Napoleon (miniseries) - 2002

It was "sit-on-my-butt-and-watch-longer-movies" day. I've had this show lined up for a while, but it's literally 6 hours. Yes, I know I don't have to watch it straight, but that's the way I decided to do it.

There are four episodes, and they cover Napoleon's life as the military leader/emperor of France. I feel like I'm going to be comparing this to Waterloo a bit, because that's my most recent Napoleon exposure. They are definitely different and not meant to be covering the same thing at all.

I feel like this show was supposed to focus more on Napoleon as a person. I also got to know his marshals a bit as well. It was the first time I'd been able to distinguish those particular characters. I credit the 6-hour length for that. It gave the time needed to get to know side characters and actually care about them. I appreciated that. There was also a lot of Napoleon's love life in this show. Josephine is played by Isabella Rossellini, an actress I remembered from another miniseries: Merlin.

The thing about Napoleon is that he's considered a military genius. The way that's handled in the miniseries wasn't as engaging as I've seen elsewhere. The camera zooms in so that I had no idea where any of the troops were or what was happening. I'd say maybe it was because they had a smaller budget, but I read the miniseries had $46 million to work with. When the camera keeps the action zoomed in like that, it's hard to appreciate the overall scope of the strategy being employed.

With the action scenes the way they were, and the focus on the relationships, I'm pretty sure I was meant to connect with Napoleon on a personal level. One of the things that peaked my interest when I saw the credits was the presence of Toby Stephens and Julian Sands. They're a couple of my favorites, but they were barely in the show. I was pretty bored for the first hour, and I almost gave up. But I persevered, and I'm glad I kept going. 

My opinion is if you want to see more of the marshals and see Napoleon as a person, this might be the show for you. If you're interested in him as a leader and military strategist, I feel like Waterloo does a good job of that. Between the two, I felt like I enjoyed Waterloo more. Considering both time invested and story portrayed.

Would I watch Napoleon again? Probably not. There were times when scenes seemed to drag on, and the end was one of them. I didn't understand why so much time was spent on Napoleon dying. I feel like he would've wanted to be remembered more for his life than the way he died on St. Helena. Just my opinion. It was pretty good, but I'm stopping just short of giving it the good movie review. It was real close though.