Séamas O'Reilly: Historians, the truth, and Ridley Scott's Napoleon complex

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Napoleon Bonaparte in Apple Original Films and Columbia Pictures theatrical release of NAPOLEON. Picture: Sony Pictures/Apple Original Films

In one of the more entertaining press tours of recent memory, Ridley Scott has been attacking critics of his upcoming Napoleon biopic, featuring Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role. 

Responding to academics who’ve taken issue with the events his film depicts, Scott minced few words. “When I have issues with historians,” he said to The Times last week, “I ask: ‘Excuse me mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the f**k up then’.”

At this, I find myself torn. 

On the one hand, Scott’s statement is inarguably ridiculous. 

It’s obvious to the point of truism that historians can, and do, find truths beyond their own personal experience. 

It is, in fact, the only way we know anything about anything. 

Secondly, much of their research is based on people who were there and wrote down what happened at the time.

To deny this is not just childish but baffling to hear from someone who is, aside from anything else, literally speaking about an entire film he has, by definition, based largely on things written down by historians.

The reason I’m torn, then, is because I love Ridley Scott quite dearly, and his puckish resistance to historical critique tickles parts of my brain ungoverned by the sanctity of truth. 

Ridley Scott attending the UK premiere of Napoleon at the Odeon Luxe, Leicester Square, London. Pic: Ian West

I find it silly, even offensive, for him to say historians are useless, but I also find it extremely funny, and of a piece with a man whose motivation is to make a thrilling piece of drama, not a document of historical fact.

It seems like there’s a bit of it about. 

On Brendan Courtney’s Radio 1 show this week, Geri Halliwell spoke of her new children’s book which recasts Ann Boleyn as an unlikely proponent of Girl Power, done in by Thomas Cromwell for trying to help the poor. 

Last Saturday, Channel 4 aired an hour-long documentary purporting to show new evidence that Richard III did not — as is generally believed — murder his nephews, resulting in almost unanimous derision from British historians. 

Meanwhile, Netflix’s The Crown has seen blades drawn for its treatment of the late Princess Diana, who spends a goodly portion of the sixth series as a ghost, commentating on events around her. 

Though not an ardent enough royalist to quibble on the finer details of the Windsors’ life stories, I reckon that full-throatedly pronouncing Princess Diana lived on for a bit as a spectral cheerleader may cross some form of invisible line of historical fact.

Unlike with Napoleon, Ann Boleyn, or Richard II, The Crown’s difficulties are exacerbated by the shrinking horizon of any broad, sweeping historical narrative.

Its first season was set in the 1950s, a time just distant enough that smudging a few details could be done with relative imperceptibility. 

Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana in The Crown. Picture: Netflix

Its toothsome period set-dressings and stellar cast, all boasting accents like glazed cherries, gave proceedings a patina of class that made any such quibbling redundant. 

It might simply be harder to recreate this suspension of disbelief once the show hoves to the end of the 20th century, to people and events we all now remember watching on 24-hour news channels.

In the case of The Crown, historical accuracy is low on my list of grievances. 

My main beef, then as now, was the yawning chasm at the centre of my heart where there exists, in other people, an interest in the Windsors. 

For all the ire it’s drawn from royalists for its unsympathetic characterisations — and these do show up consistently, to its credit — the show’s general tone seems guided by the knowledge that the overall reputations of its central characters remain somewhat sacred.

In Diana’s case, this impulse finds almost laughable expression, depicting an undeniably kind and mistreated woman as something like a Godhead, complete with ghostly visitations that wouldn’t be out of place at a Marian shrine.

In the case of the series’ more long-term treatment of the Queen herself, I got a similar feeling. 

It’s just I can’t claim that this was to do with historical, so much as emotional, accuracy. 

Several times an episode, I would screw up my eyes and remind myself that the great motivating drama of Her Majesty’s life is meant to be a nebulous sense of ‘duty’, and that this through-line should prove compelling to me as a viewer. 

Leaving aside the fact that I’ve never found blank stoicism the most cinematic of virtues, it’s also a silly one, once we consider the medieval fiction of divine right from which it springs.

A great deal of the latter series is spent dwelling on the idea that it would be the worst thing in the world if the queen wasn’t the queen, or even if she showed normal human emotions, when in reality … it’d be fine, wouldn’t it?

At many points, I found this central absurdity indistinguishable from watching a show about a mental patient who believes they have to keep reciting prime numbers or else the world will end, except that we as viewers seemed bidden to think “quite right, ma’m, and thank you for your service”.

All historical dramas must wage a war between throwing us enough flaws and foibles to humanise the statues in our heads, versus a directly opposing necessity to make them seem, at least in part, as larger-than-life as they are in our collective memory.

Accuracy is often the first casualty of such a war. Alas, in the case of The Crown, we must also count my attention span among the fallen.

Not that my opinion means much, either way. 

The Crown is a continent-spanning smash hit, which has proven massively popular all over the world — including with almost all my friends, family and my own wife — and remains one of just a handful of dramas to have progressed past Netflix’s three-season killing floor. 

I’m happy to concede that all of the above is as much about my own cynicism, bias, personal taste, and lack thereof.

As for whether it’s accurate or not, well ... I wasn’t there. So maybe I should shut the f**k up.