REVIEWING NAPOLEON

I saw the new movie "Napoleon" today at a local theater. Here is my take on it. I have deliberately avoiding reading other reviews or comments so as not to skew my own view.

First of all, we must remember this is a Hollywood movie. It is not history. Since it is just a movie, we must think about the purpose and function of this movie. Why was it made? For entertainment, certainly. Then, we have to ask, how does this film work as entertainment?

I think a movie has to engage the viewer in one or two ways. It has to present an enveloping narrative, a plot, that draws us in and makes us care about what is happening on the screen. For instance, "Casablanca" does this perfectly. If the movie does not do this, then it has to present characters that we care about.

How does "Napoleon" function on each of these? It really has no unified narrative or plot. It is a collection of vignettes and they are not usually well-connected. So, the movie tries to rest on the characters, in this case Napoleon and Josephine. It does not succeed at this either. We really do not get to know either person well. Therefore, we never really care about them much as people. We do not even learn why they care so much about each other. The romance is not there. Instead the relationship is all sexual. There are numerous sexual references and two scenes of simulated intercourse. This depiction is most unfair to Josephine who, while she did use sex as a tool, was far more than a sex object. She was an intelligent, shrewd, and ambitious woman who contributed to Napoleon's career. This was really why Napoleon was attracted to her so much.

It is often true that movies tell us more about the time in which they were made than in the history being represented. If so, this movie tells us we live in an age obsessed with sex, sexuality, and gender. I do not think anyone would disagree with this. 

The movie is replete with historical inaccuracies and I will not go into this as it would take a long time. Suffice to say the one that grated on me the most was Josephine's reaction to being told that Napoleon was going to divorce her. In the movie she laughs disdainfully. In fact, people said one could hear her screams from one end of the palace to the other. She dissolved into hysterical sobs and begged and pleaded for a long time before becoming reconciled to the decision. In this case, history would have actually added to the emotional intensity of the movie since there was precious little otherwise. The countless other errors I would chalk up to poetic license. 

The battle scenes are mediocre to poor. In fact, they seemed gratuitous and even broke the narrative, such as it was, that the movie was trying to convey. Toulon was fair. Austerlitz was completely wrong. Borodino is barely a blip. The only battle scene that had any merit was Waterloo which was not too bad.

So, would I recommend the movie? I would give it 5 out of 10. If you are interested in history, or in Napoleon, it would be worth your while. If not, I would skip it. I doubt seriously that it will win any Academy Awards. And no, Joaquin Phoenix is not a convincing Napoleon.

I suppose one useful outcome of the movie is to make us think about the place of Napoleon Bonaparte in history. He was a gigantic figure who dominated Europe from 1799 to 1815 and cast a strong and long shadow over the next century and a half. The question is, what difference has he made to the world in which we live?

Historically, Napoleon represented two different currents, militarism and authoritarianism. Contrary to the film above, the driving force in his life was not Josephine, it was the army. He was first, last and in-between a soldier. One cannot understand anything about him without starting with this. As a soldier, he believed problems were solved on the battlefield. Hence, campaign after campaign, battle after battle. And this is what a lot of Napoleonic scholars love to specialize in. Napoleon was a genius at innovative, sometimes dazzling, strategy and tactics. But, in the end, his enemies inevitably joined up against him and brought him down. His militarism failed to keep him in power. 

The other current was authoritarianism. Napoleon overthrew the revolutionary republican government and made himself a dictator, calling himself consul, first consul, then emperor. While he institutionalized many reforms of the revolution, he betrayed the fundamental idea of the revolution, that people could govern themselves in freedom and equality.

One can argue that both militarism and authoritarianism have had devastating effects on civilization in the two centuries since Napoleon's time. Militarism zoomed ahead in the century after Napoleon so that by 1914, all the great powers had poured massive fortunes into military preparations, on the Napoleonic assumption that problems between nations could be settled on the battlefield. Every power in the world financed detailed historical studies of the Napoleonic wars as if to unlock the keys to his brilliance. This took all the great powers straight into the First World War. However, WWI was to be entirely different than the Napoleonic wars because of technology. Airplanes, submarines, tanks, machine guns, flame throwers, poison gas etc. were things N could not have imagined. The new militarism was far more deadly. Whereas at least 3m people died in the Napoleonic wars, some 20m died in WWI, and 60m in WWII. 

