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    France Scoffs at an Englishman’s ‘Napoleon’

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    French critics considered Ridley Scott’s new biopic lazy, pointless, boring, migraine-inducing, too short and historically inaccurate. And that’s just to start.The French do not like an Englishman’s rendition of Napoleon.Or at least, the French critics do not.Looking grim and moody from under an enormous bicorn hat, Joaquin Phoenix glowers from posters around Paris, promoting the film by Ridley Scott that offers the latest reincarnation of the French hero whose nose — as one reviewer deliciously wrote — still rises in the middle of French political life two centuries after his death.Yet while British and American reviewers glowed, French critics considered it lazy, pointless, boring, migraine-inducing, too short and historically inaccurate. And that’s just to start.The critic for the left-wing daily Libération panned the film as not just ugly, but vacuous, positing nothing and “very sure of its inanity.” The review in Le Monde offered that if the director’s vision had one merit, it was “simplicity” — “a montage alternating between Napoleon’s love life and his feats of battle.”The right-wing Le Figaro took many positions in its breathless coverage, using the moment to pump out a 132-page special-edition magazine on Napoleon, along with more than a dozen articles, including a reader poll and a Napoleon knowledge test. The newspaper’s most memorable take came from Thierry Lentz, the 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 bit vulgar, a bit rude, with a voice from elsewhere that doesn’t fit at all.” All of this was to be expected.British and American critics praised the film, but their French counterparts panned it, to say the least.Quentin de Groeve/Hans Lucas, via ReutersAs the French writer Sylvain Tesson once famously said, “France is a paradise inhabited by people who think they’re in hell.” How else would you expect a country where the perennial response to “How are you?” is “Not bad” to respond to a historical film about itself?But to have that film be about a French legend — even one whom many detest — 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 the historian Patrick Gueniffey, in Le Point magazine, “because the English have never compromised their admiration for their enemy.”“It’s hard not to see this hasty approach as the historical revenge of Ridley Scott, the Englishman,” assessed the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné. “An Austerlitz of cinema? More like Waterloo.”Bracing under the waterfall of negative reaction, you begin to wonder whether the criticism reveals more about the French psyche than the nation’s taste in historical cinema.“When we talk about Napoleon, in fact we are getting at the heart of our principles and our political divisions,” explained Arthur Chevallier, a Napoleon expert who has published five books on the Corsican soldier who seized power after the French Revolution, crowned himself emperor and proceeded to conquer — and later lose — much of Western Europe.“The common point among all French people is that Napoleon remains a subject that influences our understanding of ourselves, our identity,” Chevallier said.Phoenix and Ridley Scott, the film’s director, at the premiere of the movie in Paris this month.Stephanie Lecocq/ReutersMore than 200 years after his death, the smudge of Napoleon’s fingerprints still liberally decorates the country and its capital: along the streets and metro stations named after his generals and battles; from atop the Arc de Triomphe that he planned; in the gleam of the gold dome of the Invalides, under which his giant marble tomb rises.Lawyers still follow an updated version of his civil code. Provincial regions are still overseen by prefects — or government administrators — in a system he devised. Every year, high schoolers take the baccalaureate exam that his regime introduced, and citizens are awarded the country’s top 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 1.9 million euros, or $2.1 million.In recent decades, Napoleon’s record for misogyny, imperialism and racism — he reimposed slavery eight years after the revolutionary government abolished it — has come under glaring critical light. But that seems to have simply reinforced the weight of his legacy.To many, Napoleon is the symbol of a France that has come under assault from what they consider an American import of identity politics and “wokeism.” The latest front page of the weekly far-right magazine Valeurs Actuelles declared him “The Anti-Woke Emperor.” (Its reviewer also panned the film: From the first scene, the viewer knows that “historical accuracy will suffer the guillotine,” wrote Laurent Dandrieu.)In a national poll conducted this week, 74 percent of respondents with an opinion on Napoleon considered his actions beneficial for France.