By Nina Heyn
Ridley Scott, the man who over half a century has given us Gladiator, Alien, Blade Runner, and The Martian, has not stopped making big movies. His latest is Napoleon—you do not get any grander than that in terms of subject matter. It is an ambitious biography of the emperor’s rise to power, his many battles, and his apparent obsession with Josephine. However, this being a movie where an English director directs an American actor (Joaquin Phoenix), the film has already garnered some negative reviews. Not surprisingly, it has been panned in France, and it is indeed flawed by some historical inaccuracies, the strange casting of an older, tall actor with a brooding countenance to portray a young, small Frenchman, and an Anglo-Saxon point of view on both the emperor and French history. On the other hand, the French film industry has produced few major Napoleon pictures since Abel Gance’s silent film from 1927 and Sacha Guitry’s biopic in 1951, so perhaps Ridley Scott’s movie will have to do for contemporary generations.