Joaquin Phoenix Sounds Pretty Damn American in the ‘Napoleon’ Trailer
There are two things I love about the first trailer for Napoleon, Ridley Scott’s upcoming epic-scale biopic of the tiny, angry Frenchman. The first is the deeply incongruous song choice to score the trailer: “The National Anthem” by Radiohead, which is the musical antithesis of an 18th/19th-century period piece. The second is the even more incongruous accents—particularly that of Joaquin Phoenix as Monsieur Bonaparte himself.
Phoenix doesn’t try his hand at a French accent, nor does he don an English accent, like the entire rest of the cast. (In Napoleon, both the French and their English nemeses sound like posh Britons.) Instead, the Oscar winner just … sounds like his regular ol’ self.
Not that he talks much in this trailer, mind you. But when Phoenix, who—this is my third favorite thing about the trailer—is squished down to a tinier height (of arguable historical accuracy) for the film, does open his tersely drawn trap, he bleats in his normal, accent-less Californian speaking voice. He even sounds as tired as he usually does in interviews.