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What if our politics today is a replay of Napoleon’s “you’re-nothing-without-me” moment?
During the conversation – punctuated by awkward pauses, silence and non-verbal cues –Josephine delivers pivotal lines that Scott puts early in the film in an attempt to make sense of Napoleon Bonaparte’s imperial and authoritarian tendencies.
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Megawati Soekarnoputri (center), chairwoman of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), and President Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo (left) share a moment on Sept. 29, 2023, as PDI-P presumptive presidential candidate Ganjar Pranowo looks on, during the party's national meeting in Jakarta. (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
I
f you have seen the movie Napoleon, directed by famed moviemaker Ridley Scott, there is one pivotal scene early in the film, where the French general shares the screen with his wife Josephine de Beauharnais.
During the conversation – punctuated by awkward pauses, silence and non-verbal cues –Josephine delivers pivotal lines that Scott puts early in the film in an attempt to make sense of Napoleon Bonaparte’s imperial and authoritarian tendencies.
“You want to be great? You’re nothing without me. Without me, you’re just a brute,” Beauharnais tells her husband, apparently playing on her husband’s insecurities, who, as the offspring of a minor Corsican nobility, would only be seen as an outsider in French politics and the military establishment.
British actress, Vanessa Kirby, should win an award just for uttering these lines, which she delivers with a perfect mix of contempt and disgust.
The story in Napoleon kicks into high gear soon after this scene with Napoleon launching concerted efforts to insert himself into the new post-revolutionary French politics, culminating in a bloodless coup against the nation’s five-person leadership coalition known as the Directoire.
Only five years later, Napoleon crowned himself emperor.
Historians have complained that director Scott took too much creative liberty in his retelling of Napoleon’s story and we can certainly ask if Josephine did actually utter those insults to Napoleon.
