Joaquin Phoenix vs. Real Napoleon

Was Napoleon French? Political Genius Or Brilliant General?

Napoleon. Jacques-Louis David — The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries — Google Art Project. Public Domain. Available on⁠ Wikimedia⁠.

From essentially an immigrant to France to the Emperor of France. From a lowly lieutenant to a political genius. And from military brilliance to brute force.

The News:

The movie Napoleon was released just before Thanksgiving to much fanfare and with high expectations. The film is directed by Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon.

Regardless of how Napoleon performed at the box office, the French lambasted the movie.

According to the New York Times, French critics considered the movie “lazy, pointless, boring, migraine-inducing, too short and historically inaccurate. And that’s just to start.”

Concerning the film being too short, FYI, the movie was 2 hours and 37 minutes!

Le Figaro, the French newspaper, called the movie “Barbie and Ken under the Empire”. See Deadline.com

GQ’s French edition described it as “deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally funny” See BBC.

And in Le Point, a French weekly political news magazine, a leading historian called the movie “very anti-French and very pro-British”.

History Behind News:

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