Transcript: Culture chat — ‘Napoleon’ with historian Simon Schama

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture chat — ‘Napoleon’ with historian Simon Schama’

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show. Today we are talking about the film Napoleon - that’s Ridley Scott’s $200mn, 2.5 hour epic, which is in theatres now. In it, Joaquin Phoenix plays the notorious French emperor, and the film follows his rise and fall. Today, we will talk about the film and the myth of Napoleon with two very special guests. First, we have the esteemed author and historian, Sir Simon Schama. You may know him as the host of a number of BBC series, including A History of Britain. He’s also the author of many books on European and American history. In the words of the film, he’s not built like other men. Simon, welcome to the show.

Simon Schama
Hello.

Lilah Raptopoulos
And joining us in London is our deputy arts editor and resident film expert, the great Raph Abraham. He found the crown in the gutter and the people put it on his head. Hi, Raph. Welcome.

Raphael Abraham
Hi, Lilah.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Such a pleasure to have you both here. So before we get into the history, I would love to just get your top line thoughts about the film. In this version of the story, we watched Napoleon lead a number of famous battles. We spend time in his pretty kinky relationship with his wife, Josephine, played by Vanessa Kirby. Did you like it? Did you hate it? Simon, why don’t we start with you?

Simon Schama
It could have been worse. (laughter) This may not sound like a, you know, massively ringing endorsement. You know, I’m not one of those historians who goes to history movies in order to spot the mistakes in chronology or costume or whatever, really. It is, after all, a movie.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

Simon Schama
The issue I think, actually is, is whether they get the atmospherics right, whether if it’s about a hero like Napoleon to get the psychology right. And I think actually that all of the things that are necessary conditions of being put in the past, much of it was there. I think what was absolutely missing was was sort of a sense, actually, of the part of Napoleon that wasn’t just about winning battles and about making kind of, you know, hasty lunch time love to Josephine, really. It was very weirdly robotic form of lovemaking for someone, you know, who wrote hundreds and hundreds of ecstatically romantic, passionate letters to her.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It wasn’t romantic sex. No, not at all.

Simon Schama
No, it was sort of. It reminded me a bit of Fellini’s Casanova, you know, where it literally is, like a kind of copulating automaton. And that wasn’t really Napoleon’s thing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mm hmm. Raph, what about you? What did you think?

Raphael Abraham
Yeah, well, I mostly enjoyed it. I mean, if Simon didn’t go to spot historical inaccuracies, I certainly didn’t. Let’s just get that straight right from the start.

Simon Schama
There were some Raph, there were some.

Raphael Abraham
Well I mean, even I might’ve spotted 1 or 2, but, I mean, the fact is, I, you know, I was actually expecting a sort of much more straight telling of historical fact in many ways. But I enjoyed its kind of irreverent approach to, you know, certainly the personal side of of Napoleon’s life and Josephine. But I think, you know, clearly the film is trying to do both things right. So he’s trying to show the great battles, but then it’s also trying to show this kind of slightly strange, kinky, you know, private life. So it was the kind of the marriage of those two things that didn’t always work for me. Sometimes there were these sort of really abrupt tonal shifts when we went from one to the other. I’m not sure I came away with a complete understanding of Napoleon. If you haven’t read umpteen biographies, I don’t know if you come away from this really understanding the man or just being, you know, quite puzzled, really.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I agree. I enjoyed it more than I expected. But I did leave wondering whether I was asking myself the right questions about Napoleon, as somebody who hasn’t read all the biographies. Before we continue on, I don’t want to assume that all our listeners know what to know about Napoleon. And so Simon: may I ask you to do the generous work of just placing him for us? Like for the people listening who haven’t thought about him since high school history, who, you know, they know he was short but salty about it.

Simon Schama
He actually wasn’t short.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Ah, he wasn’t short. Okay, great. What do we need to know about him?

Simon Schama
He was absolutely the average height. He was probably around five foot six or something like that. That the notion that he was short comes from a misreading of the scale of French measurements and also from him being called Le Petit Caporal. But they didn’t when they called him the little corporal, it didn’t mean that he was stunted in growth at all. They just meant he was a kind of good bloke, which he often wasn’t.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Simon Schama
I just want to say I will do your, you know, I will do your thumbnail biopic. But I do have to say the script I thought was mostly shit actually.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, really?

