If men cannot stop thinking about the Roman Empire practically every day, according to the latest digital legend, Ridley Scott is to blame. “Ha!” exclaims the British filmmaker, assuming such responsibility with half a laugh. No regrets. “In Hollywood they said he was crazy when I decided to do Gladiator. Swords and sandals films, they disdainfully criticized any story that had to do with the Oman Empire, a genre that was not popular at the time. Until I rolled mine.
Now it seems funny to me because, in some way, it was like reinventing the wheel, metaphorically speaking,” he concedes regarding the film that turned the Hispanic general and gladiator Máximo Décimo Meridio into a noble icon, a heroic global reference of a certain masculinity, two decades ago. long. “An academic from the University of Oxford even wrote me the letter that I liked reading the most. 'Thank you very much for making this film,' he thanked me, because despite the historical inaccuracies, of which he was aware, he had managed to revive interest in the subject. There you have the tremendous plus of cinema, its way of educating, even if indirectly. At least, I try,” he says.
Late in directing his sequels, right now Scott – prolific as never before at just turned 86 – is embarking on a second twist on the last days of men's favorite empire. A continuation of Gladiator with the ubiquitous Paul Mescal heading the poster of a blockbuster that smells like a million-dollar box office a year before its release. Because, as he will repeat throughout the conversation, why not. For example, ask: Why a new Napoleon? Answer: “Why not?”
He could have left it there, with the sly half-smile twisted on his lips, but he has the detail to develop, which here we have all come to play: “I think I have never stopped thinking about him since The Duelists [1977, his debut in the feature film], which took place during the Napoleonic Wars, although he did not even appear. In reality, the story was about class inequality, which was what structured his army. One day he recruited workers and poor peasants, and the next, aristocrats. He wasn’t smart or anything, dude.”
“Every soldier hides a general's baton in his backpack,” says an old war aphorism. Kitbag (duffel bag in English) was what Ridley Scott's Napoleon was first going to be called, as it began to take shape in 2020. From the fight for survival in outer space (Alien, 1979; Prometheus, 2012) to civil strife and genocide (Black Hawk Down, 2001), through religious conflict (Kingdom of Heaven, 2005; Exodus: Gods and Kings, 2014), the anti-drug crusade (American Gangster, 2007), terrorism (Network of Lies, 2008 ), the battle for honor (The Last Duel, 2021) and even the one in the bedroom (House of Gucci, 2021), war is, in this case, a constant that does not give truce in the filmography of the director, producer and screenwriter British, who has held the title of Sir since New Year's Eve 2002.
Is social conflict then what interests you? She had the impression that his fascination with war came from his father, who was a colonel in the armed forces.
Eeeeeeh [stretches the interjection into a whistle]… No. Look, war only has bad things, very bad. But bad things come out with good stories to tell.
He is talking, of course, about cinematographic material. The reflection he makes next is a full-fledged anti-war statement: “In wars, everyone loses, even the winners. There are no advantages for anyone at all. Right now, we have two that polarize the world, and in both of them we all lose. Don't you think that's crazy?" Napoleon, sorry for the spoiler that is not, ends with the count, red on the fade to black, of the bodies left on the European battlefields by the 11 years of violent escalation of the first French empire, between 1804 and 1815: more than three million dead. “And that is counting only the military, because with civilians the figure would double, at least,” adds his director.
The current situation drives the sociopolitical reading of the film, which Scott tries to avoid: “What interested me was to recover that critical background of The Duelists. The truth is that there has never been a successful movie about Napoleon. They have all caused problems. I think one of the reasons why Stanley Kubrick couldn't carry out his project was because of the failure of Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo [defeated at the box office in 1970]. So I thought, why not me?”
At the moment, his $200 million Napoleonic bounty may not be considered a blockbuster, but it's close. This is supported by the almost 80 million collected in the first five days of exhibition in cinemas. And this despite the many criticisms: that the narrative is rushed, that it is excessively long, that it has large historical errors. “But, let's see, what does anyone know,” says the latter. “There are 2,500 books written about Napoleon. One for each week after his death. How much speculation and inaccuracy there will be in them. Furthermore, veracity is not the issue either, but whether you have enjoyed the story.” His ignores the part of the Iberian invasion of the French troops, I forget that quite a few have blamed him for these payments.
The premiere of the film in Spain, however, was orchestrated at the Prado Museum in Madrid, with much fanfare and a guided tour for the director and his protagonist, Joaquin Phoenix, through the rooms dedicated to Goya. “I couldn't afford it, it was financially unaffordable. The tax benefits of filming in your country are not so good, they return only 30 percent for every million invested. In France it is even worse. In the United Kingdom it is 40 percent. And the big production companies look at every last cent. That is the most honest answer I can give you,” he explains.
And, then, a Spanish compliment is given: “I have shot four films in Spain, which fascinates me. I am a little part of your lives [laughs]. I was amazed by Salamanca when we shot 1492. The Conquest of Paradise, which is one of my favorites, although it didn't work very well, I guess people didn't see a Frenchman, Gérard Depardieu, as Columbus. I adore Depardieu to death. Sigourney Weaver, on the other hand, I do consider that he was very good in type like Isabel La Católica.”
From the portrait he paints, I get that he doesn't like Napoleon, the man, at all.
I admire his balls, the balls he gave him. And the great intuition he had, despite certain erroneous strategies. The same ones, by the way, that Hitler would later repeat. Otherwise, he was irritating.
Don't you think Josefina would have provided you with better material as the protagonist?
Well, she is the most fascinating thing about Napoleon Bonaparte. Without it, everything would be more boring. You see, the action scenes alone are boring. Those about sex, too, unless sex is legitimized in the narrative. The best thing she could do for him was to contrast her figure with him. Josefina was his Achilles heel. She mastered the art of grace, she was all grace; He was a successful guy, on every level, even in his darkest moments as a dictator, but he was completely graceless. And that was what captivated him about her. She went beyond the sexual.
Sometime starting in January 2024, Napoleon will be streaming fodder. Apple TV has funded part of the feature and claims its broadcast rights. Then the four-hour and ten-minute version will be seen, almost double the one released in theaters, thus correcting, they say, narrative gaps and leaps. What it will gain in duration it will inevitably lose in spectacularity, designed for the big screen, like that recreation of the battle of Austerlitz, the cannonballs detonating the frozen lake, the blood of soldiers and horses scattered like a watercolor. Scott's trademark, the look also educated for production design, a filmmaker who still draws his scenes, who for some reason trained for art at the Royal College of Art in London
Do you think cinema has found its Waterloo on streaming platforms?
It seemed like the end, but Apple and the others have realized that both formulas can work at the same time, that there is business. We must thank Tom Cruise for standing up when they tried to release Top Gun: Maverick only on streaming. At first, Napoleon was going to be released in only 50 theaters in the United States. For that don't count on me.
