Reviews

Royal Albert Hall has a seating capacity of almost six thousand arranged in a circle of serried ranks and levels.

Tamara and I sat in the Upper Tier to watch a performance, the second time we had been to the Albert Hall within a week. The first time was to watch a Spanish-inspired evening that included Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez and Ravel’s Bolero. Well, Ravel was not exactly Spanish. He was French, but he had Swiss and Basque heritage.

Truth is, I wasn’t that taken with that first evening. It was good, but just a bit too languid, which I put down to the conductor lacking bite. I guessed as much before the start, because he didn’t have the hair for a conductor. Take my word for it, conductors generally have plenty of good hair, which they need to control an orchestra.

Not so with this second visit. If you think the Scots are staid, watch the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with Thomas Søndergård conductor. He was excellent. They were excellent. At some points watching him with his whole body moving and seeing the violin section moving together, it was like the sea.

After the interval, the music was given over to just one piece – Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G minor ‘The Year 1905’.

It is long and it starts out very quietly and continues quietly for a long time until it builds into something louder and stronger and stronger. And then, boy, does it hammer out music that is unrelenting and unforgiving. And all this without a particularly strong or memorable melody.

As the programme has it “the work’s four movements pay vivid homage to the First Russian
Revolution, plunging listeners into the violence of its Bloody Sunday massacre and the grief and anger that followed.”

Shostakovich composed it in 1957, after the death of Stalin in 1953. And as I was listening, I was thinking of the composer’s life hanging by a thread during Stalin’s life.

In 1936 Stalin walked out of Shostakovich’s opera, and two days later an unsigned article appeared in the State newspaper, Pravda, condemning the music. A year later Shostakovich composed a piece that restored his reputation. Throughout the war and through the long siege of Leningrad, his Symphony No. 7 was effectively the country’s anthem.

It didn’t last long, and in 1948 his music was decreed to be anti-people and he was forced to apologise and keep a low profile. Then,, another change, and after Stalin’s death, he composed Symphony No, 10, as his payback in music describing the brutality of Stalin’s Russia.

So then at the Albert hall, as we were listening to Symphony No. 11 in G minor ‘The Year 1905’, which I had never heard before, I was thinking about the terror he endured for years and years, about how he managed not just to stay alive, but to thrive.

The symphony lasts about an hour, and there are points in the music when it sounds like a warning, the kind that makes you stop and prick up your ears and be on the alert and ready.

It reminded me of the theme music by James Horner for the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates. A quick search, and yes, Horner drew on Shostakovich’s music for the score. Unbelievable that it was 2001. How time flies.

Contains spoilers… lots of spoilers.

Other reviewers don’t seem to have like it, in the main.

I’ll talk about the weak points first.

There’s the clumsy opening in Reptile with Ben Nichols (Benicio del Toro) having cut his hand. It seemed so obviously made to encourage us to think that maybe he was the killer, and that therefore it was one of ‘those’ kinds of films.

And the sloughed off snakeskin that was irrelevant to the plot line and yet the film is entitled Reptile. Why?

It’s not 100% clear that it was Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) and not one of his co-conspirators who killed his girlfriend. The killer stabbed her many times. The film kind of pushes it that it was Grady. So how would he be able to leave the scene without leaving traces of himself on the victim?

And how would he be able to avoid having blood from the victim on his clothes, on himself and/or in his car when he left the scene? Oh of course, she wasn’t killed there. She was killed at that other place – the church with the calcimine paint that was found on her hand. That explains why the walls in the house weren’t covered in blood. But then how did the killer(s) manage to get her body into the bedroom in the house without leaving traces of her everywhere?

And why not just leave her body in the church? Why bother putting her body in the house at all?

They took swabs for DNA and all they found on the body was hair from a wig? And what wig? It is never mentioned again.

And why was there no follow-up, no investigation of how Nicol’s partner Dan Cleary (Ato Essandoh) let a suspect grab his gun?

Would the villains have shot Captain Robert Allen (Eric Bogosian) right there in a house full of people with kids playing outside? They would at least have to clear up. They would at least remove any doubt in Nicol’s mind about what might then happen. So surely the villains would have saved shooting there own there, and done it in a better time and place.

In the finale, did the kids playing outside not hear the first shot when the villains turned on their own? Did the kids not hear the next shot? Was it only when the third man was down that they crowded up to the window? Well, maybe.

That’s a lot of weak points. They should hire me to spot them before they wrap up films.

Despite All

Despite these little dents in the story – the strong points are very strong. The arc of the story reads like lives lived in a small town. And the pieces fall in and put the story together well.

Benicio del Toro is a joy to watch. I think he was wearing a wig. That’s a lot of hair. But who knows.

