Three hours in theatre for men and horses? No, thank you | Napoleon

ChillJane, 2023/12/07

CJ Rating: ⭐⭐

Stepping into the grand theater for "Napoleon," a peculiar sight caught my eye right away: it was like a superhero movie convention, with gentlemen leading the way for their better halves or fathers shepherding their little protegés. (Picture this: in the realm of romantic movies, it's typically the ladies brandishing two tickets on a mission to score some prime seats.) Obviously, the dominant force at this cinematic gathering was the male audience.

This spectacle is undoubtedly tied to the men's fascination with Napoleon—a tip of the hat to a bygone era of the heroic conqueror and a penchant for the theatrics of war. As the movie played on, the loquacious father-son duo in front of me wouldn't cease their banter. Fortunately, I sidestepped a potential debacle by not selecting seats in front of them; otherwise, this article might've turned into a never-ending commentary on Napoleon's history, Joaquin Phoenix's altitude, and a meticulous historical analysis of each scene, serving as a fact-check for their textbook or Wikipedia wisdom.

Yet, when Josephine (Napoleon's romantic partner) took center stage on the screen, silence reigned, as if the atmosphere had been vacuumed out of the room. Perhaps they couldn't stomach the revelation that Napoleon was a hopeless romantic, the steamy love scenes, or Josephine bluntly telling Napoleon, "Without me, you are nothing."

I’m a female viewer, but still I'm left pondering why director Ridley Scott chose to elevate Napoleon and Josephine's love story to the epicenter of the entire movie. Perhaps he sensed that Napoleon and his story were somewhat lackluster, considering the exhaustive retelling of this character's history and biography. As it’s now 2023, wiser choices have been exploring the lives of ordinary folks, fringe characters, and the overlooked corners of history. And yet, here we are with a movie about Napoleon. Also, it seems very likely that traditional storytelling has got the better of Ridley Scott as well, where heroes always need a glamorous sidekick and would become about as charming as wet cardboard without one.

The result is that we see in Josephine's character an attempt by this movie to cater to female viewers, to give us a sense of participation and agency. A quite deliberate effort. Josephine is portrayed as extremely ambitious, free-spirited, and unconstrained by moral and ethical boundaries. Although she doesn't have real power, she can make Napoleon surrender to her time and time again.

Regardless of Ridley Scott's grand plan, the cold, hard fact is that the portrayal of Napoleon and his story in the film is indeed unremarkable. Without Josephine and her romantic escapades, it’d be even more dull as dishwater, lacking that special something.

"Napoleon" is not a complete failure though, and Ridley Scott has no need to feel any shame, because if viewed from a different angle, this movie seems like a deconstruction and dissolution of the authority of a historical figure. Napoleon's wars, once praised as heroic, are now depicted in the movie as repetitive and mundane. The end credits emphasize the number of casualties on his side, rather than the number of enemy soldiers he defeated. Seen as not the untouchable, awe or pity-inspiring figure from the history books anymore, Napoleon becomes a man who gets nervous and breathless on his first battlefield, with a bit of an Oedipus complex and struggles in his relationships with women.

I don’t mean to step on any toes but the movie does seem tailor-made for men, and I suspect those male viewers bashing it as rubbish might just find their defenses crumbling precisely because of this.

However, I have to be a wet blanket - as a female viewer, no matter how this movie tries to please me with Josephine's role or tells me that Napoleon is just an ordinary person, it doesn't hold much meaning for me. I don't care about these things, I don't care about the deep pride and trauma of a man's inner world, even if he is Napoleon. Honestly, just managing the guys in my life is exhausting enough—adding nearly three hours in a cinema? No, thank you.