Good morning. I’ll say something good about the movie: just screenshots of the film, an album of stills, each surrounded by a fancy frame, would have its place in an art museum.
For example the coronation scene. It looked like a tableau by a Dutch painter or something, almost too staged to be real (in that shot, we got a brief glance at a court painter, making this same point).
Of course it is too staged to be real. It ends up being cinematic and archetypal, at which point it feels free to dive into some new Freudian vista that doesn’t echo any historical accounts already on file.
It’s all about Josephine and his own mother. People who study this period don’t like this kind of “fooling around” as if what’s being told is the accepted wisdom.
Once one suspends disbeliefs and enters speculation mode, then the story hangs together by a different glue. He abruptly returns from Egypt, or escapes Elba, for the same reason: he wants a word with his wife. Hah hah.
You could say he’s an early feminist, wanting to hold up his end of the bargain as he sees it, with corresponding counter-demands. He esteems her highly to the end and in the fade out, her disembodied voice suggests they try it again in a next life, and maybe get the balance right this time.
I can’t help but see this telling as one in contrast to King Henry VIII and how he treated women who couldn’t bear him a son. Napoleon takes a more scientific approach (for the day), seeing if the problem might be him, and even when it turns out to be not, he wants the divorce so he can legally marry and have a legitimate heir, but without wanting to punish his wife. She’s to be treated very well, and he still wants to be her best friend.
In a way, it’s quite a touching story as told, and I don’t find it to be anti-French. He’s not just some brute from Corsica. He has a deep sense of chivalry.
