Ridley Scott's Napoleon (Nov 2023)

[Grim.Reaper]

Although I know not by same director, Patriot is a perfect example....I know it isn't very historic, but every time I run across it on TV, I re-watch it over and over....it seems to capture the spirit of the time period and I find it entertaining, it not being historic doesn't make me enjoy it any less.  I suspect this movie will be the same and that is perfectly fine for me...just entertain me:)  My biggest issue will be whether I can sit in a theatre seat for 3+ hours :)

[Gusington]

^I'm the same way with The Patriot. That movie is another good example of just wanting to be entertained because when Mel Gibson was being accused of being a nutter, I was basically like 'who knows what is true and what is not here' and decided to try to still enjoy the movies. In just don't have the mental capacity to investigate every claim anymore.

[JasonPratt]

You can definitely add Braveheart to that list of significantly inaccurate but awesome historical films, also involving Mel Gibson. 


The basic truth of what happened with him is that he is, or was, a very angry drunk with a drinking problem, and said some anti-Jewish things against people in Hollywood while angry-drunk that he quickly regretted as unfair (at least in regard to Jews as a whole). What more is true there, I don't know.

[Sir Slash]

I agree, we don't need to investigate every claim to be just plain-old entertained. Anyway, that's what the world has the Grogheads for. Does it not? Still, I can already hear the sound of many snide grumblings with a French accent coming.

[SirAndrewD]

I'm a history nut but I don't demand everything being totally exact to the very letter of history. 

I especially don't mind a bit of puffery around this period.  Propaganda was in full swing during the Napoleonic Wars, both on the part of Napoleon and against him.  I like some of the stories being represented on screen even if they don't match the letter of history, but at least its spirit. 

I actually went over a lot of British Propaganda about Napoleon written at the time, and he was portrayed as a spoiled, incompetent dwarf who was utterly incapable of waging war effectively and shot off the nose of the Sphinx out of anger that there were monuments to men greater than he.   Clearly untrue but fun to sometime represent ala Terry Gilliam's segment in Time Bandits with Ian Holm in the role.

I mean, I used to show Gladiator in my World History class, not because it was an accurate representation of the historical figures it claimed to follow, but because it was a good movie and it fit the spirit of Roman history if not the letter.  It got kids interested and they then listened to me when I told the real story. 

This film might be too much for a class in school, but I can tell you it'd have a much better chance of engaging people and getting them interested than the hyper-accurate Bondarchuk Waterloo film will ever do. 

[Gusington]

Was Napoleon really a monster?

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230818-ridley-scotts-napoleon-was-the-french-leader-really-a-monster

[SirAndrewD]

Was Napoleon really a monster?

No. 

[Uberhaus]

Oui, oui, oui, all the way home.

The Poles love him though, and bonus points for enabling am Anglo/Prussian dalliance.

[JasonPratt]

The Corsican Ogre, man! -- I know one writer from the period who regarded him as the final Antichrist for sure really! (This was despite Israel not having returned and rebuilt the Temple yet, which this author knew very well was supposed to happen first.)

That Anglo/Prussian dalliance was regarded by Chesterton as disastrous, btw: on his reckoning (in the midst of WW1, and in the interwar period) the British should have allied with Nappy. But then, the Hanover dynasty had been invited onto the throne earlier (also regarded as a disaster by Chesterton, ofc). So no way was Britain ever going to ally with Napoleon.

[ArizonaTank]

I think Napoleon's conduct during the Siege of Jaffa in 1799, would have gotten him the rope had the incident happened during WWII. His troops were enraged at the Ottomans, and Napoleon basically oversaw the wholesale slaughter of the populace of the city.

I suppose some might say he wasn't able to control the situation, but that same argument didn't stop a few Japanese generals from swinging after war crimes tribunals at the end of WWII.

Fortunately in Napoleon's long military career, what happened at Jaffa was an aberration. 

[SirAndrewD]

[Sir Slash]

It would depend on your definition of a, "Monster" wouldn't it? England, yes. France, no. Russia, yes. Poland, no. Prussia, yes. Everybody threatened by Prussia, no. His second wife, yes. His first wife, no. Every royal family in Europe, yes. Every commoner in Europe, no, unless he invaded their country and despoiled everything and everyone in it, then yes. The army that he loved, loved him back. The navy he hated, hated him back. Are we still talking about just one guy here? 

[SirAndrewD]

I studied Revolutionary and Imperial France under Dr. Mike Fitzsimmons.

Thing about Mike, he was as hardcore a leftist as they came.  He absolutely thought and argued Reagan and Nixon were "monsters".

He also had a secondary PhD in the Holocaust and he was someone that was a straight up and down black and white as they came. 

Great guy, my academic advisor and mentor.  Was a patron of me back when I was still in the history world.

All of that is to say, when anyone asked him if Napoleon was a monster, he answered the same as I did above, a simple "No". 

Let him go and he got complicated about it, but I can tell you what, that man forgot more about French History than I'll ever know and he said he wasn't a monster, I'm not going to argue with him.

[Uberhaus]

How did your professor reconcile the fact of Napoleon's continual wars of conquest?
As one professor states in the BBC article he wasn't like Hitler or Stalin, in a genocidal manner.
However millions ranging from 3.5 to 7 million died during his wars and lets not forget the atrocities directed at guerrillas in the Peninsular war and at rebelling Caribbean islands.  Goya is most famous for his art depicting such atrocities.

[Sir Slash]

We are all part monsters and part Saints depending on environment we're in and the circumstances. And absolute power tends to bring-out the, 'monster' part more readily. Probably all of us would become Napoleon to promote our vision of Justice and the Greater Good for, (Fill-In-The-Blank) if given the same level of total control he had. Monsters are easy to see when looking into the past, but much harder to see in the present. Who are today's Heros that will be seen as Monsters in a generation?