Counter-Currents
707 words
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a bad movie, but not a terrible one. There are legions of nerds complaining about how Scott got this or that historical detail wrong. Honestly, that’s beside the point. Even if Scott didn’t know Saint Helena from Elba, he could still have made a great movie.
Everyone has heard of Napoleon. But what’s so great about Napoleon? Any film about Napoleon needs to answer that question. But in nearly three hours’ screen time, Scott fails to do so.
Napoleon rose from obscurity to immense power and world fame. How? On Scott’s telling, he was always an insider, always on the scene, and more powerful people just kept giving him more and more important offices for reasons that remain vague. This is an African’s understanding of how white societies work.
Joaquin Phoenix is a capable actor, but he doesn’t look especially like Napoleon, and he can do nothing with this script. Napoleon summoned forth an immense cult of personality. Phoenix’s Napoleon barely has a personality at all. Phoenix plays Napoleon as a glowering cipher, with all the wit and charisma of a toad. Maybe I just can’t wash Joker out of my memory, but I swear that Phoenix’s Napoleon more resembles one of the madmen who were locked up for thinking they were Napoleon. Indeed, Scott’s Napoleon plays like an unfunny period remake of Jerzy Kosinki’s Being There, about a well-dressed, vacant dullard who bumbles into becoming President of the United States.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema here.
What made Napoleon a great general? How did he command such enormous loyalty? How did he end up being dictator and then Emperor of France? You can bet that the last thing moviegoers today will be shown is why the original Leftist revolution descended into chaos, and why a dictatorship was seen as the best way to restore order.
Scott shows us scenes from history, but not their significance, not the logic of events. If you don’t already know about the French Revolution and Napoleon’s career, most of it will simply make no sense. This spells failure for any historical or biographical drama.
But if you are one of the .001% of moviegoers who already knows the Napoleon story, can you then take some pleasure in Scott’s recreation of scenes from Napoleon’s life? Maybe. But chances are, you are one of the history nerds whom Scott has up in arms, because he just isn’t meticulous enough.
Can Napoleon be enjoyed as a romance? A great deal of the movie deals with Napoleon’s relationship with Joséphine. Neither comes off as particularly loveable, so their relationship is baffling. I don’t know how accurate a depiction it is. I rather hope it was not this sordid and vulgar.
Can Napoleon be enjoyed just as an aesthetic spectacle? Sadly not. Scott decided to wash out the brilliant colors of the clothes, so it doesn’t even work as costume drama. Still, there are a few beautiful touches. The Battle of Austerlitz is a highly aestheticized slaughter. When Napoleon visits the divorced Joséphine to show her his son, we see two swans, who mate for life, drifting apart from one another in the background. But for the most part, Napoleon is a gloomy, muddy, ugly film.
The film ends with a list of the major battles fought by Napoleon, along with the number of dead. Three million people, we are told, lost their lives in Napoleon’s wars. As if he started all of them. As if this is the measure of his life and achievements.
Does Scott’s Napoleon have an agenda? Not really. Aside from shoehorning in Africans in the most unlikely places, there’s nothing particularly political about this movie. I don’t think that Scott is trying to bring Napoleon down so much as he just can’t comprehend what made Napoleon interesting in the first place. Hegel once said that “No man is a hero to his valet, not because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet.” Don’t waste your time with this jumped-up valet’s view of Napoleon.
Hegel dubbed Napoleon the World Spirit on horseback because his victories universalized the idea that all men are free. It would be a sad irony if Napoleon’s victories helped birth a world that can no longer comprehend him.
Enjoyed this article?
Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!
* * *
Counter-Currents has extended special privileges to those who donate at least $10/month or $120/year.
- Donors will have immediate access to all Counter-Currents posts. Everyone else will find that one post a day, five posts a week will be behind a “paywall” and will be available to the general public after 30 days. Naturally, we do not grant permission to other websites to repost paywall content before 30 days have passed.
- Paywall member comments will appear immediately instead of waiting in a moderation queue. (People who abuse this privilege will lose it.)