The authoritarian model has also been inordinately impressive since 1815 even though the main thrust of western civilization has been toward democracy. The Twentieth Century was the age of the ideological dictators, every one of which looked back to Napoleon. Hitler spent a long time standing at Napoleon's tomb on his triumphant visit to Paris in 1940. As we see in the world today, the urge toward authoritarianism is a major problem. This will be a large part of the American national elections next year. One of the parties is about to nominate a candidate who promises an authoritarian, that is, anti-democratic, state.

I would like to think the world has outgrown Napoleon and his legacy of militarism and authoritarianism. Aggressive wars do not solve problems and often only lead to more. The glory is not on the battlefield. It is in the making of the peace. Likewise, dictators do not know better than the communal spirit of the people. Sovereignty rests in the people as a whole and they have the right to decide collectively what they will do. Democracy is the best way to preserve liberty, equality, and fraternity.

 

AWAITING THE ARRIVAL OF "NAPOLEON"

I suppose we have all seen the trailers and ads on television about the upcoming theater movie, "Napoleon." This two-and-a-half hour "epic" is set to debut on the big screen at Thanksgiving. It has already been hyped a great deal in the media. I plan to see it at my earliest convenience. Find an announcement about the new movie HERE .

I am actually looking forward to it although I expect the film-makers have taken great liberties with actual characters and events. In graduate school at Florida State, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to specialize in the period of the French Revolution and Napoleon. FSU was then, and still is, one of the few universities in America that offered intense study in this particular period of history. My major professor was a world-renowned scholar of Napoleonic military history and amassed the largest library in the country on this period of history.

Over the years I have published several books and numerous articles on the French Revolution and Napoleon. I spent six years scouring the major libraries of Europe and America to compile a comprehensive bibliography of the books, articles, and other writings on the age of Napoleon, 1799-1815. This was something that had never been done before. I published a massive two-volume work in 1991 to great reviews. It listed 48,000 items. With the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, more books have been written about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other character of modern history. He has always fascinated people, historians and lay people alike.

The new movie is certainly not the first movie made about Napoleon, far from it. There have been dozens of them starting back in the silent era. In fact, the groundbreaking film came with Abel Gance's 1927 masterpiece, "Napoleon." Unfortunately, no actor has ever embodied the Napoleon we know from history. The worst attempt ever was Marlon Brando in "Desirée."

Awful. He played, well, Brando. From the new trailers, Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Napoleon, sounds a lot like Brando. Not a good sign.

Nevertheless, there were some very good parts of the movies that are still worthy of viewing. When I was a teenager, I was enthralled by the 1956 movie, "War and Peace," with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn. I watched it, mesmerized, on the huge screen of the Saenger theater in Pensacola. I can still feel the agony of the retreat from Russia. In my opinion the greatest Napoleonic battle scene ever put on film was in the 1966 Soviet six-hour version of "War and Peace." The Battle of Borodino used 100,000 actors and took forty-five minutes of the movie. The 1971 movie, "Waterloo" also did a good job of recreating that fatal battle. Unfortunately, most of the  movies and television production on Napoleon are forgettable junk. 

Of course, Hollywood movies have been all over the place in depicting history. In my mind, the greatest characterization of Louis XVI came in the 1938 movie, "Marie Antoinette." Robert Morley was the very reincarnation of Louis. I used to show the movie in my classes for that reason. On the other hand, the worst movie about history was actually one of the greatest movies ever made, 1939's "Gone With the Wind." It conjured up a fictional view of a past that never existed of rich white southerners and happy black slaves. The movie has had a huge and negative effect on southerners around the issue of race. An awful lot of white people still cling to the myth perpetuated by that movie that blacks were well off and well treated as slaves and that the white people were the victims. In my opinion, "Gone With the Wind" has done tremendous damage to race relations in the south. This is the power of what a movie can do.

