I watched the trailer for Ridley Scott’s Napoleon this summer in an Airbnb in Paris, with my seven-year-old son crowded up against me, clutching the Playmobil Bonaparte he’d selected at the Louvre gift shop. It was an exciting three minutes for the seven-year-old Napoleon fan who lives inside of every man — there’s the 18th Brumaire! there’s Austerlitz! there’s Waterloo! — shadowed by puzzlement at the close-ups of Scott’s choice to play the man himself and the question even those brief shots of Joaquin Phoenix raised: Why is he playing Napoleon like . . . the Joker?
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