Simon Schama
I thought the production, the direction was great. And I just thought, you know, in terms of what really always surprises me is when a director, particularly one as really gifted as Ridley Scott. He gets the kind of costumes, physical body language, all of that is really brilliantly done. So I say what always surprises me about history movies that really don’t quite succeed is that they miss out things that actually happen which are much more sensationally dramatic than the ones they use. For example, right at the beginning of the film, we see Marie Antoinette being guillotined that, and Napoleon wasn’t there. He was in the film, but that doesn’t matter at all. And she has the kind of silver haired perm gone bad. She has the famous kind of distressed hair. Well, we know for a fact which is really much more, much more gripping and poignant that she’d had to have her head shaved in order that the guillotine blade - you know, there’s a wonderful, famous cartoon by Jacques-Louis David of her riding with her hands tied behind her, with a shaved head with the little bonnet on top. And that actually threw the crowds into total silence. Everybody there who either loved or hated her, recognised that there was this extraordinary moment of dignity. So there you have an incredibly counterintuitive, dramatic moment handed to the director on the play or screenwriter who fails to take it. So it wasn’t the historian in me that minded that, it was the dramatist...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Simon Schama
In me that minded that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. You know, it’s funny, Simon, I was you know, when I left the film, I felt like I got to know this man’s sort of sex drive. And I got to know him as a battle leader. But I crave some sort of, like, bigger picture to ground me somehow. Like, yeah, it felt a little inconsistent to me. Like we’re in a big battle and then we’re in a little bedroom scene with Josephine, and then we’re in a big battle and then a little scene. And I kept thinking like, Wait, where are we? Who is that again? What is he trying to do? He’s trying to conquer Europe. Okay, wait, we’re in Egypt - is he trying to conquer the world...

Simon Schama
You’re quite right.

Lilah Raptopoulos
And then, like, right away. Oh, we’re in exile. I wonder what that’s like. Oh, wait, he’s out of exile. You can just do that? And I sort of left a little like, Whoa.

Simon Schama
No, you’re so right. You know, there was an opportunity to say something really about the dangers of charismatic military leadership, and that just didn’t interest them. It would not get in the way of a gripping drama. And I will now announce the film, which I think one of the few films that gets it absolutely right. And that was Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, which is an amazing thing to watch. It had a staggering performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, and it asks very profound questions. And if you remember it and if you’ve seen it, the way it worked was to take one brief period in Lincoln’s career, namely the deals he has to do in order, some of them very dirty, in order to pass the Emancipation Proclamation. And, you know, if you remember, there were exactly kind of 45 seconds of civil war or a minute of civil war right at the beginning.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Simon Schama
The entire action then comes in a darkened, smoky room.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Simon Schama
So you have to really know what you’re doing. As a dramatist, I think.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mm hmm.

Simon Schama
And Ridley Scott really had no idea what he was doing, in my view.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I imagine, like Napoleon, Ridley Scott just couldn’t help himself. I’m sure he really wanted to do those big battles.

Raphael Abraham
That’s the thing. I think part of the problem of the film is the fact that instead of trying to be these two things, right? so as I was saying, it’s it’s this very irreverent sort of picture of his private life. But at the same time, you know, it doesn’t just focus on that. So I think a lot of the best biopics and recent one I thought was terrific was Maestro, the film about Leonard Bernstein, right? But that takes a very particular focus and decides we’re gonna make this primarily about his marriage and his family relationships with his children, his wife. And we’re actually going to leave out a lot of the music, which you sort of think, how are you gonna make a film about Leonard Bernstein and, you know, not make more of the music? Well, because I think you’ve got to make some tough choices. And the tighter the focus often, you know, the richer the understanding of the person. The biopic I really thought was terrific was Jackie, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, which again, takes a very, very short period of, you know, sort of a week or something, you know, after the Kennedy assassination. And so you get this very richly detailed picture, whereas I think in Napoleon, it’s not quite doing the cradle to the grave type of movie, but it’s.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Simon Schama
But nearly.

