Teamworking Day: Liddy and Schmidty's Napoleon, Parte One

Alex: Lydia! Thank you so much for watching this movie with me.

Lydia: Of Course! Thanks for suggesting this. Did your screening also begin with Anthony Anderson selling diabetes medicine, or is that just a Tennessee thing?

Alex: I wish my screening began with that because it would've been more useful and cogent than the film Napoleon. Also thank you for seeing this movie in your different U.S. state, but on the same Tuesday, at the same start time of 3:15 PM, without us coordinating that beyond “let’s see it this week unless we get busy.”

Lydia: I'm glad someone else got to experience this movie at that exact time besides me and the one other elderly gentleman in the theater.

Alex: What! I also saw it with one elderly gentleman and no one else.

Lydia: I bet it was the same guy. Every screening is haunted by one older white guy in a puffy vest, and he is NOT happy. Or maybe that's Ridley Scott watching over his masterpiece.

Alex: .....are we the same person? (Great if so)

Lydia: This Teamworking Day would be a mindblowing reveal. But yeah, it's not a good movie in any way, right? Can't recommend a single thing about it. Even the costumes are boring, which is INSANE.

Alex: Yes I want to reiterate that it is awesome, and great, that you willingly saw this. Because the critical consensus is that it stinks. It is also long. And after I read almost one thousand pages about Napoleon, plus his romance novel he wrote, I decided Napoleon was a big sack of garbage. The main reason I wanted to see the movie is that I read the movie frames him as garbage. It hates him! Which is the exact kind of Napoleon movie I want. Having now seen it, for what felt like ten hours, the movie does deliver on the pooping on Napoleon. But is also a serious-faced, psychedelic mess of a movie, without being as fun as that sounds. Napoleon is the best Napoleon movie ever made AND the worst Napoleon movie anyone ever could make.

Lydia: Yes! Watching a depiction of Napoleon as a gross little troll also interested me, but the reviews repelled me. I've read some Napoleon stuff, and he's very clearly a weird dude. I was hoping for something like The Favourite. I love it when people don't take history too seriously and point out how strange and gross a lot of the stuff we don't typically talk about was, so this idea of weird Napoleon has a lot of potential. Then, sitting there in the theater, I think it's impossible to figure out if the intention is for it to be a comedy or a drama. There are some very clearly comedic moments, and then there's a lot of digging into corpses and exploding horses—things that don't typically make me chuckle.

Alex: Hey Stanley Kubrick! Great news! Your dream project happened (a Napoleon movie), and it's one million times worse than a movie about Queen Anne.

Lydia: Absolutely! This man led such an interesting life, and somehow I didn't care about any of the shit that was going on because I had no emotional attachment to anyone. I didn't even know their names. It felt like other than Napoleon and Josephine, there were no characters in this movie with an enormous cast. They were constantly putting up text on screen explaining, this is Gus Vangloopderberg, The Third Earl Of Penis, and then Gus would get assassinated five minutes later because they're covering so much history in such a relatively short amount of time.

Alex: Now I wish I quizzed my theater’s vested elder about the minor characters. "Who is Robespierre? You have seven seconds before he dies."

Lydia: Hahaha, yes, a lot of them were incredible characters. I loved the bit with Robespierre! That's someone I instantly googled later. Robespierre's suicide was a weirdly funny suicide. It was clearly played for laughs, right?

Alex: This is why your question of "sad comedy/funny drama" is so good. I have no idea. Dear Reader, Dearest Hotdogger, this movie has a scene climaxing with a guy shooting himself in the head. When I watched that, I didn't know how I was supposed to feel about it, and I barely knew who the character was, and it felt like a throwaway. Which is (to quote Napoleon, probably) “le batshit”! You don’t blow past blowing out brains. Most movies make their Head Goes Kablooey Sequences a little clearer and more meaningful. It’s a big moment. It's not, say, an establishing shot of a house.

Lydia: At the end, they have a death toll for Napoleon as if to say, "Look at this terrible monster. Look what he did," but so much of the violence in the movie is played for comedy. Plus, you could tell Ridley Scott loved making the battle scenes. Those scenes felt like they were fun to make. I think that's mainly what he was there for. I've watched a couple of interviews to see his response to criticism of the film, and all I learned were some fun new old man swears.

