NAPOLEON - HISTORY AS ENTERTAINMENT
By Jack Woolf
Napoleon, the new historical epic starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Ridley Scott has come under fire by critics for its historical inaccuracies. But what is more important when making a blockbuster Hollywood film on the life of Napoleon, respecting the history or making it entertaining? Professor William Doyle, Emeritus at the University of Bristol, and author of Napoleon at Peace: How to end a Revolution, gave his perspective on the film. ‘It doesn’t bother me, but it is full of historical errors. The film is only loosely based on a skeleton of fact,’ he said.
What Professor Doyle found to be ‘most ludicrous’ were in fact the first and last scenes of the film. The film begins in 1793 with Napoleon witnessing the beheading of Marie Antoinette, widow of already executed French King, Louis XIV. But Napoleon was busy at the siege of Touillon at the time, a crucial victory that prevented a British backed insurrection against the young revolutionary government. This does still occur in the film but at a later point. The last scene depicts Napoleon taking a vial of poison in exile at St Helena and collapsing in full military uniform, something Doyle insists there was no evidence of occurring.
In Napoleon’s lifetime, there were seven coalitions of foreign powers that set themselves against post-revolution France. The first two were what made Napoleon, with tactical victories in Italy especially leading to his rapid ascension to the heights of power. Professor Doyle described his time in Italy especially as ‘making his name’. In the film, Italy is said to have ‘surrendered without a fight’ and it directly skips to Napoleon’s time in Egypt. This has led to some confusion for those less versed in history, who see Napoleon’s rise to power in the film as abrupt and poorly explained. Professor Doyle said: “It’s a series of disjointed episodes in which he emerges bigger and more powerful in each one. But how he gets from one to the other is not clear at all.’
Napoleon is heralded as one of the greatest generals ever to exist but his strategic feats were strangely absent from the film. Only the battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo are depicted in any kind of detail, one of which, Waterloo, being Napoleon’s last battle and most famous defeat. Professor Doyle had this to say regarding Napoleon’s status as a master tactician. ‘He’s a winner, he fights 60 battles and wins 52 of them. He defeats all of his major opponents in Europe except the British, who survived in part due to being an Island nation with a strong navy,’ he said. ‘However, his innovations on the battlefield weren’t great, they were just instinctive. Napoleon himself said ‘you don’t have a plan, you engage and you wait and see,’ Doyle continued.
The relationship between Napoleon and his wife Josephine is a crucial element of the film, with some describing it as too crucial, the screentime dedicated to it detracting from Napoleon’s achievements as a general and ruler. Professor Doyle emphasised the disparity of age that was not mentioned in the film. ‘She was six years older than him. She was, from a very early point in the marriage, clearly too old to have children, at least by the standards of the time,’ he said. The film casts Vanessa Kirby, who is 15 years younger than Joaquin Phoenix, in the part. Their dynamic, especially regarding their sex life, is very intimately explored in the film, with Phoenix’s Napoleon acting like a lovestruck teenager, both in love letters and the bedroom. Doyle concedes that this is somewhat accurate. ‘She was very experienced sexually and he wasn’t when they first met,’ he said. On Phoenix as Napoleon, however, Doyle was more critical: ‘He doesn’t age, he doesn’t change, it covers the time of him being a skinny young man to a paunchy despot with him looking quite the same as he does at the beginning,’ he said.
Professor Doyle was not entirely critical of the film however. He described the battles as ‘visually sumptuous’, and ultimately concluded that the main flaws from the film come not from inaccuracies but the (relatively) short runtime. Almost two hours of footage are on the cutting room floor, with a potential director’s cut hotly anticipated that may run up to four and a half hours. Professor Doyle said: “I don’t think the inaccuracies hinder the film coming together, but I’m sure there were more historical continuities in the original.”
Professor William Doyle - Emeritus Professor of History at Bristol University
Daniel Barrett is a filmmaker who is also fascinated by Napoleon. He shared his view on Scott’s approach to the film. ‘It’s a continued movement of Scott away from the high concept films which made him big towards more grounded and real stories. But it exposes his lack of top drama directing skills,’ he said.
Daniel compared the film to Kingdom of Heaven, a film by Scott depicting the fall of Jerusalem that also faced criticism for historical inaccuracies. Panned by critics even more harshly than Napoleon at release, it is important to note that a director’s cut of the film received far more praise and has in some ways redeemed the film in the public eye. So perhaps we can expect a similar story with Napoleon. Daniel is uncertain that a couple more hours would be enough. ‘The big issue is you need to know the history if you want to understand what’s happening. It’s incredibly rushed. Should’ve been a 7 season TV show,’ he said.
Ridley Scott has historically been very vocal in response to criticism. After his film, ‘The Last Duel’, bombed back in 2021, he blamed the failure of the film on ‘millennials’. ‘The millennials do not ever want to be taught anything unless you are told it on the cell phone,’ he said. French critics were particularly brutal regarding ‘Napoleon’ with major publication G2 France describing the film as ‘deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally funny.’ For the criticism of Napoleon’s inaccuracies, especially from those of a French background, he told certain critics to ‘get a life’ and said ‘the French don’t even like themselves.’ Though perhaps Scott took some vindication from the film’s initial box office success within France, taking almost a million Euros in its first day of release.
If, as some might argue, Napoleon made concessions in historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment, to judge the success of that strategy we can only look at two things, the critical reception and the box office. Critically, Napoleon has a decidedly mixed reception. A 60% on Rotten Tomatoes (1 percentage point off being rotten) and a 6.6 rating on IMDB show that the film has certainly divided opinion. However, the box office is more dire. On a budget of 130-200 million dollars, Napoleon has, as of the 7th of December, made $139 million dollars at the worldwide box office. This marks it very clearly as a box office bomb. But not all hope is lost, perhaps a director’s cut will eventually redeem Napoleon, and like the man himself the film can return from exile and fight further battles.