Raphael Abraham
It’s trying to cover decades, right?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Too much. I have to admit that by the, by Waterloo, the last battle scene, I fell asleep. (laughter)

Raphael Abraham
Oh, my God. (laughter) The cannons woke you up.

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter) The cannon woke me up. Yeah, yeah.

Simon Schama
Yeah.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I was kind of, it was a long. It was a journey.

Raphael Abraham
Let’s not forget, Ridley Scott is the son of a military man. He’s clearly fascinated with all the machinations of military life and portraying all of that. And he’s a brilliant director of set pieces. I do think the battle scenes are very strong. You know, I found those very, you know, visually exciting and gripping and all the rest of it. But actually, when we’re talking about what it leaves out.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. What does it leave out?

Raphael Abraham
Where you may be delighted or you may be horrified to hear there’s a much longer cut of this film coming. (laughter) In typical...

Lilah Raptopoulos
I heard that. Yeah.

Raphael Abraham
Ridley Scott fashion, he does not like to walk away from a film. You know, once he’s done it, apparently there is a four hour cut. So an hour and a half longer than this, which will appear on Apple TV when it goes to streaming.

Simon Schama
Yeah, I’ve sort of resolved not to see it, but I probably end up will, just out of curiosity.

Raphael Abraham
Yeah. But he does have, he does have a history of sort of actually making quite good director’s cuts. So the Blade Runner director’s cut is, is much better than the original theatrical version for me.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah.

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I want to run this by you. I’m curious how you both think of it. You know, I’ve been thinking about what questions a good film about Napoleon would leave us asking. When I left the theatre, the questions that I was asking were like, When? Why didn’t that man quit while he was ahead? Isn’t that probably a fair enough question about him to, you know, how much does a human life count and on what scale? You know, he sacrificed so many lives. And I was wondering about destiny and how dumb it seems and all the ways that he punished himself and others around him under the guise of this idea of destiny. And I thought about Josephine a lot. And I wondered, though, whether, like, are there more questions I should have been leaving with? Are there like chewier or better questions that, about power or about leadership or about the people? Like maybe I didn’t need to go to a film about Napoleon to ask myself questions about love.

Lilah Raptopoulos
But I don’t know.

Simon Schama
Well, I think my ideal director would be someone who starts off from the position of bitter hostility to Napoleon...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Hmmm interesting.

Simon Schama
And then acknowledges his extraordinary talent. But inevitably, because all the directors who tackle it and those who don’t realise the ambition, like Stanley Kubrick, identify with Napoleon. (laughter) Cause Raph mentions Ridley Scott’s family background. You know, you start out really with starry eyes...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Simon Schama
And the correction for being too starry-eyed is a kind of slight. I found all the humour incredibly lame. You’re never scared of Napoleon. Absolutely missing from the film was him shutting down the newspaper press, for example, which have been a great blossoming phenomenon of the revolution and sort of emasculating freedom of expression. Censors were everywhere. I’ve known somebody not unlike Napoleon, and I’m not gonna say who it is, but...

Lilah Raptopoulos
If you change your mind.

Simon Schama
When you’re not going to tell anybody who it is, and he’s not alive actually now, not a general. But when I when I was in his presence, I found myself desperately wishing him to like me. And when I left the presence, I needed to take a long, cool shower and felt kind of disgusted with myself for wanting to kind of crave his admiration. This reminded me of so many people who came into Napoleon’s presence who just could not help themselves, but you know sort of abandoned any sense of their own self-respect.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Simon Schama
So he had that extraordinary kind of power. He had a phenomenal memory. He was an incredible manipulator. He was an extraordinary psychologist of human behaviour. And he didn’t give a toss about, I mean, human lives over and over again were just pieces to move around their chessboard...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

Simon Schama
Really.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. Simon, he really didn’t seem scary.

Simon Schama
Yeah. He really didn’t.

Lilah Raptopoulos
He really wasn’t scary. And I did feel like I was missing some critical piece of his character.

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Raph I’m curious if you had thoughts about the humour. Simon said he didn’t like it, it didn’t really land. Did you feel that way, too? It was, yeah.