“You have the impression that when we talk about him, he’s a living politician,” said Chevallier, who has already seen the film twice and counts himself among its few unabashed French fans.A reincarnated Napoleon and Imperial Guards welcomed viewers to a screening of the film in Ajaccio, the city in which the real Napoleon was born, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat he liked, he said, was its different take on Napoleon and the revolution that birthed him and modern France. Instead of a regal leader with insatiable energy and ambition, Joaquin Phoenix portrays a regular grasping mortal who is the product of a bloodthirsty, barbaric upheaval — something that some find “very destabilizing,” Chevallier said, but that he considered interesting and instructive, “because you understand why Napoleon inspired such hate” among other European powers at the time.He predicted that his fellow citizens who were more cinema fans than history buffs would like the film, which opened to the public on Wednesday.Some 120,000 people went to see it across France that day — a strong opening, but not a blockbuster like “Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom,” which drew more than 460,000 on its opening day early this year, according to figures collected by C.B.O. Box Office, a firm that collates French box office data.Moviegoers streaming out of a theater in the Latin Quarter of Paris on Thursday night were not enthused.Augustin Ampe, 20, said he was all for demystifying Napoleon, but this was just too much. “Here he looks like a clumsy man focused only on his wife,” said the literature student, breaking for a moment from a fierce debate over the film’s failures with his friends. He preferred the mythical figure offered in the books and poems of Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, he said.Waiting for her movie date to finish his post-film cigarette, Charline Tartar, a librarian, assessed Phoenix’s rendition as too moany.“It’s too bad Napoleon looks like a loser,” said Tartar, 27. She thought a French director would have paid more attention to historical accuracy.“The French,” she added, “are very jealous of their history.”Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle More

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      ‘Napoleon’ Review: A Lumpy, Grumpy Little Man

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      Joaquin Phoenix is oddly mesmerizing as the French emperor in Ridley Scott’s historical epic charting his rise and ruin.When he was in his mid-20s and first visited the studio where he would late shoot “Citizen Kane,” Orson Welles is said to have likened the movies to the best electric train set a boy could have. Welles is a defining inspiration for Ridley Scott, who is best known for monumentally scaled historical epics like “Gladiator” and “Kingdom of Heaven.” In these movies as well as in his latest spectacle, “Napoleon,” Scott plays, to push Welles’s metaphor further, with the biggest train sets conceivable — giant, beautiful, gleaming machines that can, by turns, transport and overwhelm you. He’s a heavy metal guy.“Napoleon” is a very big movie, as you would expect given that it follows its title subject from the bloody delirium of the French Revolution to battlefields across Europe, Africa and, catastrophically, into Russia. More startling, though, is that the movie is also often eccentric and at times eccentrically funny. You expect refined craft and technique from Scott and the pleasures of spectacle filmmaking at its most expansive. You expect heft, seriousness, not snort-out-loud humor, which I guess explains why, while watching the movie, I flashed on Karl Marx’s axiom about history being first tragedy and then farce.It opens in Paris amid that convulsion of violence called the Terror, with surging, shouting crowds and the metallic hiss of the falling guillotine blade. Aristocrats are losing their heads (Scott re-creates one execution with gory verisimilitude), and Napoleon Bonaparte — a mesmerizing, off-kilter, lumpish Joaquin Phoenix — will soon profit from the chaos. Before long, the story has jumped forward and now Napoleon is in the southern French port city of Toulon, where he strategically routs the Anglo-Spanish fleet that has taken the city.Scott establishes Napoleon’s early rise to power with bold imagery and brusque narrative economy, vividly setting the historical moment with scenes from both inside the corridors of revolutionary power — enter Robespierre — and the surging anarchy out in the streets. Napoleon’s rise at this point is largely facilitated by the politician Paul Barras (Tahar Rahim), a silky operator with the pacific mien of a patiently lurking predator and an inescapable aristocratic hauteur. Everyone addresses one another as Citizen, which, in Barras’s case comes across as the 18th-century version of performative political correctness. Together, Barras and Napoleon consolidate their positions. Exit Robespierre.Joséphine (a fine Vanessa Kirby) makes her entrance soon after, catching Napoleon’s notice (her décolletage helps) and ushering in the story’s second plotline. A widow whose husband lost his head during the Terror, Joséphine has been recently released from prison, an ordeal that has left her with short, choppy hair and a very keen sense of self-preservation. It’s not at all clear what she actually sees in Napoleon, other than his uniform, growing reputation and obvious interest in her. She’s (relatively) poor for a society woman and has children, so desperation plays a role, though the movie suggests that what Joséphine truly sees is power.After Joséphine appears, the movie soon bifurcates into two lines of action, one involving Napoleon’s military