himself: "In Oppenheimer, all the discussion of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos is actually the genre of the heist movie;And the third act of "Oppenheimer" is a courtroom drama, and the audience will want to see what the witnesses say, what evidence they provide, and whether they can overturn the case. It's how we use dialogue, using them to create drama and pleasure, rather than simply throwing words at the audience. ”As a biopic, "Napoleon" is not a film that performs *** or elegiac tribute to the hero. Lei Gong is still playing with blockbusters, but this time Lei Gong didn't use too many techniques. As mentioned above, the whole film is two and a half hours long, and Lei Gong devotes a lot of space to the expression of Napoleon's pathos and the discussion of fate, all of which are pressed on Napoleon's emotional drama. The female perspective is used as a back-and-forth profile to intersperse the whole film, which is one of the points that presents a creator in his later years to think more deeply about fate, history and war. War drama too. Especially in the bloody battle of the ice lake, Napoleon, who was inferior in strength, first lured the enemy deep into the area of the ice lake, and then mobilized infantry, cavalry, and artillery to attack together, crushing the opponent in one fell swoop, showing amazing tactical acumen and excellent military leadership temperament. 
However, the glorious years of France and the history of defeat and sinking are like a long river with Napoleon as the valve, and only a few strokes have passed. The characters are much more inked than history, and history is more like a background cloth that provides the setting of the worldview. It's because Lei Gong wants to shoot it, it's one"Monsters of Corsica".A generation of emperors who decided the fate of France, and an ambitious god of war who influenced the world map, how his spiritual world was exiled to a remote desert island in the "tug of war" again and again. From 24 to 52 years old, from a plain face to a frosty body, from a foothold in the world to bathing in divine light, from saving the crisis to being exiled for the second time, thirty years of ups and downs have almost sung the most tragic historical songs. If you want to query Napoleon's mental state under Lei Gong's lens with one click, you will find that he is similar to too many ordinary people throughout the ages:Disturbed. Whether it is anger and grumbling in public at the dinner table, sweat beads and frowns on the battlefield, or resentment on the letter paper to his wife. He wasn't so absolutely confidentThe other side of his smug efforts is that he is unable to escape the nightmare entanglement, he is giving his best, and he is also trying hard, and the "reluctance" of this is that it is still difficult to support and make it more difficult to subdue the old authority in the coup d'état. Maybe he can't even be self-consistent, and can only fill his inner turmoil with constant battles. There are many scenes of literary drama in the whole film, Napoleon in front of people is radiant under the exquisite costume of this film, like a god high in ancient Greek mythology, and Napoleon is driven back from the exiled island, sitting next to his late wife's sickbed, his face is tired, wiping his nose with a handkerchief and the tears that he can't hold back in front of the maid. 
In Ridley's n-fold big close-ups, in Uncle Phoenix's curled eyelashes and deep pupils, that kindThe sense of unease behind the inflated ambitions, all overflowing the screen. Thanks to Uncle Phoenix Joaquin Phoenix, who has tried to be good and evil and intelligent over the years, he just used the role to revive his soul and hook out his most vigorous addiction to drama. HisTragic existential temperamentIt fits perfectly with it, and his screen image has always been like this-Loneliness, melancholy and mystery, a mixed temperament of contradictions, which made him go from the superhero film "Joker" to the romance film "She", it is simply that"Lonely Outsider".spokesperson of the . 
But Napoleon's fears seemed to fulfill the cosmic law of attraction, and he ultimately failed. And he should not have even dreamed that he would forever be used by posterity as a synonym for the defeat derived from his most failed campaign"Waterloo".With him** together. God gave him unrivaled ambition and generalization ability, and also gave him an unpredictable game of success and defeat. He was always exhausted and fiddled with the scales, because at the slightest moment, he would reveal a stiffness and uneasiness contrary to restraint and grace through his stubborn and superior speech and impermanence, and God seemed to mock him through this mismatch. Ridley Scott uses the melody and majestic classical music that weaves through the whole film to give this failure an infectious force with the compassion of later generations, and deconstructs the sense of fate of this mismatch. The entire two-and-a-half-hour film is like a journey of Napoleon's questioning, as he searches"Who am I"., while always reminding himself of the identity of an imperial general, he walked very compassionately towards the Waterloo of life - that is, he finally realized that his destiny was to be a marshal who led his soldiers to fight in all directions, and was destined to complete the confrontation with himself. What's even more rare is that Lei Gong deconstructs the grand narrative. The implantation of the civilian perspective is also a great means of deconstructing this heroic figure. Lei Gong did not hide the cost of the war, nor did he try to exonerate Napoleon. He captured the tragic sacrifice of too many innocent lives on the battlefield. In addition to summarizing Napoleon's life, the subtitles at the end of the film also list how many people died in his conquest of horses. Ridley Scott has always been a director who has a thorough observation of human natureIn the creation of biopics, he has a tolerant, compassionate and snarky mind, as well as a vision that can penetrate a soul without examining a character or a piece of history with a simple view of good and evil。In "Napoleon", it is not difficult to see the gaze and reflection of this old man on war and life. He saw the uneasiness in all ambitions, the humility in the majesty, which were inseparable. The kind of conquest and battle with himself, with intimacy, and with the world, has a romantic and dense texture under his lens. There is both glory from God and the desire to be burned red by hell. They are equally touching and equally tragic. This makes his "Napoleon" seem fair enough, so fair that the audience will definitely feel itMerit is not celebrated, but fault is not ridiculed, Lei Gong has always told the story in a way unique to the old man, and finished filming this biopic with a little compassion and banter. 
It is also foreseeable that audiences who are not so obsessed with military history will criticize the emotional scenes for being long and boring, pulling too much and lacking tension. Or question, behind the major wars brought out by words, the background history of the times that is not so well written. Admittedly, perhaps the most hilarious and exciting details are fictional, but fortunately, Lei Gong's level of control of the worldview** in the end few people can survive the magic of the duality between Ridley-esque films and this special history. Placing Napoleon in the context of all of Ridley's work and directorial career, the film bridges the eclectic and authorial sequence of Ridley's work, and it continues to write a closely connected chapter in previous works. Ridley, who is especially good at rendering the majestic epic atmosphere, visualizes the friction and confrontation of cold weapons in battles and games, the dusty aesthetics of war, and the temperature of human nature in "The Martian" that still craves humor and romance under extreme survival conditions, to the extreme in "Napoleon". 
Even, this one's emotional rendering of the characters also continues a kind of "Crazy Flower of the End".Women's perseverance and resistance
What is certain is that Napoleon foreshadows a later iconic chapter in Ridley Scott's sequence. Because in this work, the connections that may have been hidden in the past with other works become clearly visible in this work. This biographical film explores Napoleon Bonaparte's legacy in Napoleon, bridging the gap between his well-known predecessor and guaranteeing a new take his style to a new extreme. The 86-year-old Hollywood director at least continued to take bold steps with "Napoleon". As a person and a director, he is on the big screen, continuing to organize and break through himself.