Raphael Abraham
Well, no. I mean, I have to say, I did enjoy the humour clearly more than Simon. I mean, I thought, you know, I thought there was some some moments that really reminded me of sort of the Monty Python films.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

Raphael Abraham
It’s kind of, you know, exaggerated version of the British, you know, heckling Napoleon. And there are a few choice lines, you know, the line about, oh, you British think you’re so clever because you have boats...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Boats.

Raphael Abraham
You know, things like that.

Simon Schama
We’re just so weird. (laughter)

Raphael Abraham
Well, I think weird is right. But I think weird is what they were going for. Because I think you do not cast Joaquin Phoenix if you’re going for scary Napoleon. Right. I mean, okay, he’s got a sort of sinister weirdness about him, but he’s not he’s not a sort of frightening face. He’s not an intimidating.

Simon Schama
You want, you want someone like Tom Hardy, I think.

Raphael Abraham
I think he might have given it more of that sort of, you know, brawny attitude. But I also at the same time, I am I’m going to contradict myself to some extent here. I think, you know, part of what did keep me interested in the film was Joaquin Phoenix’s performance and this kind of strange, stoner take on Napoleon, you know. And a lot of your appreciation or enjoyment of this film will depend on how much you like or dislike Joaquin Phoenix, because I don’t think it’s possible to watch this and not somehow have him as Joker. Or in last year’s Beau Is Afraid - a film I didn’t like at all. It’s that version of Napoleon that you’re gonna get. And if you don’t like the idea of that going in, I think really just don’t even go near this film.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. They did, in some ways they seem to have done well at the pouty boy version of him. But is that the him we want?

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I would love to spend the last few minutes talking about where Napoleon fits into the current film landscape. Simon, you wrote in your piece that he ranks third behind Jesus and Hitler in number of books written about him. But he’s first in depictions on film and TV. He’s been depicted around a thousand times. You know, it’s risky to make a film like this. And, you know, we didn’t think it was great or perfect, but it’s doing really well. It’s doing better than anticipated. And I’m curious why you think it’s doing so well right now.

Simon Schama
Well, I think, I would love to know the proportion of men and women actually, you know, responsible for the box office. Because I will acknowledge and, Raph said the battle scenes have done very well, You know, dropped into them really quite powerfully. So that’s I suppose, you know, I come on for the whole kind of romance of warfare and glittering costumes. So, you know, I guess that may be part of it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Raph, what do you think? You know, do we still want historical epics in this image?

Raphael Abraham
I mean, I think actually, yes, it does seem that the appetite for historical films is kind of on the rise again, because I think there was quite a long fallow period. As Simon says, films like Lincoln didn’t perform very well. But, you know, this year - this is the third big historical movie of the year. So, you know, obviously we had Oppenheimer, which was a monster success, has made nearly a $1bn at the box office. And it’s a very talky, interior film for the most part. You know, men in rooms talking. And then we had Killers of the Flower Moon, the Scorsese, Martin Scorsese film, both done pretty well. I mean, I think, you know, the danger is that the budgets of these films, so both Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon, are $200mn movies budget-wise. So they have to make sort of $500mn, $600mn worldwide to actually start turning a profit. And so, you know, that’s that’s a big ask for a historical movie. But look, I personally I’m kind of encouraged and heartened by the fact that films like this are being, are still being made, are being made again and are attracting audiences because, you know, quite frankly, I’m just sick of, you know, watching endless superhero movies. And as much as I enjoy the occasional one. But the fact is, films have been so dominated by these big franchises. So, you know, at least an original script, an original idea, even if it’s a story has been told umpteen times before - at least if there’s a variety of what sort of the cinema and, you know, reaching big mainstream audiences, then you know that for me is, is kind of a reason to be cheerful.

Simon Schama
Yeah, I will just I will just come off my grumpy old (laughter) case and agree with Raph. But I do not want to begrudge the possibility of hooking people on history.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s funny. I wondered cynically whether historical films have gotten big because it’s another way of tapping into a franchise. Like they know that people care about Napoleon, so they know that if they’d make a movie about it, it will do well. But on the other hand, it’s not because it’s history. And I think that it’s, I feel heartened by it too, because I like spending my time that way. I like going down a Google rabbit hole after a film, learning more about Josephine.