- Paywall members have the option of editing their comments.
- Paywall members get an Badge badge on their comments.
- Paywall members can “like” comments.
- Paywall members can “commission” a yearly article from Counter-Currents. Just send a question that you’d like to have discussed to [email protected]. (Obviously, the topics must be suitable to Counter-Currents and its broader project, as well as the interests and expertise of our writers.)
To get full access to all content behind the paywall, please visit our redesigned Paywall page.
30 comments
As if he started all of them.
Of course, he did not. We all know who has started all World Wars, wars against France with Russian and German and Spanish cannon fodder, wars against Germany with French and Russian cannon fodder and American money and material, and the actual war against Russia, waged with Ukrainian soldiers as “colonial infantry”.
Wow, charisma was one of Napoleon’s prominent features. There’s a story that, many years after the wars, during a performance of one of the rousing sections of a Beethoven symphony, an elderly veteran of his army who was attending rose with great emotion, and shouted, “The Emperor!!!”
Napoleon also had a good sense of humor, as shown by several examples in Felix Markham’s very good biography. And according to his sometime enemy Metternich, he was very good at conversing and listening to people of various stations and differing opinions.
He also had a very strong will, which got him through many hardships and battles against the odds. It doesn’t look like that’s emphasized in the movie either.
I can’t say I’m surprised that this movie didn’t come close to doing him justice. There was a silent French movie about him which is supposed to be very good, but I haven’t seen it.
That’s interesting. Several other people have already told me that napolean wasn’t very good. The French Revolution is a topic with scant attention from Hollywood for some reason. This motivates me to finish my Teaching Company course on the French Revolution. It’s one of the topics I know least about.
There was a Polish-French movie of the early 1980’s called Danton which is very good, in case you’re interested. It captures the awfulness of the Terror very well. Gerard Depardieu plays Danton. One of the most tension-gripped movies that I can remember, directed by the Pole Wajda.
I suspect the French Revolution isn’t widely considered by Hollywood since much of its history goes against their “Progressive” ideology. Ronald Colman was in a decent adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities back in the ’30s in case you’d like to see that. I also enjoyed Dickens’ novel a lot.
Ha, Les Visiteurs-3 or Les Visiteurs : La Révolution avec Jean Reno et Christian Clavier is a good look at those terrible events.
I don’t want new Napoleon, I want new Napola!
Napoleon Bonaparte killed so many White men that the French are shorter today than they should be. (There was additional genetic damage to other nations.) We are a weaker, less valiant race than we should be, because of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon Bonaparte destroyed traditional restraints on the Jews. The harm they were able to do after him was greater than the harm they were able to do before him.
In return Napoleon Bonaparte got personal glory, but only for a while. The only lasting custodians of fame are one’s own people, to whom one must be loyal. If you diminish your race you diminish your potential to have a good name, forever. This is the most important thing that every White man who desires glory must understand. Napoleon Bonaparte did not understand this.
Ghastly casualty lists are an adequate memorial to the glory of Napoleon Bonaparte — those, and his portrait in a mass media culture that is dominated by Jews and that does not see White men as heroes.
Napoleon Bonaparte should have loved his fellow White men more. Then he could have been a real hero.
A needed corrective. Hard to explain the Napoleon-love on the Right, other than that words like “Empire” and “War” turn them on. Better than a video game, man! What did Napoleon actually do? If he had reversed the French Revolution it might be understandable, but he actually stabilized it and allowed its ideas of abstract “citizens,” centralized authority and unchecked “rationality” (redrawing historic borders, the metric system, etc.) to continue to this day, especially in France, where any African born in an ex-French colony is just as much a “citizen” as someone born in France — perhaps moreso, as the necons would say.
By the same logic he “emancipated” the Jews, making them also “just as much a citizen as you, peasant.” [Fun fact: the first use of the expression “anti-Semitism” was in an open letter published by a Polish rabbi, complaining that Napoleon was refusing to let rabbis inflict capital punishment on dissenters. Already complaining, the ingrates. But he did have a point: Napoleon was always the enemy of Tradition).
So, basically he gave us mass immigration and Jewish dominance. And this is worthy of praise on the Right, why?
Along the way, let’s not forget his rampages through the lands now known as Germany. Because we all hate Germany on the Right, of course. But let’s ask someone who was directed affected by the death and chaos wrought on Germany by the “Napoleonic” wars”:
“Napoleon was not really worse than many, not to say most, men. He was possessed of the very ordinary egoism that seeks its welfare at the expense of others. What distinguished him was merely the greater power he had of satisfying his will, and greater intelligence, reason and courage; added to which, chance gave him a favourable scope for his operations. By means of all this he did for his egoism what a thousand other men would like to do for theirs, but cannot. Every feeble lad who by little acts of villainy gains a small advantage for himself by putting others to some disadvantage, although it may be equally small, is just as bad as Napoleon.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer, On Human Nature
Napoleon may have had ” greater intelligence, reason and courage,” making his a good subject for a historical film, but that “greater intelligence, reason and courage” was at the service of his paltry ego, not the White race. People seem upset about ending the film with a list of the death and destruction he brought about, but they should remember that these were overwhelmingly White Europeans, sacrificed on the altar of his vanity.
If memory serves, in Napoleon’s time, Blacks were barred from entry into France, with the death penalty imposed for anyone caught sneaking them into France. So whatever CivNat silliness emerged from the spirit of those times has been magnified greatly from the original, which never would’ve approved of such excesses.
The general portrayed in the film by a negro is Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who was in fact a mulatto, born in Saint Domingue, with a French aristocrat father and said aristocrat’s negress slave as his mother. If Wikipedia can be believed in this case, Dumas had command of 50,000 troops in the Army of the Alps in 1794, having supposedly enlisted as a private soldier in 1786. His son was the legendary author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.
He was also the father of the widely read French writer Alexandre Dumas.
It was the Jacobins who originally emancipated the Jews in France. Napoleon, true to his revolutionary origin, continued the practice in lands he conquered. Napoleon was as much a revolutionary as the men he replaced or he would have restored the monarchy after gaining power.
“Hard to explain the Napoleon-love on the Right, other than that words like “Empire” and “War” turn them on. “
Not to mention all those flashy uniforms!
Imagine if Hollyweird tried to make 300 today. Aside from artificial diversity they wouldn’t be able to appreciate let alone communicate any historical themes.
Most wars of Napoleon were defensive. Even his aggressions were mostly praeventive strikes. The aggressive wars against the French began even before Napoleon got the power, the European Nations, instigated by … we know whom, attacked the newborn French Republic. The other European countries should simply let the French alone, but not, they continously attacked France.
What did the great Russian general Suvorov, also known as Great Murderer of Poles and of Nogays, in Italy and in Switzerland in 1798-1799? Was this the defence of Mother Russia or an act of aggression?
All this hoopla over napoleon, a man named after a pastry!
Really, I’ve always heard that the Jews were contributors to the French Revolution. I’m not sure to what degree or if at all, but the French Revolution is similar to the Bolshevik Revolution. Why would the Jews have wanted to attack the french? Most of the ones I know of, for example the poet Heine, supported Napoleon. Didn’t Napoleon emancipate the Jews wherever he conquered?
Didn’t Napoleon emancipate the Jews wherever he conquered?
Yes, he did, but in some German lands the process of emancipation began even before him, for example, Prussian King Friedrich II, a.k.a. der Grosse, started this under his rule. He also introduced the religious tolerance.
At least he is still the greatest Italian general of all times.
Greater than Cincinatus? Or Scipio? Or Pompey? Or Julius Caesar? He did okay, but he has to be judged by his ending. Throwing everything you’ve got at your enemy and being shorthanded at the end is poor generalship. In the end. He did have some decent victories, though.
I am really not sure that ancient Romans were “Italians”. The ancient Greeks were not modern Greeks, for example, at least in racial terms. They simply lived on the same lands.
And, well, the enemies of Napoleon and of France (anti-French coalitions) were always much stronger numerically that the French. I do not know if any of victorious commanders of the Ancient Rome had to fight against so dramatically superior hostile armies.
Good review! The WN viewpoint is always best. So let’s not forget that we Americans can thank Napoleon for the greatest real estate deal in our history – the Louisiana Purchase.
The rest of his bloody history is of little matter to America.
And also under his rule, the most prosperous and developed country of the New World, Haiti, became independent.
I understand that he sent an invasion force to relieve the colony, but they got decimated by yellow fever before arriving.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a total disaster for France. In 1803, he sold the vast Louisiana Territory to the USA for peanuts. Even after you adjust it into today’s dollars, that was a steal for the USA. He lost entire armies in Egypt (1798), Spain (1809), and Russia (1812). His violation of the 1814 armistice led to more war, before his final defeat.
His so-called nephew, Napoleon III (Louis), was another disaster. He was a lazy clown, with the morals of an ally cat. He promised peace and delivered four wars in his 22 years in power. In 1870, he declared war against Prussia for no credible reason, which finally cut France down to size once and for all.
To paraphrase Karl Marx, “History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
I enjoyed the comment section. It sounds like a thorough set of lessons learned is in order. Surely, he did not intend to create the consequences we now live with if his actions are responsible. What is important now is if vanity and ideology can lead to this, how can we cultivate the cunning, intelligence, courage and martial brilliance with higher character and motivations to save our homelands and our people? Is it just emergent? I doubt it. It must be molded and brought to discipline and above all it must serve the highest purpose – our existence and the ability to resume and pursue our destiny.
In a way Napoleon Bonaparte is the justification of Greg Johnson. Do intellectuals really count? They absolutely do.
Genetically, Napoleon Bonaparte was the bomb. He had in formidable abundance every quality that Arthur Schopenhauer said he had. If innate fortitude was enough without a properly educated mind, good things should have happened.
I always understood Napoleon’s goodwill gesture towards the jews as a kind of way of dealing with the situation. A compromise.
Jews were not as powerful then as they are now, they were largely just kooky outsiders who did weird stuff and got kicked out from time to time.
I think the Napoleon method of saying “OK Jews, you can just go about your business” is evidence that every which way of dealing with the Jews has been attempted by white gentiles over time. He tried to be reasonable. Leopold II of Poland tried something similar. Naive in retrospect but at the time you can understand why this was done. We can now say : We’ve kicked them out, we’ve invited them in, we’ve discriminated them, we’ve emancipated them, we’ve tried to kill them (allegedly), and eventually we fought Arab aboriginals to give them their own country.
And STILL they persist on not only living with us but undermining us.
Of course it’s possible napoleon was a masonic/jewish/globalist/whatever plant, but that’s all conjecture. It’s possible the French and/or American revolutions were masonic/Jewish plots, too… unlikely but possible… in which case napoleon may be the “controlled opposition” of the day, but I don’t know enough about that. I personally doubt these scenarios but it’s just interesting to posit.
I’d probably look up to napoleon as a proto Franco : basically a radical Conservative army man who came to restore order after the wild Left went too crazy.
I also think that at least Napoleon had some kind of endgame. The British Empire, which more or less replaced the potential Napoleonic empire, is not worthy of respect at all, and had no clear goals. The British Empire was basically a global shop, a racket, a penny pinching scheme, with no ideological drive beyond “make money” and “exploit”. Indeed the British – by which I really mean the English, of course – are essentially apolitical and have no real ideology or a particularly worthy philosophical or ideological tradition (the English/British are also somewhat lacking on the arts and music side of things but that’s a slightly different issue – although related, for philosophy and the arts stem from the same root mindset).
Ideology has never caught on in Britian. Margaret Thatcher tried to bring ideology to England. Her cabinet came in one day to find a Hayek economics book in front of each seat. “This is what we believe”, she commanded, in her flat mock-male-baritone voice. “But prime minister”, squeaked Heseltine, or Howard, or Lawson, or Rifkind, or one of them, i can’t remember, they’re all the same anyway- “prime minister, I thought we believed in NOTHING!”