Alex: Yeah! Sean, please make this quote a big picture for everybody:

Lydia: He's told several people to shut the fuck up about this movie, and none of them should have. That response is so funny to me. You can't make up whatever you want about history and say who knows you weren't there. We certainly don't have any evidence that Napoleon DIDN'T cannon the pyramids. We have the pyramids, Ridley—my man.

Alex: Yes but I think you'll find you are not 300 years old.

Lydia: Right, only three hundred-year-olds get an opinion. Henry Kissinger almost made it.

Alex: I want to just remember the parts of this movie. There are so many. There are too many. The movie is nearly Napoleon's entire life, crammed into a movie where half the movie is weird emotional dom/sub stuff between Napoleon and his wife. It's somehow boring and a blur all at once. Our description of it will sound like a weird dream. It’ll take us two whole columns to explore it (parte two this Thursday!) because we can’t skip any horse explosions or sex-horse impressions. Lydia, you’re in the same boat as me, right? Watching this movie felt like forcing my mind to do middle school gym class wind sprints.

Lydia: Exactly. There are almost no lines, barely anything happens, and it covers three of the most influential decades of French history.

Alex: Scene one: French revolutionaries cut off Marie Antoinette's head. Napoleon sees this from afar and makes an unclear face about it. Scene two: Napoleon speaks! He has a wormy American accent. It turns out Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of this French-ish general is “Joaquin Phoenix, sad/mad teenager.”

Lydia: Scene three: Napoleon is instantly in love with Josephine for no reason, and she hates his hat.

Alex: Almost every scene involves weird hat physical comedy! Multiple scenes feel like there was no script and they asked Joaquin to invent a hat joke. Like friggin Harpo Marx.

Lydia: The hat is constantly in the way. We all think of Napoleon as the weird hat guy, and I love that the movie assumes even back then, everyone was like, "Napoleon? The hat guy?" That feels true to me.

Alex: Rough draft of his regnal emperor name: "Hats McCorsica”

Lydia: Yes! That is totally how the aristocracy saw him—the Corsican thug with terrible fashion sense. Also, I think the very first place the movie went wrong was casting Joaquin Phoenix to play Napoleon at every age. They should have done two Napoleons. He's 49, and the movie begins when Napoleon is in his early 20s.

Alex: Yeah and he's so old looking at the beginning. Before meeting Josephine, he does one sneak attack on a fort. Where they show him being nervous beforehand. But he looks like a nervous middle-aged man. Like how Tim Robinson characters have Teen Boy energy but old faces.

Lydia: I wrote down "he looks like a tired gym teacher."

Alex: In the battle, while nervous, Napoleon’s horse gets shot in the... chest? Is that the middle front part? We get a long, lingering shot of the horse taking a cannonball to its middle-front and dying in agony. This moment gets more screen time than most of French history.

Lydia: Then he digs the cannonball out with his bare hands and says "a present for mother." This is how they open the movie: beheading, horse murder, jokes.

Alex: Yes! Also thank you! Napoleon digs the cannonball out of his horse, post-battle, and says to everyone around him "a present for mother." Thank you for confirming he shouts “a present for mother.” I was pretty sure I was being mean to the movie and misheard the line. But no! The movie tells us it’s time to start loving this chaos goblin, because his name is the movie title and them’s the rules.

Lydia: So he's supposed to be around 26 when he meets Josephine and Josephine is 32, with two children and widowed because her husband was an aristocrat who got beheaded in the revolution.

Alex: I forgot she had children until right now. They're in the movie one time and then vanish until Josephine dies.

Lydia: Her daughter married Napoleon's brother and became the queen of Holland. Too boring for the movie.

Alex: Yes! And one of Napoleon's generals became King of Sweden, and eventually went to war with Napoleon. Is this in the movie? No. Too boring. Takes time away from the horse gristle fancam.

Lydia: Gotta get that horse gristle. Gotta please the Hat Fans.

Alex: Also: are we the only two Americans who know anything about Napoleon at all? I feel like this movie refused to tackle the challenge of "here is who this is." They're asking America to get super excited about (as presented) the least charming French jackboot-wearer ever to stare at people weird. He never does a good or cool thing.

