2023-11-21 20:51:46
“Technology companies think they are gods. This is fantastic but it’s also lethal. If you have children, don’t leave this to them,” says Ridley Scott emphatically while he holds in his hand an iPhone of one of the journalists summoned to the round table with the director and the actor. Joaquin Phoenix. “Let them climb a tree, fall, break an arm, but not this,” continues the director of Alien, Blade Runner o Thelma & Louise without caring that his last tape, Napoleonhas been financed precisely by Apple TV+, the manufacturer of that device.
“The platforms of streaming they have made a mistake in the business plan and even Bloomberg has told them that they have made a big mistake. His idea was to close the theaters and make people pay a sum per month to see all the movies they want, but that was not a good solution. How many movies do you release per month? Fifteen? The problem is that, with the theatrical release of just one of them, they made more money,” explains Scott, who has paralyzed the release of Napoleon for ten months until Apple TV+ refused to release it directly on home platforms. “In this time I have already shot half of Gladiator 2but I preferred to wait ten months because I told them that we could not release the film directly in streaming, had to be released in theaters. In the end We put the distribution out to competition, Sony won it, and now we premiere in fourteen thousand theaters and four hundred IMAX. Those at Apple have realized that it was the right thing to do and we are all delighted.”
At 85 years old, Ridley Scott is back from everything. An attitude resulting from a long and solid career that is not exactly the result of luck or improvisation. When he shot his first movie, The duelistshad already turned forty and had a good part of the more than three thousand advertisements that he has filmed. One of them, 1984made precisely for the Apple brand in the year of the title, is preserved in the archives of the MoMa in New York.
Cinema is not like a sport where you win or lose. The creative theme, writing, painting, making music, is different and only self-criticism counts. The rest are opinions.”
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“I shot the first ad for Steve Jobs and it rocked it, so I’m quite proud of it,” says Scott, who is aware of his value as a filmmaker and the importance that really needs to be given to criticism. “For years, I’ve had the ‘director’s cut’ [el derecho por contrato a decidir el montaje]. That means that, although I take into account the studio and the people who finance the films, to the point that, Since I am very decisive, I tend to spend less than estimated in the budget, the final version of the film is mine. Then you have to understand that cinema is not like a sport in which you win or lose. The creative theme, writing, painting, making music, is different and only self-criticism counts. The rest are opinions. I’m already very critical of my work, so when bad reviews come in, I tell them ‘screw them’ and move on. “The only thing I think about at this point in my career is what trouble I’m going to get into next and make it fun.”
Rigor vs. fun
Napoleon has been one of the great themes in the history of cinema, which has approached the characters from very different points of view, from documentary to comedy, through melodrama or the war genre. The last of these approaches has been that of Ridley Scott, whose work has not been well received by historians, who accuse the British director of lack of historical rigor for, for example, incorporating into the footage a scene of the French artillery bombarding the pyramids of Egypt with cannons or citing as the emperor’s last words “France, the Navy, Josephine”, when there are experts who, for decades, consider that this version is more the result of propaganda than historical truth.
“More than two thousand books have been written about Napoleon. That’s one book a week since his death. I think the only character who has had more written about him is Christ. If you take all that information, you have to be aware that There must be a lot of speculation. That’s why I focused more on the letters, which allow us to better understand the relationship that Napoleon had with Josephine. Letters that were somewhat childish, especially when it comes to sexuality, and in which the soldier shows himself as a very vulnerable person with respect to her,” explains Ridley Scott, who does not deny that, at the time to bring all that material to the big screen, sought a balance between historical accuracy and funsomething for which the freedom of the actors when facing their characters has been very important.
“I shoot with four cameras. That gives the actors a certain freedom and allows them to improvise. Although there is always a script, improvisation usually generates good things and Joaquin loves to work like that. For example, Vanessa Kirby [Josefina en la película] “I had no idea that in the breakfast scene he would throw her out of her chair and put her under the table,” recalls Ridley Scott, who maintains a special relationship of complicity with Phoenix, whom he already directed in Gladiatormore than two decades ago.
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“I was an inexperienced kid and he allowed me to discover what I wanted to do with my character, sometimes by instinct and sometimes by the research I had carried out,” recalls Joaquin Phoenix. “What I didn’t know at the time was that this way of working was not so common. I was not aware that it is not normal that you can do whatever you want, because I didn’t even know that it took two hours to light a scene. If you suddenly decided to do the scene in a different place on the set, you had to set it all up again. In that sense, Scott has been very important for my development as an actor and, although he has given me a lot of freedom, it is also true that, if something doesn’t work, he tells you and goes back to the original idea,” explains the performer, who To build the character he has tried to give it a new approach that moved away from the historical biopic.
“The truth is that I knew very little about Napoleon. I left high school very early and at that time I didn’t have much interest in history because I didn’t know how it could benefit me. Then, obviously, I have made a lot of films and I would have liked to go a little deeper. In this case, I have focused on the personal accounts of her relationship with Josefina that, I confess, I have not yet understood very well. I don’t know what they saw in each other, beyond the fact that they had qualities that the other did not possess. She, for example, was very good socially, she had a network of contacts and he, however, was very strange at that level,” says Phoenix, who recognizes the difficulty of showing a life as complex as that of Napoleon and more. even in a two and a half hour movie.
Throughout that time, Scott and Phoenix have enough time to make a succinct review of the French leader’s numerous war exploits and some of his life milestones. From the successful siege of the fortress of Toulon, to his death on the Island of Saint Helena, without forgetting his self-coronation as emperor, the spectacularly shot campaigns of Austerlitz, the invasion of Russia or the defeat at Waterloo. All this seasoned with the intense and stormy relationship that the little Corsican had with Josefinawith divorce included, due to the impossibility of conceiving a successor to continue the emperor’s lineage.
I am never satisfied with what I do. “If it were up to me, I would reshoot all the films I’ve already made.”
“I would like to have made a three-hour film just about the part of the coup d’état because there were a lot of things to put in there,” laments Phoenix, who is as critical as Scott when it comes to evaluating his work. “I am never satisfied with what I do. If it were up to me, I would reshoot all the films I have already made. I always think that I would like to have done more or expressed more… What I am proud of is the work we have dedicated to the film, the day-to-day effort, of the actors, of the joint work of the technicians…”, he comments. the actor who, while recognizing the fascination that a character like Napoleon can generate in an actor, is also critical of an extremely ambitious and authoritarian character.
“That desire to possess, to want material things above universal rights, is something that we can see in many people, not only in political leaders. I don’t know what the source is that makes that come out in human beings, but I think that You need a type of consciousness that makes you go a little beyond that materiality. In his case, Napoleon was a son of the Revolution, his principles were to care for the people above the aristocracy. In the end, he turned the tables on all that and It is no longer that it benefited the aristocracy, but that it benefited only those in his family, like when in Spain he removed the king and put in his brother. In any case, they are profiles that can be found in different places in society, including this room.”
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