Joaquin Phoenix-starrer Napoleon: Hollywood habit of turning history into a spectacular joke continues

“You think you are great? You are just a tiny little brute that is nothing without me,” Vanessa Kirby as Empress Josephine tells Joaquin Phoenix’s Napoleon Bonaparte in Ridley Scott’s new film, Napoleon. The words perhaps sets the tone that the film, Napoleon, wished to take while defining its titular subject. For all the magnificent war drama that expectedly packages Napoleon Bonaparte as a warrior-strategist par excellence and an emperor aroused by power play, Hollywood titan Scott also finds Napoleon to be an egocentric tyrant with a seemingly confused mind that needs constant prodding.

That’s where Scott positions Josephine as the psychologically sturdier half of a power-hungry couple, brimming with self-assurance and never missing half a chance to mock her all-powerful hubby. The reimagined tale of Napoleon and Josephine, however, doesn’t seem to be going down well with all audiences, just as rest of the film. Indeed, few films in recent times have polarised audiences as much as Napoleon. Reactions may have ranged from “epic” to “outrageously enjoyable” to “Ridley Scott’s best film since Gladiator” in the United States and the UK (understandable, given Ridley Scott’s British roots), but French critics and historians seem far from impressed.

“Barbie and Ken Under the Empire,” wrote the daily Le Figaro, describing the Phoenix-Kirby duo. Historian Patrice Gueniffey told Le Point that Scott’s Napoleon was “very anti-French and very pro-English”, adding that the character has been imagined as an “an ambitious Corsican ogre” and “a sullen boor who is disgusting with his wife”. Social media reviewer Mehdi Omais said the film felt “like a Wikipedia page”.

Movie buffs have by now learnt not to take history lessons from Hollywood historicals, so we will gloss over factual inaccuracies that Scott’s film manufactures in order to pump up the drama, such as Napoleon firing on the pyramids during his military expedition to Egypt or witnessing Marie-Antoinette’s execution in Paris. But historical howlers put aside, what has grabbed attention of many fans in the West is how Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa seem insistent on portraying Napoleon’s life as a spectacular caricature and little else.

Scott has spoken about the perils of producing big-budget historicals in the time of comicbook cinema — which perhaps explains his irreverent approach while imagining Napoleon. English films, however, has a long history of irreverence. An early example worth note would be Caesar And Cleopatra starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains in the title roles with Stewart Granger as Cleopatra loyalist Apollodorus. The 1945 historical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s play of the same name, retained much of the master playwright’s hallmark comic nonchalance while setting up drama and romance around its protagonists.

Unlike many later-day historicals, Caesar And Cleopatra wasn’t silly despite its lightweight approach to history. Technically a British production, the lavish film, in its run-up to release, was widely publicised as the latest of Vivien Leigh who, despite her British origin, was by then being counted among America’s sweethearts following the global success of Gone With The Wind in 1939. Caesar And Cleopatra retained much of Shaw’s witty tone while imagining what follows when an aging Julius Caesar takes over the Egyptian Capital city of Alexandria. More of a costume drama with gentle rom-com vibes than a sombre historical epic, the film narrates how the young princess Cleopatra learns the ropes of politics under Caesar’s tutelage.

The historical as a rom-com has always been a favourite money-spinner for Hollywood. The idea isn’t a bad one when it comes to films where history is merely used as backdrop to tell a fictional tale. John Madden’s 1998 hit Shakespeare In Love would be an example. The entertaining film finds its premise in an imaginary romance that brews between playwright William Shakespeare, essayed by Joseph Fiennes, and Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a fictional heroine based on the character he created in his play, Twelfth Night. Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s screenwriting blends fictional events and characters with real figures such as Queen Elizabeth I, playwright Christopher Marlowe, Elizabethan actor Ned Alleyn and renowned impresario of the era Philip Henslowe.

In Hollywood’s historical screenplays, where facts are never sacrosanct, humour is an easy device to explain complex relationships or situations. Paul WS Anderson tried it in his 2011 release, The Three Musketeers, while giving the adventures of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan a suitable spin to connect with new-age audiences. In his 1994 directorial, The Madness Of King George, Nicholas Hytner used humour to make up for altered facts, while narrating a sensitive story of the insanity of King George III, following which his aids try to run the country without royal participation.

Ridley Scott tries serving history with a tinge of humour, too, in Napoleon, especially in the chemistry his titular hero shares with Josephine. The impact is only partial, because the relationship drama hardly gets space to develop amidst the film’s cramped screenplay that has a runtime of close to 160 minutes. Still, the Joaquin Phoenix’s on-screen equation with Vanessa Kirby remains among the more enjoyable bits in Scott’s new film.

Irreverence and humour seem to work best in historicals when Hollywood goes on a socio-political analysis spree. Random recall would bring to mind W, Vice, America: The Motion Picture or Elvis & Nixon — films that cast a critical gaze at the American system — in the same way as Armando Iannucci’s 2017 dark comedy The Death Of Stalin portrays a satirical picture of internal power politics in Soviet Union of 1953, following the death of Joseph Stalin. Hollywood’s streak of irreverence while imagining history extended to World War II, too, when Quentin Tarantino outrageously imagined Hitler’s slaughter at a movie premiere in the 2011 release, Inglourious Basterds. Scott was perhaps driven by similar ideas to set up a satire quotient around Napoleon.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who loves to write on popular culture.