Lydia: Yes! It feels like a hit piece that would have gone over great in 1816. In 1816 this movie would have fucking killed. Everyone would have known who Gus Vangloopderberg was and they would go wild when he got exploded by three cannons.

Alex: Yeah! Plus, giving him an American accent! It's like giving George Washington a French accent. I refuse to google it, but I am confident French people hate this movie even more than we do.

Lydia: It was a bizarre choice, but also, I don't think Joaquin could handle the accent, and I appreciate being spared it. I don't think he's a bad actor at all, but man, he was terrible in this movie. Josephine acted circles around him. If Joaquin was also like, "Haw haw, I've got ze silly hat and ze mommy issue haw haw," I would have walked out.

Alex: (Napoleon looks directly at the screen) “Haw haw! Tonally, zees cinéma eez intended to be a sad comedy. Question answered mon frere.”

Alex: Next scenes: Josephine gets out of prison. There is one scene where she just walks through an empty messy street, wearing an Assassin's Creed cloak. Then (as mentioned) she meets Napoleon and negs him and extra-negs his hat. Later, she sends her son to get her dead husband's sword from Napoleon, as a meet-cute between her and Non-Cute Napoleon. In another scene, they discuss their stations in life. As the discussion progresses, Josephine dramatically presents her vulva to Napoleon.

Lydia: "Look down and you'll see a surprise" is the line. I thought...is it surprising? I bet he can guess.

Alex: hahaha. Yes! Get a better magic act Josie. Also, the next moment after Napoleon sees Josephine’s arc de triomphe, the movie cuts to Napoleon using cannons to murder a crowd of protesters.

Lydia: Do you think the movie thought it was edgy and cool to flip back and forth so rapidly between their weird sex and then gore? Is Ridley Scott not aware that’s been done? Was that the point of that, I guess?

Alex: Yeah I think they thought it's edgy and also good writing and also making Josephine equally important. They achieve none of that! But there was definitely a meeting where everyone slapped each other on the back for doing a great job making Josephine half the movie. She is not half the movie, and dies long before the end of the movie. Everyone at the meeting was male.

Lydia: Totally. That weird meet cute is the one scene that makes Josephine seem smart, and I think that was her main quality. Pretty much everyone in history agrees that she was not that into Napoleon, but he was so into her, and she knew how powerful he was going to become. She was like, "Fine, I'll marry the hat guy." That's a smart woman who's willing to sacrifice for her future.

Alex: “He’s on the verge of getting such a bigger hat.” Yeah the movie makes it seem like both of them have a Sid & Nancy thing going. Extreme passion for each other in sudden bursts. But there's also a rapid fire sequence of 1) N marries J 2) J begins to cheat on N 3) J kind of ignores N while he has sex with her 4) N makes himself feel better by shooting a pyramid with a cannon. It's very confusing and it makes J less cool than she was!

Lydia: Fully ghosting the ruler of France is such a bad bitch move. He left town for a while, and she basically forgot about him like a high schooler at summer camp, and he got really sad about it. So sad, according to Ridley Scott, the pyramids had to suffer!

Alex: Yes Napoleon is shown obliterating one of today’s famous pyramids with a cannon. I hope Ridley Scott thinks the pyramids are now rubble and the Sphinx is gleaming, intact, full-nosed.

Lydia: Hahaha I bet he does.

Alex: While in Egypt, Napoleon sees a mummy. He puts his hat on the mummy and it kind of tips over and everyone in the scene thinks Napoleon is being cringe. That’s really a scene in the movie.

Lydia: Constant hat jokes. I thought they were going to yell at him not to poke the mummy. Wait, did we miss the part where he forces the French Council to resign? I have no idea where that goes in the story, but we cannot forget about, "I AM ENJOYING A SUCCULENT BREAKFAST."

Alex: I also wrote that in my notebook, in all caps, in a dark movie theater. I even turned my phone screen on, to be a little mini light, to make sure I got every word down legibly. Vest-Elder said nothing.

Lydia: See, there are certain beats designed to be traps for people like us. That is so funny! I'm watching a coup, and I'm friggin dying laughing. The hat stuff's the same way. If we'd pitched "Napoleon, but his hat keeps falling off" to Hollywood, National Lampoon would have bought it in a second.

