The French do not like the portrayal of Napoleon by an Englishman.
At least not the French critics.
Looking grim and moody beneath his giant bicorn hat, Joaquin Phoenix scowls on posters across Paris. He is promoting the film by Ridley Scott, which represents the latest reincarnation of the French hero, whose nose – as one reviewer deliciously wrote – still sticks out into the middle of French political life two centuries after his death.
But while British and American reviewers loved it, French critics found it lazy, pointless, boring, migraine-inducing, too short and historically inaccurate. And that is just the beginning.
The critic of the left-wing daily newspaper Libération described the film not only as ugly, but also as empty, postulated nothing and was “very sure that it is pointless”. The review in Le Monde said that if the director’s vision had any merit, it was “simplicity” – “a montage that alternates between Napoleon’s love life and his exploits in battle.”
The right-wing Le Figaro took many positions in its breathless reporting and seized the moment to publish a 132-page special issue on Napoleon and more than a dozen articles, including a reader survey and a Napoleon knowledge test. The newspaper’s most memorable opinion came from Thierry Lentz, director of the Napoleon Foundation, a charity dedicated to historical research: He considered Phoenix’s version of Napoleon – compared to more than 100 other actors who have played the role – ” a little vulgar, a.” A little rude, with a voice from somewhere else that doesn’t fit at all.”
All of this was to be expected.
As the French writer Sylvain Tesson once said: “France is a paradise in which people live who believe they are in hell.” How else would one expect a country where the eternal answer to the question “How is it?” you?” can be heard again and again. Is “Not Bad” a way to respond to a historical film about yourself?
But is this film supposed to be about a French legend – even one despised by many – played by an American actor and directed by a British filmmaker?
L’horreur.
“This very anti-French and very pro-English film is, however, not very ‘English’ in spirit,” said historian Patrick Gueniffey in the magazine Le Point, “because the English never gave up their admiration for their enemy.”
“It is difficult not to see this hasty action as historic revenge by the Englishman Ridley Scott,” said the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné. “An Austerlitz of cinema? More like Waterloo.”
As one settles into the waterfall of negative reactions, one begins to wonder whether the criticism reveals more about the French psyche than the nation’s taste in period cinema.
““When we talk about Napoleon, we actually go to the heart of our principles and our political divisions,” said Arthur Chevallier, a Napoleon expert who has published five books about the Corsican soldier who seized power after the French Revolution and declared himself Kaiser crowned and conquered large parts of Western Europe – and later lost them.
“What all French people have in common is that Napoleon remains a theme that influences our self-image and our identity,” said Chevallier.
More than 200 years after his death, Napoleon’s fingerprints still generously decorate the country and its capital: along the streets and subway stations named after his generals and battles; from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, which he had planned; in the splendor of the golden dome of the Invalides, beneath which rises his huge marble tomb.
Lawyers still follow an updated version of its civil code. Provincial regions are still overseen by prefects – or government administrators – under a system he developed. Every year, high school students take the high school diploma introduced by his regime, and citizens are awarded the country’s highest honor, which he invented.
Last Sunday, before the film hit theaters here, a French auction house announced that it had sold one of Napoleon’s signature bicorn hats for a record price of 1.9 million euros, or $2.1 million.
In recent decades, Napoleon’s behavior towards misogyny, imperialism and racism – he reintroduced slavery eight years after it was abolished by the revolutionary government – has come under sharp critical light. But that only seems to have added to the weight of his legacy.
For many, Napoleon is the symbol of a France under attack by what they see as an American import of identity politics and “wokeism.” He was declared the “anti-woke emperor” on the latest front page of the right-wing extremist weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles. (The reviewer also shot the film: From the first scene, the viewer knows that “historical accuracy will suffer at the guillotine,” wrote Laurent Dandrieu.)
In a nationwide poll conducted this week, 74 percent of respondents who had an opinion about Napoleon believed his actions were beneficial to France.
“When we talk about him, you get the impression that he is a living politician,” said Chevallier, who has already seen the film twice and counts himself among the few stalwart French fans.
What he liked, he said, was the different perspective on Napoleon and the revolution that created him and modern France. Instead of a royal leader with insatiable energy and ambition, Joaquin Phoenix portrays a common, greedy mortal who is the product of a bloodthirsty, barbaric upheaval – something that some find “very destabilizing,” Chevallier said, but which he saw as interesting and instructive: “ because you understand why Napoleon aroused such hatred among other European powers at the time.
He predicted that the film would appeal to his fellow citizens, who are more movie buffs than history buffs, since it was released in theaters on Wednesday.
About 120,000 people across France attended the film that day – a strong start, but not a blockbuster like “Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom,” which, according to CBO, drew more than 460,000 viewers on its opening day earlier this year in Box Office , a company that collects French box office data.
Moviegoers streaming out of a cinema in Paris’ Latin Quarter on Thursday evening were not thrilled.
Augustin Ampe, 20, said he was all for demystifying Napoleon, but it was just too much. “Here he looks like a clumsy man who only focuses on his wife,” said the literature student, pausing for a moment the heated debate with his friends about the film’s failures. He preferred the mythical figure offered in the books and poems of Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, he said.
Charline Tartar, a librarian, was waiting for her movie date to finish his post-movie cigarette and found Phoenix’s performance too whiny.
“It’s a shame that Napoleon looks like a loser,” said Tartar, 27. She thought a French director would have placed more emphasis on historical accuracy.
“The French,” she added, “are very jealous of their history.”
Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle contributed reporting.