David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Tahar Rahim’

Napoleon

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Rupert Everett, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Tahar Rahim, Sinead Cusack, Ben Miles, Paul Rhys, Ludivine Sagnier, Jannis Niewohner, Julian Wadham, Miles Jupp, Edouard Philipponat

Running Time: 2 hours and 38 minutes

Film Review: 9 out of 10

Oscar nominated veteran director Ridley Scott (Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) helms this meaty historical drama Napoleon, which is magnificent held together by two multifaceted performances by Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) as Napoleon and Oscar nominee Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman) as his wife, lover and soul mate Josephine.

Napoleon is a monumental film starting off with the bloody execution of the last Queen of France Marie Antoinette in 1793 and ending with the completely mind-blowingly epic Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Amidst this vast historical backdrop of war and political intrigue is the scandalous romance of the 19^th century the gorgeous and tragic love story of Napoleon and Josephine.

Napoleon a tough, charismatic military general from Corsica in post-revolutionary France proves his military ingenuity and his strategic thinking in securing France’s position in an unstable Europe post the shocking and bloody French Revolution. That Corsican ruffian who skilfully eyed an historic opportunity to seize power in the confusion of the last days of the Reign of Tower by Robespierre, swiftly and efficiently rises to power to crown himself Emperor of France. With ruthless decisiveness, Napoleon seizes power through a military coup, compensating for his abandonment of the Egyptian campaign running from 1798 to 1801, in which France tried to conquer Egypt and Syria against the Ottomans to secure trade interests.

There is a macabre scene in Napoleon when he confronts a mummy in Egypt, with the pyramids shimmering in the Mediterranean heat, whereby he takes off the shroud and reveals the skull sitting defiant staring at the Tyrant symbolically revealing to the French Emperor how much death he will eventually cause.

Amidst massive battles at Austerlitz, Waterloo and the failed attack against the wily and clever Russian Tsar Alexander I wonderfully played by French-Finnish actor Edouard Philipponat, Napoleon’s tumultuous relationship with Josephine is intricately explored through his frustration at not being able to father a child with her.

From Josephine’s viewpoint she has chosen a ruffian, a stubborn brutish man who has changed her destiny and made her an Empress who she simultaneously adores and despises. Kirby and Phoenix are a perfect onscreen couple, their prickly energy is sexually attractive and equally complicated. Like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra, Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby portray a complicated and powerful onscreen couple, allowing audiences to watch their fascinating love affair unravel in spectacular fashion playing out on a world stage in which even 19^th century gossip columnists could not get enough of Napoleon and Josephine’s salacious love life, complicated by infidelity and infertility, neglect and sexual desire, divorce and estrangement.

Besides the talents of Phoenix and Kirby the rest of the cast is superbly chosen from British actress Sinead Cusack playing Napoleon’s mother Letizia Bonaparte (because let’s face it even tyrants have mothers) to Julian Rhind-Tutt (Blithe Spirit, Rush) as Sieyes and Ben Miles (Woman in Gold, Red Joan) as French politician Caulaincourt.

Others in the cast include Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian) as Paul Barras to the talented Rupert Everett (The Comfort of Strangers, A Royal Night Out, The Madness of King George) perfectly cast as the pompous but clever Duke of Wellington, the one adversary who Napoleon cannot defeat despite his best military efforts at the crucial battle of Waterloo in 1815.

As a cinematic epic, Napoleon is elevated by a tonally balanced screenplay by David Scarpa who captures the bizarre and brutal zeitgeist of the first heady years of the Napoleonic wars from 1800-18h15. Scarpa deserves an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

Napoleon is gorgeously shot with expert cinematography by Oscar nominated Polish cinematography Dariusz Wolski (News of the World) and superbly directed by Ridley Scott who captures the chaos of war, the brutality of one man’s ego and the glamour of ambition combined with the lust to control everything. Napoleon ends off with the battle of Waterloo and a brilliant scene between Joaquin Phoenix and Rupert Everett discussing Napoleon’s untimely exile to St Helena in the South Atlantic.

On every level, Napoleon is a charismatic historical film, a multifaceted and brutal epic, a diatribe on man’s bloodthirsty ambition to create empires and his lust for celebrity status on a world stage.

Napoleon is a historical epic made with a European flair and in the hands of a veteran director like Ridley Scott this film is superb and robust, held together by two extremely powerful performances by a charismatic Joaquin Phoenix and the beautiful Vanessa Kirby as the dynamic and ruthless power couple who elegantly presided over one of the bloodiest periods of European history at the start of the 19th century.

Visually impressive and beautifully acted, Napoleon deserves recognition at the 2024 Oscars and gets a film rating of 9 out of 10. Utterly astounding and highly recommended viewing but only for those that enjoy grand cinema in the tradition of such Oscar winning films as A Passage to India, The Last Emperor and Amadeus.

The Mauritanian

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley, Denis Menochet, Benedict Cumberbatch, Clayton Boyd, Langley Kirkwood

The Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald tackles a divisive subject in his latest film, The Mauritanian, which focuses on the mistreatment of inmates at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba run by the Americans post 9/11 for the rendition, capture and torture of suspected terrorists linked to the Twin Towers attack in New York in September 2001. 

The Mauritanian was shot in the Western Cape, South Africa in 2019 and features an international cast including French actor Tahar Rahim as the unfortunate prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Rahim’s performance is superb, displaying a levity which conceals the horrific torture that Slahi endured included waterboarding and psychological torture.

To add some significance to the cast, is another brilliant performance by two time Oscar winner Jodie Foster (The Accused, The Silence of the Lambs) as the hard-edged defence attorney Nancy Hollander who is joined by her young assistant Teri Duncan played by Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, The Fault in my Stars) to build a case for Slahi’s release.

Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) plays American military prosecutor Stuart Couch who is meant to convict Mohemedou Ould Slahi of colluding with the 9/11 terrorists in Germany back when he was living there. Couch’s prosecution rests on the assumption that Slahi is definitely guilty until all the redacted files on his capture and initial confession are released as privileged information for both sides of the law.

Told in a series of flashbacks to Slahi’s childhood in Mauritania which is a North West African country located at the edge of the Sahara Desert, The Mauritanian is a fascinating true story of one man’s wrongful detention and the years it took through justifiable legal processes to release him from Guantanamo Bay.

As a film based on a real life event, director Kevin Macdonald tends to over-emphasize the torture scenes, which are numerous and disturbing and under-emphasizes the American political climate in which the legal case was being conducted in.

Audiences must remember that The Mauritanian is a British film, which justifies the inexplicable casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as a quintessential American complete with a Southern accent. What holds this film together are the two diametrically opposed performances of Jodie Foster as defence lawyer Nancy Hollander and the outstanding Tahar Rahim as the client, Mohemedou Ould Slahi, a foreigner trapped in a strange prison which is above the law, basically a victim surrounded by wolves.

The script for The Mauritanian was not brilliant and the film could have been edited extensively, which explains the reason this BBC film missed the cut at the 2021 Oscar nominations.

The Mauritanian gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is worth watching but comes with a warning of some disturbing torture scenes.