Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” chronicles the fate of France’s most prominent ancient figure, from his rise from the ashes of the French Revolution, his military victories to his defeat and exile.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix as Bonaparte, the film also explores dating his wife Josephine de Beauharnais, played by Vanessa Kirthrough.
Napoleon Bonaparte is undoubtedly one of the most depicted ancient figures in cinema, along with Joan of Arc, with over 1,000 film and television appearances over the years.
Studying in history categories around the world, he remains a divisive figure in France.
He is praised for modernizing the state and for his strategic genius, and reviled for restoring slavery, codifying sexism, and killing millions of people from his warmongering ambition.
It is to be expected, then, that any rendition of his story on the big screen would get wildly different reactions.
“Napoleon leaves no one indifferent. It fascinates and where there is fascination, there are equal parts of aversion and interest,” historian and Napoleon specialist David Chanteranne told RFI on Wednesday after the film’s screening in France.
For him, the general’s life is worthy of a Greek tragedy, but it appeals to audiences around the world as the story of a “self-made man. “
“The film traces his ordinary destiny from the small town of Ajaccio to becoming emperor and then squandering it all in eleven years,” says Chanteranne, adding that Napoleon is fascinated as much for his flaws as for his heroism.
The two main actors said their studies are confusing despite the many other narratives that have spread over the centuries. Obviously, no matter what they do, someone will probably find fault with it.
“It’s very difficult to get a transparent answer about a lot of things,” Phoenix told AFP. He explained that to prepare for the role he will look for “more inspiration than information”, through main points such as the way Napoleon ate and drank. .
Phoenix said he was surprised to notice an edition of Napoleon that looked more like a beat-up “adolescent in love,” especially when he was writing his letters to Josephine.
“I imagined him bloodless and calculating, like a wonderful military strategist. What surprised me was his sense of humor and his childlike side. “
Kirby told AFP that the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine was desirable but “exhausting”.
“I always found it amazing that this man who built an empire could write these letters,” she said.
“They were so inexorably drawn to each other but to me it never seemed sane, calm, healthy – it was obsession and infatuation and power dynamics that would swing,” Kirby added.
Scott, whose film career includes such classics as “Alien,” “Gladiator” and “Thelma and Louise,” says that, as a history buff, Bonaparte is an apparent selection as a subject.
“There are 10,400 books about this man, one for each week since his death. He obviously fascinated the world in all his bureaucracy as a leader, diplomat, warrior, politician, bureaucrat and, of course, inevitable dictator,” Scott said.
While early critics were almost unanimous in praising the large-scale war scenes that punctuate the film, particularly that of Austerlitz, there were complaints about the former accuracy of certain details.
British historian Dan Snow has said that Napoleon was not willing to execute Marie Antoinette, as the film opens.
Emilie Robbe, a Bonaparte at the Invalides Military Museum, also points out that Napoleon never fired on the pyramids of Egypt.
Despite some shortcuts and narrative liberties, he goes on to say that Scott’s performance is very “effective. “
Scott followed “an old British point of view, with resources different from ours,” but one that authentically recreates the environment and social relations of the time, he told the Journal du Dimanche Array.
The BBC’s Nicholas Barber called the film “an impressive achievement” but admitted that “we don’t know who Napoleon is or what he wants, where he came from or why he is so successful. “
This sentiment was shared by French journalists, who felt that perhaps more had been said about Napoleon’s relations with his entourage, his circle of relatives, or his advisers.
“Clumsily and intentionally unworthy of its subject, the poorly crafted biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix offers no perspective, either on the man or on the myth,” writes the left-wing newspaper Libération.
French GQ wrote it is “deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally funny” to have French characters speaking in American accents.
Historian Patrice Gueniffey went so far as to call him “very anti-French. “
“We’re offered the brilliant animated film of an ambitious Corsican ogre, a sullen jerk, who is also disgusting to his wife Josephine,” Gueniffey told Le Point magazine, also questioning the “fanciful” statistics at the end of the film that say Napoleon was guilty of 3 million deaths.
Scott responded bluntly to those fact-checks and criticisms. “Do it yourself,” he said in the pages of the New Yorker.
“Those who I showed it to in Paris enjoyed it,” he told the BBC.
Not that this description has struck a chord with critics and journalists alike.
“With all the political debates sparked by him, Napoleon remains a very much living figure in our history,” French historian Thierry Lentz told the Journal du Diguyche, explaining the enormous control the man continues to exert on French society, even today.
“If you want to understand Napoleon, then you probably deserve to research and read for yourself. Because if you watch this movie, it’s that experience told through Ridley’s eyes,” Phoenix told Empire magazine.
“The approximations, simplifications and arrangements in the chronology of the occasions are there to make a complex character and era available to the viewer. It remains a wonderful exhibition and a wonderful artistic creation,” concludes Chanteranne.
Scott is preparing a four-hour director’s cut to be released by Apple at a later date.