Breathing life into the story of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was never going to be easy, especially for an Englishman. Director Ridley Scott’s version incorporates masterful battles scenes with a tortured love story between Napoleon and Josephine. After its worldwide release on Wednesday, it seems the war of the film critics and historians has only just begun.
Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" traces the fortunes of France's most famous historical figure, from his rise among the ashes of the French Revolution through his incredible military victories to his eventual defeat and exile.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix as Bonaparte, the film also explores the complex relationship with his wife Josephine de Beauharnais, played by Vanessa Kirby.
Napoleon Bonaparte is without a doubt one of the most depicted historical characters in cinema – alongside Joan of Arc – with more than 1,000 appearances in cinema and television over the years.
Studied in history classes around the world, he remains a divisive figure in France.
He is lauded for modernising the state and for his strategic genius, vilified for re-establishing slavery, codifying sexism and leaving millions dead through his war-mongering ambition.
It is to be expected, then, that any rendition of his story on the big screen would get wildly different reactions.
Extraordinary destiny
"Napoleon doesn’t leave anyone indifferent. He fascinates people and where there is fascination, there will be aversion and interest in equal measure," historian and Napoleon specialist David Chanteranne told RFI on Wednesday, after the film's release in France.
For him, the general’s life is worthy of a Greek tragedy, but appeals to audiences worldwide as the story of a "self-made man".
"The film traces his extraordinary destiny from small-town Ajaccio to becoming emperor and then losing everything in the space of 11 years," says Chanteranne – adding that Napoleon is an object of fascination as much for his flaws as for his heroics.
Both lead actors said their research was complicated by the vastly different accounts that have come down through the centuries. Clearly, no matter what they do, someone will probably find fault with it.
"It's very hard to get a clear answer about many things," Phoenix told French agency AFP. He explained that he preferred to prepare the role by finding "inspiration more than information", through details like how Napoleon ate and drank.
Phoenix said he was surprised to discover a version of Napoleon who was more like a soppy "teenager in love", particularly when he wrote his letters to Josephine.
"I imagined that he was cold and calculated as a great military strategist. What I was surprised by was the sense of humour and how child-like he was."
Power dynamics
Kirby told AFP that the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine was fascinating 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 classics like "Alien", "Gladiator" and "Thelma and Louise", says as a history buff, Bonaparte was an obvious choice of subject.
"There are 10,400 books on the man – that's one for every week since he died. He clearly fascinated the world in every shape and form as leader, diplomat, warrior, politician, bureaucrat, and of course inevitable dictator," Scott said.
While the first reviews have been virtually unanimous in their praise of the huge-scale battle scenes that punctuate the film, especially that of Austerlitz, there have been grumbles about the historical accuracy of some details.
British historian Dan Snow said Napoleon was not present at the execution of Marie-Antoinette, which opens the film.
Emilie Robbe, a Bonaparte expert at France's army museum Les Invalides, also points out that Napoleon never fired on the pyramids in Egypt.
Despite some shortcuts and storytelling liberties, she goes on to say Scott's representation is very "effective".
Scott adopted "a British historical point of view, using different sources to ours", but one that authentically recreates the atmosphere and social relationships of the time, she told the Journal du Dimanche weekly.
'Anti-French'
The BBC’s Nicholas Barber called the film "an awe-inspiring achievement", but conceded "it lacks insights into who Napoleon is or what he wants, where he comes from or why he is such a success".
This sentiment was shared by French journalists, who felt more could have been revealed about the relationships Napoleon had to those around him, his family or his advisors.
"Clumsy and deliberately unworthy of its subject, the poorly crafted biopic with Joaquin Phoenix offers no perspective, neither on the man, nor on the myth," wrote left-leaning Libération.
French GQ wrote it is "deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally funny" to have French characters speaking in American accents.
Historian Patrice Gueniffey even went so far as to call it "very anti-French".
"We are treated to a caricature of an ambitious Corsican ogre, a sullen boor, who is also disgusting with his wife Josephine," Gueniffey told Le Point magazine, also taking issue with the "fanciful" statistics at the end of the film saying Napoleon was responsible for three million deaths.
Scott has responded bluntly to such fact-checking and criticism. "Get a life," he said in the pages of the New Yorker.
"The audience that I showed it to in Paris, they loved it," he told the BBC.
'Great spectacle'
It's no wonder the portrayal has hit a nerve with critics and journalists alike.
"With all the political debates that are sparked because of him, Napoleon is still very much a living character in our history," French historian and writer Thierry Lentz told the Journal du Dimanche, explaining the enormous sway the man continues to wield over French society even today.
"If you want to really understand Napoleon, then you should probably do your own studying and reading. Because if you see this film, it’s this experience told through Ridley’s eyes," Phoenix told Empire magazine.
"The approximations, simplifications and other arrangements in the chronology of events are there to bring a complex character and era within the reach of the viewer. It remains a great spectacle and artistic creation," Chanteranne concludes.
Scott is preparing a four-hour director’s cut to be released by Apple at a later date.
