2023-12-24 13:15:22
When great, aging American directors take on the great, old story, what does that do to their cinema and to history? This will be the subject of the last “Critical Mind” of the year 2023, returning to Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, two films which share the fact of taking their time to tell the time spent: 2 hours 40 minutes for the first, almost 3 hours 30 minutes for the second. And two films which are produced by Apple for almost 200 million dollars, which will be an opportunity to wonder if there is an aesthetic specific to the productions of the Californian platform, as it was possible to identify for the Netflix productions.
The action of Martin Scorsese’s twenty-seventh feature film, Killers of the Flower Moon, takes place at the beginning of the 20th century, when the rush for black gold created dizzying enrichments, including that of the indigenous Osage people, who own some of the land in Oklahoma where the oil flows. Except that the main representatives of this people die successively from a mysterious illness, before being more directly assassinated one after the other.
For this film adapted from a best-selling novel by David Grann entitled The American Note and based on an investigation that unearthed this little-known story, Martin Scorsese reunites with his two favorite actors, Leonardo Di Caprio and Robert de Niro. The film was released in theaters in mid-October and will be available on the Apple platform.
Napoleon is the latest production by Ridley Scott, 86 years old and dozens of feature films under his belt, including The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner or Gladiator, but also Robin Hood, 1492, Kingdom of Heaven or The Last Duel more recently . The cinematographic and chronological story follows the journey of Bonaparte and Joséphine, passing through the major historical stages which marked the dictator’s journey, whether it be the coronation or the battle of Austerlitz. The film was released in theaters at the end of November and will soon be available in an even longer version on the Apple platform.
To talk about it :
Alice Leroy, who writes for Cahiers du cinéma; Occitane Lacurie, member of the editorial board of the cinema magazine Débordements, doctoral student in aesthetics and visual studies; Raphaël Nieuwjaer, who writes for Cahiers du cinéma and for Etudes.
“Critical Mind” is a podcast produced by Samuel Hirsch and recorded in the Gong studios by Karen Beun.
#History #cinema #Martin #Scorsese #Ridley #Scott