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History repeating >>
Ian Holm seizes power as Napoleon by JOANNE LATIMER
Historical figures have instant sympathy and back-history, while sparing the filmmaker the task of creating a wholly original character. Sounds like freeloading, doesn’t it? It’s much more noble for the director to stick to the plot than add fake little flourishes of drama to keep us interested. The other option is to go way out on a limb and dazzle us with leaps of the imagination. Director Alan Taylor (Palookaville) did the latter. He took such extreme liberties with the life of Napoleon that even humourless French military buffs will look like heels if they complain. The result, The Emperor’s New Clothes, is a harmless fantasy about Napoleon escaping St. Helena Island, with the help of an impostor, and selling watermelons in Paris. Yes, selling watermelons. Sir Ian Holm does an uncanny impersonation of Napoleon and the emperor’s would-be impostor. Only Holm—and possibly Bob Hoskins—could make this watchable and fun. Holm is priceless, particularly when he plays the impostor learning Napoleon’s mannerisms. He pulls it off, acting circles around the rest, and making audiences believe for a minute that a military megalomaniac like Napoleon could be distracted by a fetching peasant named Pumpkin (Iben Hjejle). She’s a poor widow in Paris. Napoleon, still on the lam, stays with her, waiting for word that his impostor on St. Helena has been revealed. News of his escape, he hopes, will cause an uprising. But the local nuthouse is full of men who think they’re Napoleon and Pumpkin starts to suspect he’s a wack-job. Egos and delusions clash, keeping things amusing. The amusement, however, is limited and squeaky clean, like the laughs you get from a made-for-TV movie. Let’s hope that the next Napoleon farce about the emperor’s final days plays something better than tube filler. : The Emperor’s New Clothes opens Friday, July 12 >> Movie Listings |
Is
it cheating? Is it a cheap trick to create alternate lives for historical
figures on film? Yes. It’s smarmy—unless the historical
fantasy is so far-fetched that charges of smarm and laziness don’t
hold. This was the case with Shakespeare in Love, and also with The
Emperor’s New Clothes, a film about Napoleon.