The little things, like the earring he wore at the dinner with friends. Then in the car on the way to the crime scene he removes it. And the way he leaned back, smiling, in the RV with is partner in the car dealer’s lot. Or the interactions with his wife – the language, the easy sexual closeness.

The finale when he confronts his bosses and the way that played out. That was convincing. That is except, would Wally (Domenick Lombardozzi) really have waited with gun cocked after Nicols shoots Chief Marty Graeber (Mike Pniewski)? Would he wait for old time’s sake?

Despite all these gaps and holes, for my money it’s a good film.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall for this one. Joaquin Phoenix effectively played the Joker part again in frozen stillness, only coming alive when he was playing the tactician of battles or rushing into the fray wild eyed and mad like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.

Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby as Josephine has zero chemistry and she looked permanently surprised.

How did Ridley Scott not see that they were not a good match for the screen? How could he have portrayed them as such broken cardboard figures? Was he intending to show what a mismatched sham their relationship was? Is Napoleon intended as a cautionary tale? Maybe, but it wasn’t woven like that.

To the point, and the point at which the film and I properly parted company was when Napoleon is in Egypt on campaign (as you do) and is told that his Josephine has a lover. He returns home and is accused of deserting his campaign. He, seemingly outraged, counter-accuses his accusers of deserting the governance of France. In a stand-off he runs off, gathers troops (who are of course loyal to him) and fights back and turns the tables.

When his accusers in the Parliament corner him, he transitions from powerful to ‘oops’ in flash, and he reminded me of the Joker again – same mannerisms.

Leaving that to one side, the plot describes how if Josephine had not had a lover then Napoleon would not have returned from Egypt and the consuls could have continued to merrily run France into the ground.

It may have been so as historical fact, but as a presentation of storytelling it was weak.

So, the plot: Napoleon takes over France under the guise of ending the Terror and has lots of battles that meld into one. He bites off more than he chan chew when the Russians have the temerity to burn Moscow to deny the city to the French and to save the Russian army. And to cap it all they refuse to come to peace terms despite Napoleon waiting weeks for the surrender.

By then the Russian winter is approaching and at that point Napoleon goes north to St Petersburg, against the advice of his generals. That will be his undoing in Russia and when he returns to France.

The Russians beat the French in the battles of Tarutino and Maloyaroslavets, but neither is mentioned. We see that the winter forces him to retreat in defeat, but we see nothing of that horror.

Half of Napoleon’s army died in that retreat and we know the details of the frozen bodies on the road because it is all in the contemporary account, The Memoirs of Sergeant Burgoyne.

It is important to know because the survivors who retreated with Napoleon supported him again after the exile on Elba. Why was that? Was he a populist whom they preferred to the alternative? None of that is explained. And it should have been because it is important in understanding France of the period. This Boy’s Own version doesn’t give us an explanation.

Napoleon is exiled because of his defeat in Russia, so much is fact.

When he sails from Elba after less than a year in exile, his motley band of followers march with him. They meet the opposing forces and in one quick speech those opposing him change sides and join him. Just like that. And they march on Paris. Again – it might have been like that historically, but the way it was presented was a Monty Python version.

Then comes Waterloo.

I held my breath fearing that Rupert Everett as Wellington would not be able to hold a serious glance – but he did and he was great.

I came away thinking that so much money and time was spent on the reconstruction of the battles that there was no time to tell the story properly.

We hear Napoleon say that he wants to bring about universal peace. He fought everyone to bring that about. But countries changed sides. Allies became enemies and vice versa. Kings and emperors admired him, forged alliances with him and then betrayed him and defeated him.

Perhaps the message of the film was in there.

At the end of the film there was a tally of the dead:

He led 61 battles in his military career…
TOULON 6,000 dead
MARENGO 12,000 dead
AUSTERLITZ 16,500 dead
BORODINO 71,000 dead
WATERLOO 47,000 dead (one day)
INVASION OF RUSSIA 460,000 dead
1793-1815: over 3,000,000 dead

So what do we learn? That Napoleon was successful for a while but in the end he bit off more than he could chew. And in pursuit of his dream of peace under his banner he brought about the death of millions. Ah, we have been here before and again since then. When will we learn?

It starts with the burial ceremony for the sacred pipe as the Osage tribe realise their ways will not be followed by their children. And then a cute segue into the burial unearthing black gold and suddenly the Osage are the rich dudes enjoying everything the turn-of-the-century 1920s could bring.

And then there is a great slow pace development that places the central male character as a solder returning from the war, and the romance between the two lead characters – he and an Osage woman. Then it was ugly violence and I kept thinking that if it was not tinged by the romantic portrayal of the Osage Indians then would just be a gangsters versus civilians, and not much of a film for that. So, great potential but turned floppy.