THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES (2001) **1/2 The Last Temptation of Napoleon. Alternate histories. Of course people don't feel as passionately about Napoleon as they do about Jesus, and this is nowhere as profound as Kazantzakis The Last Temptation of Christ; certainly not as open to charges of heresy (from doctrinaire simpletons-and I don't mean that as an inherently insulting term: if something is simple there's nothing wrong with being right, and the protesters thought they were right so they weren't doing the wrong thing; just that I found their actions unnecessary, ill-informed and inappropriate) so there's not really anything to protest about here. Sorry. It does-parenthetically-ask the question, "What do you do when your eccentric boarder really is Napoleon?", and pondering that is about as entertaining as anything that occurs in the first half or so, Ian Holmes presenting a rather understated despot, though with occasional flourishes. The moral to this story is a more comfortable one than that ultimately made by Kazantzakis, too: that a full and happy life is perhaps more readily accessible without the diversions of wealth or the trappings of power-that is to say in the context of Kazantzakis: "it's ok to abandon one's destiny." Kazantzakis might well agree, qualifying that it depends on what that destiny is, and contrasting the comparative destinies of being The Saviour with that of the megalomaniac tyrant. In any event, the film nicely makes that very difficult transition from kind of silly film to one a bit more serious and carrying an important message, this made all the easier by a winning performance from Iben Hjejle as the Siren of the Escape Route.
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