campaigns, and the other the couple’s relationship. This kind of dual plot structure is a familiar template of old Hollywood that features two entwined strands — involving adventure and romance — that together bring everything to a close. What’s unusual here is how separate the lines of action remain in “Napoleon” and how they don’t as much interconnect as run on parallel tracks. When he’s not facing off against the Austrians, the British and the Russians, Napoleon is struggling with Joséphine, who vexes him almost as much as the Duke of Wellington (an amusing Rupert Everett).Written by David Scarpa, the movie tracks Napoleon’s relentless rise to despotic power — he crowns himself emperor — amid political intrigues, bloody battlefields and some occasional hasty rutting with Joséphine, who invariably cuts him down to size. He’s a little man, you are regularly reminded, and his relationship with Joséphine (who soon and understandably takes a lover) makes him smaller. Periodic bits of text function as de facto chapter headings, grounding the story’s chronology and announcing the next conflagration. Historical figures come and go (Paul Rhys plays Talleyrand), but for the most part the movie slides over the complexities of both the revolution and Napoleon’s reign as well as the reasons France has been swept up in endless battles on so many fronts.The war scenes are extraordinary, vigorous, harrowing and rightly grotesque. The tremendous scale of some of these battles helps give them their visceral power, as does Scott’s complex staging and use of masses of human actors and horses. With cannon blasts, bursts of smoke and the sights and sounds of armies of men thundering over fields toward their deaths, he conveys the frenzy of war, its heat and terror. As the fighting grimly continues, and the body count mounts, the absolute waste of it all becomes overwhelming, which is, I imagine, why Scott seems so uninterested in Napoleon’s vaunted military genius.“Napoleon” is consistently surprising partly because it doesn’t conform to the conventions of mainstream historical epics, which is especially true of its startling, adamantly unromanticized title character. (The movie also doesn’t always conform to the historical record, and some may take issue with the portrayal of the Battle of Austerlitz.) In the early scenes, Napoleon seems to be another of Phoenix’s taciturn, unnervingly volatile, enigmatically damaged, violent men. The difference is that this Napoleon, with his bloat, scowls and consuming needs, often resembles nothing as much as an angrily petulant baby, one whose cruelty and pathological vanity make the horror he unleashes unnervingly familiar.NapoleonRated R for intense scenes of war. Running time: 2 hours 38 minutes. 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      Napoleon Didn’t Really Shoot Cannons at Egypt’s Pyramids

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      But scholars say that a trailer for Ridley Scott’s new film draws attention to the French emperor’s complex and lasting legacy on the study of Egypt’s cultural heritage.As Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” opens for Thanksgiving holiday viewing, scenes from the film’s trailers are making waves. That was especially true of a sensational depiction of French troops led by Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor firing cannons at the pyramids of Giza.“I don’t know if he did that,” Mr. Scott told The Times of London. “But it was a fast way of saying he took Egypt.”There is no evidence that French invaders launched artillery at the pyramids, or that Napoleon’s troops shot the nose off the Sphinx, another piece of popular apocrypha (evidence suggests that the nose was chiseled off centuries before Napoleon’s time).“From what we know, Napoleon held the Sphinx and the pyramids in high esteem and used them as a means of urging his troops to greater glory,” said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. “He definitely did not take pot shots at them.”While creative license is expected in Hollywood biopics, Mr. Scott’s cinematic choices prompted memes, discussion and lighthearted dunking, including riffs about Napoleon battling mummies.Some historians have criticized Mr. Scott, but many hope “Napoleon” will generate interest in the events that inspired the film. And while Napoleon didn’t literally hurl projectiles at the pyramids, his invasion of Egypt had a profound effect on Egyptian cultural heritage and how the world understands it today.“Ultimately, the campaign is a defeat — the French lose and get kicked out,” said Alexander Mikaberidze, a professor at Louisiana State University in Shreveport who specializes in Napoleonic history. But Napoleon’s invasion also resulted in a complex scientific and cultural legacy, he added: “the beginning of Egyptology, the beginning of this fascination with Egypt and the desire to explore Egyptian history and Egyptian culture.”The title page of the the multivolume publication Napoleon commissioned upon his return from Egypt.James Smith Noel Collection/Louisiana State University at ShreveportA drawing by Dominique Vivant, later Baron Denon, who accompanied Napoleon on the Egyptian campaign, of French scholars measuring the Sphinx.James Smith Noel Collection/Louisiana State University at ShreveportThe French campaign in Egypt from 1798 to 1801 was driven by Napoleon’s colonial ambitions and a desire to stymie British influence. But in addition to amassing an army of some 50,000 men, Napoleon made the unusual decision to invite more than 160 scholars — in fields like botany, geology, the humanities and others — to accompany the invasion.The scholars documented the cultural and natural landscapes of Egypt, which they eventually compiled into a seminal 1809 publication that contained detailed entries about the Giza pyramid complex. This is one reason historians know that Napoleon visited the pyramids, as shown in Mr. Scott’s film, though it is unlikely he regarded the structures as military targets.