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Simon and Raph, this was such a delight. Thank you both so much. We will be back in just a minute for more or less.

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Welcome back to Life and Art. This is more or less - the part of our show where we talk about something we want more of or less of culturally. Raph, let’s start with you. What do you have?

Raphael Abraham
So the thing I want less of is, is these endless people sharing their Spotify wrapped lists data for the year. I don’t care how many times you listen to the Kylie Minogue-Padam song this year, you know, stuff like that. It’s just reducing the music to these meaningless numbers. I just I find it incredibly irritating and enough. So that’s my sour note. The thing I want more of, it turns out, is Beatles songs and ideally albums...

Lilah Raptopoulos
More Beatles songs?

Raphael Abraham
Yeah, because...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Nice.

Raphael Abraham
I found, I just found myself kind of sort of surprisingly caught up with the release of the what’s called the last ever Beatles song. But I found it incredibly moving and it really sucked me in to the whole Beatles story again. And I found myself reading a giant biography of The Beatles and wishing that more songs could be dug up and somehow magically turned into new music. And yeah. And I just I’ve got...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh wow.

Raphael Abraham
I was very touched by it and thought it was...

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. You know, we only need one more or less. But I wanted to hear both of them. They were both great. So thank you...

Raphael Abraham
Oh sorry...

Lilah Raptopoulos
No, that was perfect. What about you, Simon?

Simon Schama
Oh, well, I’m ... less, I want less vox pop because the the vox of the pop or the pop with the vox is usually so stupid. (laughter) And I particularly want less of people who say ‘Oh those politicians, they’re all the same’. No, they are not! They are so not the same.

Lilah Raptopoulos
When you say less vox pops, what do you mean?

Simon Schama
Vox pop I mean people being stopped on the street to ask their opinion about politics and politicians, really. Because inevitably the kind of maximum opinionated on less than the minimum of actual information or knowledge and they all say those politicians are all the same. No they are really profoundly not. And the fate of nations, including our own, depends on you realising they are not all the same. He continued to yell (laughter). What I want more of, because I have four grandchildren, all really wonderful - I want more brilliant cartoons of the calibre of my absolute screen hero, Bugs Bunny. (laughter)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh wow.

Simon Schama
I want. I want the heir to Bugs Bunny. Anyone out there who can, you know hear me or even Roger Rabbit, you know, rabbiting on. Yeah, that’s what I want more of.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So fewer loose opinions strongly held, more cartoons of a high calibre. I want more adults drawing. I’ve never really been someone who draws but I started drawing at museums without thinking about whether it’s good or bad. And it really helps me see the art better. And I specifically like trying to draw Matisse because he has like these strong lines and satisfying colours and he can like make a woman’s face in like three swoops and it looks somehow very sexy and I don’t know how he does it. And so more adults drawing in museums.

Raphael Abraham
I’m looking forward to seeing the, you know, the fruits of your labour.

Lilah Raptopoulos
You don’t need to see it. (laughter)

Raphael Abraham
Oh, come on.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I won’t share. Simon and Raph, thank you so much for being on the show. This was such a delight.

Raphael Abraham
Thank you so much. Pleasure.

Simon Schama
Thank you for having me.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. A quick announcement: we are still collecting your predictions for our upcoming episode where we talk through what our cultural predictions are for 2024. This is an annual episode and we love it. Here’s the question: What do you think will happen or what do you want to happen culturally next year? If you have an answer to that, email me at lilahrap@ft.com or write me on Instagram @lilahrap.

Those ways to get in touch are also in the show notes. You will also find in the show notes great links on the topic of Napoleon, including an excellent essay that Simon recently wrote about why artists are addicted to the myth of Napoleon. All the links in the show notes that take you to ft.com will take you past the paywall, and you’ll also find in there a discount code for a subscription to the Financial Times. It is one of the best discounts out there and it’s a great gift for the holidays. I am Lilah Raptopoulos and here is my talented team, Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday.