Film: “Napoleon” in the cinema: Coup of the year

That was the film coup of the year: “Napoleon” by Ridley Scott. For a $200 million blockbuster, it’s pretty bold. Because the world-historically important celebrity and emperor of the French is not charismatic for a second. This Napoleon grunts instinctively, has an infantile tendency to fight, is a bad lover and has a very lazy mouth. A banal man, but he’s good at one thing: leading an army.

The elaborate battle scenes show a military machine going about its day by shooting people and animals to bloody shreds. As a result of Napoleon’s military campaigns, over three million people died, says the film credits. They all died because of a banal guy who had power in his hands.

At the beginning of “Napoleon” it is revolutionary time: Away with the nobility! Then Napoleon coups his way to the top and after his defeat the nobility rules again. Who acts just like Napoleon. During the Battle of Waterloo, Duke Wellington, the English commander, orders a sniper not to shoot at Napoleon, who is, after all, a general. Those who are responsible for mass deaths should be spared.

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Whether it was really like in “Napoleon” is an uninteresting question. The world that “Napoleon” shows is similar to that in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “Barry Lyndon”. The period around 1800 looks as captivatingly beautiful here as it does in the outstanding paintings of the time. But in reality she was ugly. Because all the splendor belongs solely to a narrow elite, whose mean rule all other people are at the mercy of.

“Napoleon” is torn apart by critics. There seems to be no understanding of a film at the center of which is a staff member whose actions have dramatic consequences, but who are otherwise as ordinary as people and rulers beyond the screen.

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