I am already having troubles with some of the things in the trailers, little things that are wrongly portrayed. And why they threw in Marie Antoinette, I cannot imagine. Napoleon had nothing to do with her execution. I also have a lot of doubt about Joaquin Phoenix. He is too old for the part. Napoleon was very young, and youthful. He was only 19 when the Revolution began, and just 23 when he won his first big battle and became a brigadier general. He was just 30 when he came to power. 

The moviemakers promised to center the story on the relationship between N and Josephine. Good, except it would take a lot longer than two and a half hours to deal with that. It was passionate, but also highly complicated, and it was about a lot more than sex. 

So, I am trying to keep an open mind and see what the movie has to offer without prejudice. We are told the battle scenes alone are worth it. It includes the Battle of Austerlitz, N's "perfect" battle of 1805 that solidified his reputation as a great military genius. It also shows Waterloo, the last battle when the genius had lost his magic. Modern technology should be able to show these battles in a far more realistic way than in the films of old. We shall see.

I shall return with my thoughts about "Napoleon" after I have seen the new movie. Perhaps you will see the movie and share your thoughts with me. 

I will go over then my views of the place of Napoleon Bonaparte in history, a least a little summary of them. Meanwhile, let's enjoy (hopefully) the movie about one of the most fascinating characters in all of history.

 

OF HEROES AND CHRONICLERS

As the schism winds down and its loose threads are being tied off, it is appropriate to reflect on the near past before we move on, as we should, into the future. Of course, the schism can never, and should never, be removed from the memory of the past. It is now, and will be forever, in the DNA of the Diocese of South Carolina. The diocese of today has been forged in the fire of this unwelcomed conflagration. The character of the diocese today is the result of the events visited upon it in the past few decades. The loyal Episcopalians of lower South Carolina did not ask for what happened to them, and neither did they shy away from the challenge of the moment.

Therefore, it was appropriate for the diocese to pause last week and remember the heroes of the hour and the chroniclers who wrote about them. The greatest heroes were those faithful Episcopalians who refused to follow the erring crowd, who kept the faith and who fought the good fight even when it was hard to do. Frances Elmore, of Florence, was one of those. At the break in late 2012, she and Dolores Miller gathered up the dozen or so faithful Episcopalians of Florence and formed a church. I know firsthand because my daughter Elizabeth was in that little band. At first they met in living rooms, then in an old rural school and in borrowed quarters of a Lutheran church. Finally, they settled in a repurposed shoe store. By the time of Miller's death, a few years ago, St. Catherine's Episcopal Church was a strong and vibrant congregation. It was highly fitting last week for Bishop Woodliff-Stanley to recognize Elmore with the high honor of Bishop's Cross. Find a video of the Bishop's Cross presentation HERE.

It was appropriate too for the bishop to recognize the work of the "chroniclers," including Steve Skardon and Minerva King. For a decade before the break of 2012, Skardon single-handedly related information and challenged the various maneuverings of the old diocesan leadership which for years worked to remove the majority of the diocese from the Episcopal Church. His blog, scepiscopalians.com , was the only source of information available to the public that was not controlled by the schism-bound diocesan authorities. The Episcopal Forum tried also to promote reason but it was swept aside by the diocesan powers of the day. Without Skardon, the schismatics would have had complete control of the public message and a free run of the public perception of the issues of the day. He refused to concede the stage to them. This makes him both a hero and a chronicler. Find a video of the Chronicler awards HERE . The bishop recognized my work on history too, but I was not able to be present. I appreciated her kind words and look forward to receiving the award at some future time.

Meanwhile, let us enjoy the grandeur of the season. Ride down any country lane in the south these days and you are likely to be surrounded by the beauty of God's creation. The seasons change. Life goes on. And we must go with it. But we do so much better because of the heroes and their story-tellers who lead the way.