The English director Ridley Scott has certainly produced a massive irritation to French amour-propre. Over the weekend, he said that criticism of his film Napoleon proved that the French ‘don’t even like themselves’. Whether Napoleon is a masterpiece is yet to be determined (it isn’t released until Wednesday) but opinion is already divided. As if the French were ever likely to appreciate the Anglo-Saxon appropriation of a French national hero.
Doubtless some of the French outrage is contrived. The relationship of France to the Emperor is complicated and hard to explain as an interlude in the glorious republic
Scott, who will be 86 this week, has created an epic row, as well as an epic film. The sting of the criticism here is that he has revealed himself to be essentially uninterested in anything resembling the real Napoleon. He is not an expert on the subject. Indeed he seems incurious. In an interview with the New Yorker, he admits he discarded all of the late Stanley Kubrick’s voluminous research as boring, hadn’t read deeply into the capacious reservoir of primary sources or even finished watching the classic 1927 film about Napoleon. With an eagle eye, he focuses instead on the relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais and makes it the prism of the film. ‘Who was this person, and why was he vulnerable?’ Scott asked the New Yorker. ‘It was this woman called Josephine.’
Doubtless some of the French outrage is contrived. The relationship of France to the Emperor is complicated and hard to explain as an interlude in the glorious republic. Also, for all his genius, he ultimately lost. So, perhaps as a distraction, and because it is amusing, this has become a good opportunity to bash the rosbifs. We have – or Ridley Scott has, at least – appropriated the greatest of all Frenchmen and converted him into the star of a tender romance with battle scenes thrown in for good measure.
‘He speaks English, a sacrilege!’ complained Candice Mahout, chief of the culture desk at the news channel BFMTV. But serious historians are also weighing in. Patrice Gueniffey, a celebrated biographer of Napoleon, calls it ‘the film of an Englishman, very anti-French,’ with multiple historic errors and infused with feminist ideology. CNEWS nevertheless concedes that Napoleon:
Is a high-quality entertainment, especially when you are installed in a movie theatre… The relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine is also a success, and represents, in the end, the beating heart of Ridley Scott’s story. If, again, it is impossible for the director to account for the subtlety of the feelings that united them in such a short time, the interpretations of Joaquin Phoenix – impressive in the lead role from start to end – and Vanessa Kirby help to give interest to the scenes they share.
There is praise too for Tahar Rahim (Paul Barras), Rupert Everett (The Duke of Wellington), Ben Miles (Armand de Caulaincourt), and Matthew Needham (Lucien Bonaparte), with a special mention for Paul Rhys, apparently impeccable as Talleyrand.
Joaquin Phoenix, not stupid, has addressed the question of the historical veracity of the events contained in the film. ‘If you really want to understand Napoleon, then you should probably conduct your own research and choose your own readings. Because if you see this film, it’s an experience told through the eyes of Ridley Scott,’ he has explained.
Not bad advice, especially for the French, who don’t really know what to make of the empire. It’s a difficult period to explain away in a national historiography that is soaked in republicanism. Napoleon’s body is weighed down by plenty of marble at Les Invalides so they obviously don’t want him to get up, indeed the entire subject sometimes seems an embarrassment.
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