https://thefilmstage.com/news/cary-fukunaga-confirmed-to-direct-stanley-kubricks-unfinished-six-hour-project-napoleon/
An interesting choice !
I still need to see all his films, but he has great credits, no doubt.
And he already directed a period costume film…
Could become the TV event of the year.
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shareIt would only be interesting if Kubrick was directing it. That's not going to happen (obviously) so what's the point? Kubrick's strength was as a filmmaker, not a screenwriter. Watching some imitator dust off one of his old drafts is an exercise in futility.
shareDid you even read Kubrick's "Napoleon" screenplay ?
It's a masterpiece.
It's one of the most exciting scripts I've ever read and if they stay close, it will be awesome.
I thought Fukunaga's "Beasts of No Nation" and "Jane Eyre" were pretty bad. You can see why money men would consider him for a "Napoleon" movie, though. After all, Fukunaga directs fashion shoots and makes pretty pictures with "funny talking foreign people" and "guys in period clothes".
Kubrick's Napoleon screenplay, which was okay but pretty conventional, seems likely to just have been a scaffold. His personal interests, aesthetic plans, intentions and thematic points all left when he died.
So we're left with a bland director given a mediocre screeplay written by a famous dead guy.
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From the net:
"Prof.Ian Hunter of the De Montfort University wrote to Jan Harlan, Kubrick's brother-in-law, to have further details. Here's the reply: 'Without exaggerating I can say that Kubrick had probably the largest picture archive ever amassed anywhere about the topic of NAPOLEON. Every painting and drawing found in libraries and museums all of Europe, (including Eastern Europe) was photographed and the 35mm slides were mounted in IBM punch-cards for sorting on IBM sorting machines, the state of the art in 1969. No attention was given to the artistic value of the painting or drawing, the focus was strictly on information. The “script” is a bit misleading - Stanley's main focus was the relevance of Napoleon for us today'."
Tieman,
the "Napoleon" script is similar in tone to "Barry Lyndon".
If you think, that's a "conventional" film, then I disagree.
It's a great screenplay & Fukunaga a hungry talent.
Better than Baz Luhrmann!
the "Napoleon" script is similar in tone to "Barry Lyndon".
If you think, that's a "conventional" film, then I disagree.
No, I agree, "Lyndon's" an unconventional film.
I just disagree that the script's for these two films are "masterpieces". You give 1000 directors these scripts, I think, and they will mostly result in junk.
Kubrick pared down and altered his scripted dialogue. More importantly, he used distancing effects and tried to get his actors to imbue dialogue with qualities not found on the page. As a result, his dialogue typically had a weird, supercharged quality. There was an odd weight to it.
Other directors will simply slavishly follow what's on paper. They will play this dialogue straight, and it will seem very hokey, if not immediately, then eventually. Look at the acting in "AI: Artificial Intelligence", for example.
Better than Baz Luhrmann!
A flamboyantly camp guy like Luhrmann might be the perfect director for Napoleon. Nothing sends up egomaniacal machismo like dudes in garter belts.
A flamboyantly camp guy like Luhrmann might be the perfect director for Napoleon. Nothing sends up egomaniacal machismo like dudes in garter belts.
That would work better for Joachim Murat.
I'm also of a mind that he's not the best choice for the project. He's not a bad director, and I'll take most directors over Baz Luhrmann, but so far I haven't seen something to convince me he can handle this sort of material.
I'm not sure I'm interested in Stanley Kubrick's script being adapted by a different director anyway. His scripts were supposed to be malleable, a frame for filming. Adhering to this script too closely has its drawbacks; some small inaccuracies here and there and one completely fictitious scene that's woefully out of character for Napoleon. Also, given the assumed running time, entire chunks of the story are told with exposition or a quick narrative. If the script is highly altered, why is it "Kubrick's" anymore?
I think Kubrick struck the right approach with Barry Lyndon (1975) - a painting come to life, with the styles and mannerisms of the time that don't feel like modern clichés. A CGI-fest will never be as impressive as what Kubrick planned and what Sergei Bondarchuk accomplished.