Mike Duncan recently noted in an article for The Nation that director Ridley Scott could hardly have picked a more fundamentally important and exciting historical person and period for his latest film than Napoleon and the entire generation of wars he started and fought that bear his name. In this, as in so much else, he is Quite Right. An argument can be made- indeed, many have and continue to make it- that the entire epoch from the beginnings of the French Revolution up to the Congress of Vienna, which (more or less) brought this first revolutionary era in Europe to an end, is one of the most consequential in all of human history. The scope of its influence is indeed global, since it directly affected the subsequent expansion of European colonial empires and indirectly laid the groundwork for both World Wars.
But leaving that legacy- staggering as it is- aside, it's also a time period absolutely stuffed with some of the most fascinating, talented, idiotic, brilliant, egotistical, inspiring, debauched, funny, and tragic figures ever produced by the human race. You don't even need to make much- or indeed anything- up, because the scripts pretty much write themselves. I happen to have just finished re-reading Adam Zamoyski's Rites of Peace, the seminal text on the Congress of Vienna, and I must say; if that event alone were to be turned into something like a miniseries with near-zero deviation from the known historical record, the unending litany of intrigue, double-crossing, espionage, psychological warfare, and obscenely ostentatious displays of wealth and excess- not to mention the many, many, MANY orgies- would leave most viewers convinced it couldn't possibly be real.
I'm losing the thread. Let's return to Napoleon, though I did want to bring up the vividness of him and his time for a reason; though fudging and fictionalizing in history-based movies is par for the course, Napoleon and his generation are some of the few subjects where the reality is already so fantastic and dramatic, it must be asked- why waste your time thinking something up?
And that's our cue to turn to Ridley Scott. SIR Ridley Scott, for those who insist. Scott went on- and this is an understatement- a bit of a bender during the press tour for the film, flippantly dismissing historical criticisms of the film and the general science of history along with them. Top remarks included saying „no one could really know“ what happened during of the most documented and written-about periods in human history, that maybe the first (very self-serving) works about the Napoleonic era were „the most correct,“ and, most delicious of all, saying historians just need to „get a life.“
Being one of these lifeless scuds myself, I feel compelled- as both a great lover of film and someone with an actual History degree- to jump and point out that most cinephiles (and, frankly, most historians, aside from the most tiresome ones) really don't deserve Scott's ire. Most of us are perfectly happy to suspend disbelief and accept fudging of historical records and personalities in a film, biopic, miniseries, play, what have you.
There is a silent „if“ at the end of that sentence, and that „if“ is that the fudgings must be in the service of the greater good of telling a strong, meaningful, compelling narrative. Or if the positives at least outweigh the negatives. This is easier said than done.
Hell, just look at my all-time personal favorite movie, Amadeus. As history? TERRIBLE. We have no evidence Salieri and Mozart knew each other as more than passing acquaintances, much less that he was the „Dark Man“ who commissioned the Requiem. But the story it tells is such a powerful meditation on human frailty in the face of greed, lust, ambition, and hatred, it's impossible to care about nitpicking the history.
Or take The Social Network, which I very happily put in my 2010 Top Ten list not too long ago, and which is also a personal favorite. A faithful biopic of Mark Zuckerberg, that is not, not the least because we literally do not know what was said in the depositions; those documents are under lock and key and will remain so for some time, so for all we know Zuckerberg, Saverin, and the Winklevosses just spent those hours trading fart jokes before cutting each other a few checks and calling it a day. But in the end, that doesn't matter, because The Social Network remains probably the best and most prophetic film we've yet gotten about our current digital age, and it STILL might have been too nice, all things considered.
Hell, even Ridley Scott himself has a great entry in this particular subgenre; his Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven is also pretty rough on the „history“ part of the Holy Land in between Crusades, but the acting is fantastic, the set pieces are astounding, it moves at a great pace, and it has an awful lot to say about the hollowness of religious pageantry and bluster in the absence of having the heart to care for real, genuine people. Saladin's reaction to Orlando Blook threatening to raze Jerusalem to the ground- „I wonder if it would not be better if you did“- was haunting even BEFORE the current round of ethnic cleansing defiling that place as I type these words.
And, when looking at the main surface-level liberties Scott takes in Napoleon, there is lots there that could be the core of the same sort of history-but-not-really-history film that uses a time period as mere window dressing to gaze into the abyss of the human coul.
Napoleon as a Trumpian Man-Baby who only trips to the top because others are desperate to find a strongman to fall in line behind? Not the real Napoleon, no, but that is absolutely a take you can make a great flick out of.
Centering the film around Napoleon's fascinating relationship with Josephine? GREAT idea. Again, it's absolutely not true that Napoleon's political decisions were all based around Josephine's vagina and her many affairs, but since SO much of human history revolves around people being weird about sex, there is plenty of meat to pick on that bone(r).
I'm so sorry. 2023 is almost over, I swear, we'll make it together.
Even a movie that was just all camp- Pheonix is making quite a few Decisions with his performance here and I can't say I disapprove- would be a great break from the self-suffering seriousness these types of films usually drown themselves in.
The problem here is......well, this movie ain't it, Chief. Scott, you took a swing, but you really out to sit down for this one. All of the individual scenes or images or set pieces that work here- and there are a few, especially the sequence of Napoleon pouting around an empty, cold, and abandoned Moscow- are too scattered, and even as Scott is botching the history left and right, he's moving forward so fast that there is simply no way to get a hold of the passage of time and how one scene leads to another as Nalopeon rises and falls, then does it all again. Why does anything happen in this movie? Well.....it happens, dunnit?
That's the real failing of this film, in the end. It doesn't just fail to justify the bad history, it fails to justify itself, period, and so leaves little to no impact in the brain.
At least, that's my take. Granted, there's a not-insignificant chance that this movie, by default, becomes The Napoleon Movie for quite a few viewers. Aside from a well-regarded silent epic from 1927- which, of course, is neither widely known nor available- there appears to have never been a significant French production on the life and times of, and I do feel secure saying this, the single most famous Frenchman who ever Frenched.
Yes, I too hear the comments that „ACTUALLY HE WAS CORSICAN“ approaching. We shall shunt those into the „But didja know Hitler was AUSTRIAN“ box. That's just not how historical memory works, folks.
And it's not like France only just discovered the joy of 8mm lenses; the French filmmaking industry is (massive understatement incoming) fairly well-known and popular. There is no way to convince me that the talent, money, and interest in mining this particular well doesn't exist.
Which is another way of saying that if this movie DOES leave a legacy of being THE cinematic portrayol of Napoleon, it's kinda the fault of the French that they let Scott get there first.
However, I think those worries are overblown. At the end of the day, I can't feel myself able to get too worried about the potential of Napoleon to ruin historical cognizance because, well, it just isn't good enough. Effective historical revision needs to have something the mind can hold onto to stick, and there just isn't enough of that here.
So I suppose, in the end, this has been a great deal of sound and fury about nothing. At least Scott is doing his level best to keep the world interesting.
-Noah