“There was a real interest on the part of the scholars and, I think by extension, a real interest by Napoleon to be able to understand these things that Europeans hadn’t really had unfettered access to since the classical period,” said Andrew Bednarski, a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo who specializes in Egyptology and 19th-century history.In their effort to document Egypt’s vast archaeological heritage, the French scholars seized many important artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone, a rock inscribed with three languages that proved instrumental in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone and many other spoils ended up in British hands after the French hold on Egypt collapsed in 1801. By then, Napoleon had returned to France.Following the failed campaign, word of Egypt’s cultural wonders spread across Europe and powered a new wave of global Egyptomania. This insatiable appetite for Egyptian antiquities has resulted in centuries of exploration, excavation and exploitation of the region’s vast material culture. Since Napoleon’s invasion, countless artifacts have been removed from Egypt by prospectors and traders, many through clandestine and outright criminal channels.The Rosetta Stone, on view at the British Museum in London, was one of the spoils of Napoleon’s Egypt campaign.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe Nefertiti bust, found in Egypt by German archaeologists in 1912.Michael Sohn/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs a result, many of Egypt’s greatest treasures, including the Rosetta Stone and the bust of Nefertiti, are in museums and private collections far from home. Egypt’s antiquities community has been working for years to repatriate as many artifacts as possible, with some success, while also developing new strategies to protect its cultural legacy within the nation’s borders.“There are more site management plans, an increase in museums and an upsurge in media coverage of antiquities, which is geared not only to attract tourists but also to fostering national pride and educating the general Egyptian public as to the significance of their heritage,” Dr. Ikram said.Egypt has also been confronting a resurgence of looting in recent years as a result of domestic instabilities. The Antiquities Coalition, a U.S.-based nonprofit, estimated that following the 2011 revolution, about $3 billion worth of relics had been illegally smuggled out of Egypt. The Institute of Egypt, a research center that Napoleon established in Cairo during his invasion, burned down in 2011 during the tumult of the Arab Spring. Erosive forces such as pollution and the effects of climate change, including extreme weather, pose another threat to Egypt’s monuments and artifacts.Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign ignited the modern demand for Egyptian antiquities that still rages today. Mr. Scott’s vision of Napoleon shooting cannons at the pyramids of Giza is just a continuation of this longstanding impulse to co-opt Egyptian symbols and market them to a new audience. Many experts have decried the inaccuracies in the film — prompting an expletive-laden response from Mr. Scott. But some see in “Napoleon” the opportunity to revisit the polarizing French emperor’s lasting effects on the world.“Anything that might spark people’s interest in the history of Egyptology, the effects of colonialism around the world, the Enlightenment — any of those things — I think is only positive,” Dr. Bednarski said. More

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      Your Next 10 Steps After Watching the New ‘Napoleon’ Film

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      If you want to read his biography, or even see his horse, you can.With the new Ridley Scott film “Napoleon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby, hitting theaters this week, General Bonaparte is having a cultural moment.Another one.As historical figures go, Napoleon maintains a ubiquity 200 years after his death that far exceeds influential contemporaries like James Madison, Emperor Kokaku or Czar Alexander I. That’s in part because of his historic importance and military feats. But maybe also it’s that hat. (One just sold for $2 million.)Here are 10 more ways to immerse yourself in Napoleana before, after or in lieu of seeing the film.1. Read a biography“Napoleon: A Life,” an “epically scaled” biography.Napoleon has fascinated biographers for two centuries. Andrew Roberts’s “Napoleon: A Life” (2014) is a comprehensive look at the rise and fall of a man who made it from Corsica to the Palace of Versailles to (nearly) mastery of all of Europe.In The New York Times Book Review, Duncan Kelly called it “epically scaled” and said, “Roberts brilliantly conveys the sheer energy and presence of Napoleon the organizational and military whirlwind.” At 900-plus pages, it will admittedly take you longer to read than watching the 157-minute film.2. Listen to a podcastOn “Noble Blood,” the host Dana Schwartz takes a closer look at royals of all stripes. One episode, “Dumas and Napoleon,” reveals an unexpected link with Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (the father of the “Three Musketeers” author Alexandre), a Creole general who served under, but also clashed with, Napoleon.3. Go to a museumThe final resting place of Napoleon in Paris. The skeleton above is a modern work of art depicting one of his horses.Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has room after room of Napoleonic banners, uniforms and memorabilia, enough to overload the most ardent fan.Somewhat more ghoulishly, you can see the bed in which Napoleon died in exile on the island of St. Helena. And then there’s his horse, Vizir, and his dog, both stuffed and on display.Afterward, head to Napoleon’s tomb under the Dôme des Invalides.4. See a painting“Le Sacre de Napoléon” by Jacques-Louis David, at the Louvre.Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSince you’re already in Paris to see that horse, stop by the Louvre for one of Jacques-Louis David’s masterworks: “Le Sacre de Napoléon” (1807).At a massive 33 by 20 feet, and packed with historical characters, the painting depicts the moment in 1804 when Napoleon, in the presence of the Pope, crowned himself emperor at Notre Dame.5. Read a novelIn Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece “War and Peace,” Napoleon not only preoccupies the minds of the Russian characters as his Grande Armée bears down on Moscow, but he also appears as a major character himself. Far from a stock figure, he is a fully realized person in the novel, displaying egotism, anger and a liking for snuff.Don’t be put off that upon its release in 1886, The Times panned it.If that famously thick book is too much, there are several film versions. Herbert Lom plays Napoleon in a 1956 Hollywood film starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda. And Prokofiev wrote an opera that was last seen at the Met in 2008, but is readily available on streaming services.Napoleon’s towering influence on his era means he looms over many other novels, including William Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” and Stendhal’s “Le Rouge et le Noir.” And it is no coincidence that the pig who becomes a dictator in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is named Napoleon.6. See a silent filmWorking on the reconstruction of the Napoleon movie of 1927.Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere are many other films based on Napoleon’s life, but one of the classics was made 10 years before Ridley Scott was born. Of his 1927 silent epic “Napoléon,” the director Abel Gance boasted: “I have made a tangible effort toward a somewhat richer and more elevated form of cinema.”The film has innovations to spare: Wide-screen formatting, quick editing and hand-held camerawork all took big steps forward with its release. It can be found for viewing at home, but it also pops up in revival houses from time to time.7. Have a laughNapoleon, played by Terry Camilleri, struggled with bowling in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”AlamyNapoleon, with his distinctive (and usually ahistorical) mannerisms, turns up as a supporting character, or easy joke, in a wide range of films. Marlon Brando plays him in “Désirée” (1954) and Rod Steiger in “Waterloo” (1970).His appearance in the time-travel comedy “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989) is a lot lighter: Terry Camilleri’s Napoleon, collected from a battlefield and thrust into 1980s Southern California, bowls, devours ice cream and enjoys a waterslide at a park called (what else?) Waterloo.8. Play a gameHistory buffs can reshape the world in the long-running computer game Civilization. (“There may not be a game franchise I have enjoyed more consistently over the last two decades than Civilization,” the Times reviewer Seth Schiesel wrote in 2010.)Napoleon appears only as a general in the latest iteration, Civilization VI, but in Civilization V, he leads the French forces. Here’s a chance to finally win the Battle of Waterloo and maybe conquer the world.9. Watch a cartoonIn the Bugs Bunny short “Napoleon Bunny-Part” (1956), Bugs encounters Napoleon and quickly infuriates the easily infuriated caricature, as only Bugs Bunny can, while narrowly eluding the guillotine. A highlight is when he disguises himself as Josephine and rather easily fools the little general. “What’s up, Nappy?”10. Eat dessertA mille-feuille at the West Village restaurant Noortwyck.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAfter all the tomes, films and traveling, reward yourself. You could make a delicious mille-feuille, the puff pastry with cream, using the New York Times recipe. Or just buy one at the namesake pâtisserie Mille-Feuille on LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village.Oh, yes — the mille-feuille is commonly known as a Napoleon. Bon appétit, mon général. More