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battle’s are, as you might expect from Ridley, really well done.
Cinematically, they look well done but historically, they are appallingly bad. Napoleonic infantry advances didn't look like mobs of people rushing the riot police. Cannonballs didn't explode. Cavalry didn't charge through their own infantry formations on the way to the enemy. Musket smoke would have been so thick across the battlefield that seeing any distance would have been problematic...
If the rest of the film had been good I wouldn't be so irritated by this and my pedantry wouldn't have been so inflamed! 😀
but historically, they are appallingly bad.
And not just that, but all sorts of checkable details are just so terrible. At the coronation there's a conductor for the orchestra - no such thing in the 18thC. Most of the time Josephine is only half dressed, They've obviously seen the portrait of Josephine - that was created as a sort of soft porn image for one person's eyes only; a sort of 18thC sexting, and figured - that's how she dressed all the time. Its really weird.