Ridley Scott has been typically dismissive of critics taking issue with his forthcoming movie Napoleon, particularly French ones.
While his big-screen epic, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the embattled French emperor with Vanessa Kirby as his wife Josephine, has earned the veteran director plaudits in the UK, French critics have been less gushing, with Le Figaro saying the film could have been called “Barbie and Ken under the Empire,” French GQ calling the film “deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally clumsy” and Le Point magazine quoting biographer Patrice Gueniffey calling the film “very anti-French and pro-British.”
Asked by the BBC to respond, Scott replied with customary swagger:
“The French don’t even like themselves. The audience that I showed it to in Paris, they loved it.”
The film’s world premiere took place in the French capital this week.
Scott added he would say to historians questioning the accuracy of his storytelling:
“Were you there? Oh you weren’t there. Then how do you know?”
Yeah, the guy is a fan of historical fiction. More Ben-Hur than… eh… I don’t know, I’d bring up one of Spielberg’s but I’m not sure how much better they are.
Point is, he makes movies and he clearly prefers to dramatize over sticking to historical fact. That’s valid.
Dramatization in terms of exaggerating details is valid. Like say, in reality the protagonist fought 2 soldiers but the movie shows them fighting 200 warriors (“300” style) would make sense because you are trying to sell tickets.
But twisting the stories itself and then saying the historians are wrong, is not valid, I think.
It depends on whether the movie says it or it’s a thing from an interview, in my book.
As in, if the movie is making a case that something went down a certain way in real life when it didin’t (say, JFK) then… yeah, well, that’s a bit of an issue, sure.
If the movie is out there being a movie and the director is just saying he liked it more this way and you weren’t there to check and get off my hair and watch the movie… well that’s not an unreasonable response to people well acksually-ing a movie.
And again, haven’t seen the movie. No idea what this is like. All I’m saying is this attitude is not new for the guy and his historical dramas are all heavily stylized and put drama ahead of accuracy for narrative purposes and that’s… fine. At worst it’s an excuse for people to make nerdy videos about the actual history, which I’m also fine with.
