Sir, – Finn McRedmond assures us that the scene of cannons being fired at the pyramids in Sir Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and the depiction of the late Queen Elizabeth encountering the ghost of the sometime Princess of Wales in The Crown “convey a different sort of truth; access to part of the story that historians could never possibly evidence” (“Let’s not be precious about Napoleon’s distortion of facts – all historians are telling a story”, Opinion & Analysis, November 23rd).
Your columnist does not tell us what sort of truth is conveyed by these inventions. Perhaps the scene in The Crown could be said to represent some sort of reconciliation between the former monarch and and her son’s ex-wife but the passage in the section in Napoleon will only convince many viewers that Bonaparte sought to destroy the monuments of ancient Egypt.
Here the truth is very different: the one long-term consequence of Napoleon’s expedition was the start of the discipline of Egyptology.
The problem with outright fiction in historical films or novels is that uninformed viewers and readers believe that they are being given the factual truth about the past. Sir Ridley’s Napoleon appears from interviews with him to be an especially egregious example of misrepresentation.
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It is hard to take very seriously the director of a film about a minor Corsican aristocrat, general and self-proclaimed emperor who thinks that his hero was working class.– Yours, etc,
CDC ARMSTRONG,
Belfast.
Sir, – I am not sure Finn McRedmond is altogether fair to the Greek historian Herodotus, in dubbing him the father of historical fiction. His credibility was long affected by coming before Thucydides, who set contemporary political history as the only agenda for serious historians. Herodotus’s broader sweep covered the story of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, but it also dealt with the distant past and included geography, geology, archaeology, comparative religion and much more.
I agree that this is in some ways more modern, but although he was fascinated by the fantastic, it is not clear he just made things up: he reported what he was told, but, as he says himself, he did not necessarily believe it. The problem with making things up out of nothing in a film about Napoleon (or any other historical figure) is that it is not really clear what is meant by the term biopic. I suspect many viewers take it to mean a biography, rather than a historical novel, dramatised in film – and we surely expect historical accuracy from serious biography.
So, is Ridley Scott’s biopic a biography or historical fiction?
If it’s the latter, I am in full agreement with Finn McRedmond’s call not to worry about the details.
But while Herodotus would probably have liked the idea of a French general firing canons at the pyramids, he wouldn’t just have made it up. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN McGING,
Regius Professor of Greek Emeritus,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.