Alex: National Lampoon’s Hat Wilder

Lydia: Hat Wilder!

Alex: And its sequel The Rise Of SUCCULENT BREAKFAST Man. One of the most memorable parts of this movie about one of history’s “greatest” men is a character we see just one time, bellowing “I am enjoying a succulent breakfast.” Here’s how we get there: after Napoleon tips a mummy over, his friend in Egypt tells him Josephine is cheating on him. Napoleon is too stupid to understand his friend is not joking. Then Napoleon deserts the French army to confront Josephine. They both do mega-intense I-mega-love-you dry heaving at each other. They take turns commanding each other to say they are nothing, and dirt, and other "I am a worm" freak stuff. Next, Napoleon overthrows the government of France in a coup. When this coup happens, Ridley Scott painstakingly shows five different guys getting commanded to "resign" in the morning. Every one of them is eating a breakfast or walking to a breakfast. The movie takes pains to depict whether each of them eats, skips it, or runs for his life. One of them defiantly eats while shouting “I AM ENJOYING A SUCCULENT BREAKFAST” at his imminent executioners.

Lydia: I bet Succulent Breakfast Man won nineteen historic battles and invented French Math but we'll never hear about it.

Alex: Succulence Erasure. After that, Napoleon shows up to the government meeting where he'll complete the coup. Most of the guys at the meeting surround him and beat him up.

Lydia: He yells, "YOU ARE VIOLATING THE CONSTITUTION" and then sucker punches someone in the face.

Alex: Then he wriggles away, falls down three different sets of stairs, and begs his brother to send bigger guys with guns to solve it for him.

Lydia: Then, to rally the troops, his brother puts a sword to Napoleon's throat and says, "I will kill my brother if he doesn't do right by France," and they both do an obvious comedy shrug at each other, but somehow that works. This is one of roughly three lines his brother, a hugely important figure in his life, has in the movie. Imagine Benny Hill music behind that whole thing.

Alex: Next, Napoleon rules France. We see him trying to dictate a speech while being bad at shaving his face and cutting himself real big. Later, he handles a diplomatic meeting with a British leader by shouting "YOU THINK YOU'RE SO GREAT BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS."

Lydia: Alex, you know I wrote down "YOU THINK YOU'RE SO GREAT BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS." That's another comedy trap.

Alex: Simultaneously, across America, our two Vest Elders saw the glow of a phone screen.

Lydia: He also cries a little when he says it. If Joaquin gets the Oscar it should be for that scene. That's the scene they show at the ceremony.

Alex: I hope all five nominees do a "yell about boats" scene in their movie. The nominee list becomes a Boat Yell Masterclass.

Lydia: That would end in the first five-way tie in Oscar history.

Alex: Next, Napoleon shows up to Josephine's bed chamber. He expresses a desire to have sex with her by cowering in the corner of the room, not saying words, and doing an impression of a horny horse. Or at least a horny hoofed animal? Lots of stamping and vague whinny-muttering. Then they have bad sex. Next, they're eating at a table and he shouts "WHY AREN'T YOU PREGNANT."

Lydia: You're definitely going to have to keep us on track as far as when they placed things in the movie because, in my mind, it's sort of like sketch comedy. All of the scenes are a jumble that don’t need to connect in any way.

Alex: "All of the scenes are a jumble that don't need to connect in any way." -- writer/director Ridley Scott? A lot of the scenes feel like they weren’t filmed with knowledge of the previous or next scene. Like after the horny horse scene, at the dinner table scene, Napoleon follows up his “WHY AREN’T YOU PREGNANT” with an impression of a horny dog. Then he pulls Josephine under the table to have sex. There are four servants ringing the table.

Lydia: They're just like, “Yup it's a Tuesday at Casa Napoleon.”

Alex: The “I’m a horny dog” Napoleon scene is very close on the heels (paws?) of the “I’m a horny horse” Napoleon scene.

Lydia: Napoleon: freaky little sex guy is a key movie chunk. Probably a good third of the film.

Alex: Everyone reading this should see this movie and also never see this movie. Do both things at once. Do both things before we return… Thursday! For the rest of the film, plus more history, and how they could’ve gotten this right.

Lydia: And probably no further “French general doing animal impressions as foreplay” scenes.

Alex: We’re almost pretty sure.

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