The English had their revolution, they killed their King – then did a 180 and brought the King back! Got a bit exciting for a minute there.
Mosley tried to bring ideology to Britain. Extremism, of any stroke, has never gone down well in Blighty. A motley crew of leftists, Jews, nonwhites, intellectuals, foreigners, vegetarians, homosexuals & sexual deviants, trade union workers, and liberals put paid to the B.U.F. on Cable Street.
Powell tried to get on his soap box and warn his countrymen. His reward? Eternal damnation. The man ought to have been Prime Minister. But no, not in “two sugars please” England. No, we can’t have his sort, mucking it all up, getting us into a right old twiddling muddle. There’s money to be made, after all!
The English believe in nothing. Their empire supposedly “brought democracy around the world “. What a bizarre achievement. To the extent the British believe in anything, they believe in small L liberalism, capital C Capitalism, capital W Warmongering, small H homosexuality, and capital P Philosemitism. I believe the current British Royal Family are the PERFECT representation of the U.K.: mild, boring, middle of the road, inoffensive, dim-witted, and in sheer, wondrous, child-like awe of anyone who isn’t a White Englishman.
The INEVITABLE end result of the British Empire is circa 2 billion nonwhite coolies , all speaking English, all clamouring to come to the “Mother” country U.K. and MAKE MONEY there- the U.K., the great bank, the great gold hoarders of the world, the centre of global finance, the home of international capital.
This “reverse colonialism” was BAKED IN TO THE CAKE of the British Empire, as the Empire had no strict ideological ability to say NO and refuse entry to people to Britain. Especially not if they’re coming to make money – making money is the name of the (British) game! They learned that off the Brits themselves!
There’s this simping that white advocates do for Britain/England. It is repulsive. It is like constantly simping for a girl who has made it pretty clear she isn’t interested in you. White advocates have the impression England is some kind of glorious high I.Q. White ideal. At what point – ever – did England ever have the interests of White people at its core? All England ever did is subjugate her neighbours locally, and globally, profiteer and exploit. The English were never good and they never will come good. Whites advocates, I suggest you ‘give up’ hoping England will reverse on 1000 years of self interest and belligerent malifiscence, and focus your attention on the vibrant (no laughing now) populations of France, of Ireland, of the USA, and the likes of Hungary or Poland etc., where hope lies. The sad part : even true English patriots know I speak the truth.
Of course, the French revolutionaries also instilled in THEIR c. 2 billion nonwhite coolies the idea that each and every one of them is a Frenchman. That has not gone well for France. Yet Napoleon may or may not have reversed this notion. He basically didn’t get long enough to show us what he would’ve done . There’s no way of knowing, but I’d take whatever he manifested over the gruel the British ended up serving.
Therefore, for all napoleon’s faults, I do sincerely wish he had defeated the British and their friends at Waterloo and I wish the British/English had not ran their global profiteering scam, which will result in the English basically ceasing to exist as a race. But , what can you say really. Play stupid games win stupid prizes. The English, the most belligerent race of all time, also declared war on Germany twice. I do not see the British/English rising up any time soon. The French, on the other hand….
P.s. as for the movie it was awful, and I walked out.
That is the 3rd time I’ve ever walked out of a movie (I also walked out of Star Wars episode 7 and 007: Spectre. Words cannot describe the contempt I have for these productions.)
It is difficult to blame “the English” for something, because the English themselves are under foreign rule since at least 1066. And when we consider that the “English” kings and queens (who were French, Scots, Dutch and Germans) only reign but do not rule, let’s remember that the last PMs, who allegedly do rule, were not Englishmen too, one former was Circassian-Türk, and the actual one is an Hindu.
I tried to write comment on Napoleon, but they didn’t get through. For my review of the film, go to VNN (Vanguard News Network) under the arts section/movies, under the Napoleon thread. Also, all of you might be interested in Anthony Lane’s review in the December 4 The New Yorker (“Here Comes Trouble”), which offers comments similar to mine.
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
Paywall Access
Lost your password?Edit your comment