As soon as the first trailer for Ridley Scott’s new historical epic Napoleon appeared on YouTube, historians got in line to point out its numerous factual inaccuracies. These ranged from small and trivial—the haircut Marie Antoinette wore as she kneeled in front of the guillotine—to giant and not-so-trivial, like whether or not the Corsican emperor fired a cannon at the Great Pyramid of Giza during his invasion of Egypt.
Scott told the historians to “get a life,” a harsh but ultimately understandable response. He is, after all, not a researcher, but a filmmaker, and filmmakers take creative liberties to make their stories more compelling. In his 2000 hit film Gladiator, set in the Roman Empire’s heyday, Scott freely altered the fates and personalities of real-life emperors Aurelius and Commodus, and even added an entirely fictional character in the form of Maximus Decimus Meridius, the formidable general played by Russell Crowe.
But Napoleon is not Gladiator. Where the latter depicts subjects that are relegated to the distant past, the former revolves around a person who, while also long dead, continues to influence the world we live in today, literally and figuratively. Napoleon’s military campaigns dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, paving the way for the unification of both Germany and Italy. He authorized the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States with the stroke of a pen. He reimposed slavery in the French Caribbean, enabled independence movements in Latin America by invading Spain, and—through what some reluctantly refer to as enlightened despotism—helped lay the foundations for the modern welfare state.
It’s Hollywood that continues to keep Carlyle’s theory alive in the hearts and minds of ordinary people.
Arguably greater than Napoleon’s own achievements was the impression he made on nineteenth century artists and thinkers. His unrivaled political and military success, regardless of its causes or consequences, revitalized faith in the power and potential of the individual. “I saw the Emperor,” the renowned German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote to a friend after French troops marched through the town of Jena, “this world-soul, riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.”
Hegel saw Napoleon as a “man of action”—someone who, through a combination of talent, ambition, and willpower, could single-handedly change the world and reshape it in his own image. This romantic perception of the emperor went on to inspire Thomas Carlyle’s so-called “Great Man Theory,” which argues that history was largely decided by the deeds (and misdeeds) of noteworthy people, Napoleon among them.
The Great Man Theory is as incorrect as it is dangerous. Ignoring other, impersonal factors like economics and climate, it overemphasizes the agency of individuals at the expense of their immediate environment. Taking a page from the Napoleonic Wars, aspiring demagogues and dictators present themselves as “Great Men,” destined to accomplish whatever it is they promise to do, regardless of circumstances.
Instead of philosophers like Hegel, however, it’s Hollywood that continues to keep Carlyle’s theory alive in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. As such, a film like Napoleon must be judged not only by its screenplay or production quality, but also by the treatment of its controversial protagonist.
Scott, like the historians he urges to get a life, asks whether Napoleon was really as great as we have been led to believe. The answer is somewhat contradictory. At times, Napoleon comes across as a parody of the Great Man Theory. Joaquin Phoenix, last seen playing malnourished neurotics in Joker and Beau is Afraid, portrays Napoleon as smaller than life, not larger. From a distance, his version of Napoleon looks every bit like his famous paintings—stern, serious, determined—but up close and personal, he’s sad and pathetic, so much so that, during screenings, audiences regularly snicker at his delusions of grandeur.
At other times, Napoleon acts like a glaring reaffirmation of Carlyle’s theory. Although the emperor himself may be pitiful, the set pieces around him are nothing short of epic. As critic David Klion pointed out in his review for The New Republic, the film’s many battle scenes look like moving renditions of a Jacques-Louis David painting. Like David, the neoclassicist, Scott depicts warfare as something grandiose—its horrors and injustices insignificant when observed from the perspective of Napoleon himself.
As a historical epic, Scott’s Napoleon delivers. As a convincing and informative portrait of the real Bonaparte, it leaves a lot to be desired.
Phoenix’s depiction of Napoleon’s incompetent demeanor and troubled relationship with his first wife, the Italian queen Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), suggest Scott rejects the Great Man Theory in favor of the Napoleon Complex. Espoused by Napoleon’s detractors, the Complex hypothesis holds that the emperor, far from overflowing with confidence and charisma, spent his life trying to compensate for his supposedly short stature.
The Napoleon Complex is not just plain wrong—Napoleon, standing at around five feet and two inches, would have been of average height in his own time—it also fails to rebuke the Great Man Theory. Instead of questioning whether Napoleon, and Napoleon alone, deserves credit for everything that happened while he was in charge, the Complex hypothesis merely rearranges his internal motivation from purpose to insecurity. It does not challenge his alleged greatness, but merely considers an alternative, more scandalous explanation.
As a historical epic, Scott’s Napoleon delivers. As a convincing and informative portrait of the real Bonaparte, it leaves a lot to be desired. For a more satisfying and responsible take on the emperor and his role in history, try reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Set during France’s march on Moscow, the book follows a handful of Russian families as they enter a time of great uncertainty. Concerned with the philosophy of history, Tolstoy devotes a significant portion of the book to the question of whether or not Napoleon was, in Hegel’s words, master of the world.
His sobering conclusion, that history is the sum total of every individual action, from that of the poorest farmhand to the most decorated general, should be presented alongside Scott’s entertaining but deeply misleading film.