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Ian Holm does double-duty as Napoleon in director
Alan Taylor's effective period drama, The
Emperor's New Clothes.
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The best argument for abolishing the categories of leading man and character actor is veteran performer Ian Holm. His face is familiar, thanks to numerous film roles and a long stage career, but his name is lesser known. The Emperor's New Clothes, a warmhearted romance about Napoleon Bonaparte's final years, deservedly puts Holm in the spotlight with a dual-role performance. Part of almost every scene in the film, Holm, as lively at age 71 as he ever was, gives The Emperor's New Clothes an energetic boost.
The best compliment one can give director Alan Taylor's period romance is that it's hard to imagine anyone other than Holm playing Napoleon.
Based on Simon Leys' book The Death of Napoleon, Taylor directs a revisionist drama that proposes that Napoleon Bonaparte did not die in exile on the island of St. Helena in 1821. Instead, the film would have us believe that a secret plot by French loyalists had a lookalike switch places with Napoleon, allowing the real Emperor to return to Paris. The loyalists' plan hits a snag when the double, a destitute sailor named Eugene (played by Holm with ample comic zest), refuses to give up playing the Emperor. He's grown accustomed to Napoleon's pampered lifestyle. Back in Paris, Napoleon is forced to remain incognito until his lookalike reveals his true identity. Waiting to resume his political authority, Napoleon's plan takes a drastic turn after he meets a pretty widow, Pumpkin (Iben Hjejle), who offers him room and board.
Factuality comes to a halt the moment Holm appears on screen. There's something ironic about a veteran British actor playing France's celebrated emperor. Still, Taylor knows he has a good thing in Holm. Some audiences might remember Holm as Napoleon in the 1981 fantasy, Time Bandits. This time, Holm plays things straight and believable.
Taylor, who last directed the under-appreciated caper film Palookaville, has no reason to pull away the camera from Holm. There's a sense of subtle drama and emotional complexity around his performance. Every gesture, every word of dialogue that he speaks grounds the film's building romance. Holm possesses steely confidence, and that makes him utterly believable as Napoleon.
On the subject of historical accuracy, there is what was real, and then there's a costume fantasy like The Emperor's New Clothes. Stepping outside the history books, The Emperor's New Clothes has a different story to tell. Trying to outguess its fanciful screenplay (written by Kevin Moloney, Taylor and Herbie Wave) is part of the fun. Better yet, Taylor substitutes tender romance for historical accuracy.
Intimate and character-driven, The Emperor's New Clothes is clearly a foreign film. Hollywood studio executives would have insisted on a better-known actor to play Napoleon and an elaborate reenactment of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Instead, Taylor's film, financed by Britain's FilmFour, offers a simple, aesthetic look rather than flashy camera movements. There are no melodramatic confrontations or digitized recreations of 19th-century Paris. Its period details look accurate, but aren't overwhelming. Composer Rachel Portman's subtle score matches the film's low-key spirit.
In another director's hands, The Emperor's New Clothes could have been a suspense drama, focusing on Napoleon's escape from St. Helena. Wisely, Taylor emphasizes romance over thrills. Hjejle, last seen as John Cusack's girlfriend in High Fidelity, keeps the story sweet-natured as the love-struck Pumpkin. Inspired by the opportunity, Holm reveals a soft side to his normally somber, on-screen persona. Hjejle is wonderful, but The Emperor's New Clothes is essentially Holm's film.
In Holm's last film, the fantasy blockbuster The Lord of the Rings, he made the most of his brief role as Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit who passes down the Ruling Ring to his nephew Frodo. Earlier, Holm cut a menacing figure in a black cloak and a stovetop hat, playing a respected doctor in the Jack-the-Ripper thriller, From Hell.
Holm was the best thing about Stanley Tucci's period drama Joe Gould's Secret. In the film, Holm played the title character, a Greenwich Village eccentric who befriends New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell (played by Tucci himself).
Holm played a benevolent scientist who helps Jennifer Jason Leigh's game designer in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ and a hired killer in Danny Boyle's caper comedy A Life Less Ordinary. Still, these were small roles that barely gave Holm the chance to shine. His best screen performance remains Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, where he played a lawyer trying to persuade some small-town residents to mount a class action suit over a tragic bus accident. Holm is powerful in The Sweet Hereafter, but his Emperor's New Clothes performance is a close second.
Holm appears in nearly every scene courtesy of his double role. He shows flashes of comic brilliance as the clumsy double who quickly learns to act like an emperor. As Napoleon, he bares steely resolve, determination and a surprisingly soft heart.
Costume dramas are usually spectator sports, but Holm makes The Emperor's New Clothes more personal and approachable. There have been Napoleon movies many times over, but none of them can claim Holm. Thanks to his larger-than-life performance, a delicate balance of heartache and bravado, Taylor's Napoleon story is one for the ages.
CityBeat grade: A.
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