Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: Historical Myth and Feminism
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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, one of the main projects of the past year, is being released worldwide, having received devastating reviews from French critics and historians for numerous inaccuracies in the description of historical events. But the main problem of the latest Hollywood biopic was the insurmountable difficulties of translation.
1793, Place de la Revolution, the faces of ordinary Parisians are full of hysterical jubilation – after all, Queen Marie Antoinette, sentenced to capital punishment for embezzlement and treason, rises to the scaffold. Somewhere in the crowd, a young and unknown artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix), is watching her execution. Will he make fateful conclusions at this tragic moment that will determine his history and the history of Europe? The authors are in no hurry to delve into psychology yet, preferring to depict revolutionary morals in a burlesque manner. Here is some gentleman, as if straight out of William Hogarth’s engravings, raving from the rostrum about the true needs of democracy, urging people not to be cowardly with its enemies. Here are opponents who have difficulty pronouncing Gallic surnames. It seems that the action takes place in the enemy camp, across the English Channel, and we are faced with a debate in Parliament. However, the caption at the bottom of the frame helpfully announces that the bloodthirsty gentleman’s name is Robespierre. Oh yes, of course, this is an old-style Hollywood film, in which neither time nor place matters, only the genius of the industry, in this case personified by Joaquin Phoenix – with an unclouded American accent, he proposes to the Vicomte de Barras (Tahar Rahim) to free Toulon from English.
Incredible, but true – the main problem of this extremely ambitious project lies in the linguistic plane. Alas, this Napoleon, unlike Alain Delon, does not speak French at all. Every remark heard from the lips of the commander and emperor, who hated everything British, especially the fleet, and at the same time agitating to hit the red coats in the language of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, sounds like a devilish mockery. In fact, the only native word for Napoleon in “Napoleon” is coup d’etat, which put an end to the Directory and made Bonaparte first consul. Already in “The House of Gucci,” Ridley Scott’s previous work, this international technique terribly prevented one from plunging into the intrigues that members of the famous Milanese family were weaving against each other. In Napoleon, General Kleber and Marshal Ney give orders as if they were not at Austerlitz or in Egypt, but on a baseball field. Coupled with historical inaccuracies popping up here and there – is this Paris or Brighton, Versailles or Blenheim Palace – one gets the feeling that Napoleon spent his entire life in Downton Abbey. Then why does he, in the finale – before traveling into the night, or rather, to St. Helena Island – declare to the Duke of Wellington (Rupert Everett): now I understand what your strength is, you English have an excellent, nutritious breakfast. My God, no wonder French critics were outraged. It’s surprising that the New Year 1789 was not staged at the Paris premiere.
Otherwise, the biography, which cost the world 3 million killed, is told quite intelligibly in the amount of screen time (150 minutes). Consisted, participated, led. And he loved his wife very much. He loved him so much that he dreamed of throwing the whole of Europe at her feet – but Josephine, as a reward for such speeches, did not put her feet on his shoulders. The only thing that Ridley Scott was able to add to the Napoleon myth, to thousands of books, television shows, and Abel Gance’s great silent picture of 1927, was a feminist aspect. Without Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), there would be no Italian campaign, the Peace of Tilsit, Borodino and Berezina. Tell me, uncle, it’s not for nothing that Moscow is on fire? No wonder, looking at how the Kalmyk partisans make Boeuf Stroganoff out of his soldiers, Bonaparte understands that he divorced Josephine in vain, and also, probably, that anyone who comes to Russia only with sanctions will definitely achieve nothing.
By the way, about the battle scenes, both Austerlitz and Waterloo were filmed on a grand scale, people and horses were mixed together, the camera obsessively captures the fresh dead sinking to the bottom of the frozen lake – we saw something similar in Andrei Kravchuk’s “Union of Salvation.” However, the truly spectacular episode is rather Napoleon’s very first victory – the liberation of Toulon, because at this moment Joaquin Phoenix is still trying to play something and come up with a character for the role, which means we are imbued with his character’s will to power, we see that in front of us is a man , to which humanity seems to be alien. Unfortunately, after taking Toulon, both Ridley Scott and his star give up any attempts to comprehend their hero – everything that follows is just an adaptation of Wikipedia and a reconstruction of the paintings of Jacques Louis David, with completely annoying exercises in comedy. Who is this ridiculous overweight man in a cocked hat – a deceived husband, a mama’s boy or Chaplin’s dictator? There is no answer, until May 5, 1821, it was still unclear who and what they were telling us about from the screen. Before taking his last breath, the abdicated emperor toils in the garden, approximately under the cherry trees, with children playing nearby, whom he asks: do you know who I am? The kids are clueless, and neither is director Ridley Scott. Finally upset, Napoleon will fall dead.
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