Napoleon had a cold. In the Battle of Waterloo:
That's why in the last hour.
He wasn't lucky.
- Spike Milligan
I don’t remember how I got to this film, but when I watched the retelling of the Battle of Waterloo, I thought that somehow Napoleon so powerfully pulled the blanket over himself that everyone knows that he lost, and not everyone knows who was on the other side of the barricades. The mechanisms of history are amazing.
So is Arthur Wellesley. I didn’t even know who the film was about or why (because I’m in the habit of not reading it before watching it) until it got to Waterloo.
The tone of the first half of the film seemed to me rather mocking and so sorry, as if we were talking about a puppy, lying in cow cakes that did not have time to grasp. And so the mother did not pin hopes on Arthur, and he did not achieve the hands of the lady he loved - her father did not want to have such a "loser" as a son-in-law.
But no, there's no point in 'Arthur getting angry and trying to teach them a lesson.' No, Arthur simply engaged in survival in this very harsh world (especially when nothing remains of his father’s legacy), and he managed to teach everyone a lesson by accident.
Although he still got the lady he loved. Only after many years and it turned out that she was not so pretty, and why did he love her then? But still took and took, because Arthur is not one of those people who change horses at the crossing.
Perhaps the most ironic moment of his life is that he feared an open encounter with Napoleon. I would rather have 40,000 reinforcements than Napoleon personally leading the army into battle. But it is not harmful to want.
So, by the middle of the story, the historian’s tone changes to a more neutral one, and by the end he almost jumps, screaming with delight, at every mention of the name of the Duke of Wellington. It's quite entertaining and starts to get a little annoying.
I also did not like the inserts with actors allegedly acting out situations, although they were quite subtile, wordless and even blurred - so as to give a general mood or fill the screen, otherwise you could make a radio broadcast.
But the film performs its popularizing and cognitive function with hurrah. That's why I thank him.