Napoleon Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
A biopic about a historic warmonger, a maniacal emperor, and a single man hell-bent on re-shaping geographies.
Can go in so many less-than-ideal directions and trigger unpleasant emotions so many viewers are barely contained within right now as the world stands.
Ridley Scott isn’t here to soothe your frayed nerves, but he does have some things to address.
Starting with the French Revolution of 1790 and ending with Napoleon’s death in 1821, Napoleon the Movie chooses to show us 30 years of the rise and fall of the empire of its Cosrcia-born protagonist. What happened during these 30 years is practically impossible to accurately cover within one feature film, regardless of how long it is. For the non-French, or audience not interested in French history, Scott scatters helpful text descriptions throughout the film. Before he shows you the execution of Mary Antoinette, a black screen tells you where exactly in history this cinematic time machine is dropping you, who these people are, and what you’re about to see. But a documentary this is not, as watching the last queen of France be killed is Napoleon himself, hawk eyes trained on the disgraced monarch. Historians and Tik-toker currently are telling you this never happened, napoleon was busy leading the siege of Toulon against the British at the time, a battle Scott shows a little later. In this version of the story though, Bonaparte watches silently, not partaking in the vile, inhumane celebrations around him. He didn’t support the monarchy, but did he know then his actions were leading him down the path of being declared emperor, and crowning himself in front of the pope?
I doubt the Ridley Scott and writer David Scarpa’s Napoleon had foresight more than planning what his next aggression was going to be. At this stage of the screenplay though, Napoleon has purpose and reason for his actions, and it is reflected not just in Joaquin Phoenix’s body language but also in the pointedly gory war cinematography. I wasn’t prepared for the gory details Dariusz Wolski’s camera focuses on, a lobbed head with blood freely flowing from where it was erstwhile attached to a human body, a cannonball blowing to smithereens’s a horse’s sternum, a man blowing up half his face as another puts his hand in the newly formed face hole, even displays of crude and vile, almost violent celebrations in a salon with too many people drunk on wine and blood.
The Napoleon you meet here has some semblance of planning, of focus. He might not ever accept to himself his desire and hunger for power, but you begin to see that that is the only fuel propelling his rapid succession within military ranks. That and the sheer confidence of a man who has realized if decides he wants something for himself, very few other men will come in his way.
Once he meets Josephine though, both Napoleon the man and the movie change, for a tone that can only be described as humorous. The epic war film takes on some Big Lebowski hues, as Napoleon convinced of his righteousness and peace-loving ways, delivers some epic one-liners and zingers, including calling the dinner on his plate a lamb chop of destiny. Thankfully unlike Scott’s last film House Of Gucci, no actor in the House of Bonaparte has a fake French accent — Joaquin Phoenix sounds American, Vanessa Kirby British, and they just make it work, allowing us to focus on the many many things happening in the screenplay rather than how r and ts are being enunciated.
While Phoenix presents us with this slowly changing demeanor, Vanessa Kirby emerges as the excellent performer she is. I will say, her introduction shot in the trailer enraged me. In this saga that’s being promised to us about men and their great battles, the first time a woman appears, she sits sexily on a chair, opening her legs slowly. Over it.
The talented Ms Kirby in the film too, is unfortunately mostly used as an object of desire, the promise of forceful sex with her becoming the only motivation for this brutal man to keep returning home after his conquests. Napoleon is animal-like in his carnal approaches, and Josephine is occasionally amused, but mostly bored, and defeated. The acting sub-genre of royal princesses holding their true emotions already had Kirby’s name as a top-tier practitioner after The Crown, but here it goes a notch higher by taking the limited character development offered to her and elevating it to create a moving portrait of a woman stuck between many rocks and many hard places, crumpling into herself, broken and dented after years of being cruelly used as a plaything by men who loved the idea of her.
The film’s screenplay moves on from being largely episodic thus far once it begins to become clear that Napoleon and Josephine’s toxic romantic relationship and how that shaped Europe as we now know it, might be what the filmmaker is most interested in exploring. In a fit of rage, Napoleon makes Josephine apologize for taking a lover in his absence, making her tearfully declare that Napoleon alone is the most important man in the world. Almost immediately after they make up, seemingly only a few moments later Josephine, now not fearful at all, turns the tables on him, as he breaks down and repeats after HER that he is only a brute and nothing without her in his life. With the new layer of acidity in their relationship, Napoleon turns even more insolent, falling asleep in political meetings, being chided for his bad manners, literally running away from policymakers, and just about falling short of pulling faces and going phhhbbbttt at army generals.
While this goes on, the film of course doesn’t forget to keep going back to his wars, cleverly using Napoleon’s real letters to Josephine, some of which still exist, read aloud in voice-over, as a device to keep the viewers in sync with the rapidly proceeding timeline. Some 4th wall-breaking text also appears every few scenes telling you the years and geotagging various war locations. And here the tonality of the war sequences changes once again. Napoleon, overconfident due to all his wins, turns into more of a politician, further away from his troops, spearheading battles, but almost disinterested in the proceedings, even when they involve shooting canons towards the Great Pyramid of Giza. A secondary larger point of the character study begins to emerge — we are being reminded not of the great conqueror who was nicknamed the nightmare of Europe, but of a madman blinded by ego who didn’t care how many men he lost in battle, as long as his personal glory and delusions remained intact.
The screenplay at this point gets very heavy, telling the story, exploring a doomed love, and attempting to clearly present an anti-war sentiment that might resonate in 2023, there is a lot going on, and unless you’re determined to follow closely to make the experience worth your time, the additional burden might begin to feel tiresome.
The film though never collapses under its own weight. Incredible war choreography enables the seamless transition of Scott’s opinion of Napoleon from screen to psyche. Don’t be fooled by the paintings and books deifying this man, he was nothing more than a zealot with changing, undefined interests, increasingly flying by the seat of his pants. In its final act, the movie exudes a kind of melancholy even, Napoleon and Josephine are separated and the screen is tinged with the grayness of stormy skies, foreshadowing the emperor’s impending downfall.
So amid all this, Napoleon just about qualifies as a character study. It’s not brave enough to be “the favorite” showing a strange new human side of a famous monarch, it’s not as indulgent as the Firebrand nor is it as safe as Victoria and Abdul. It’s funny in an almost parody, Inherent Vice sort of way. Do I wish it were more Spencer, allowing Josephine’s story to show? Yes. I mean when we first meet her, she already has 2 children from a previous marriage, entirely forgotten till her final moments when a daughter appears and is like yeah so Josephine died.
As the promise of ever going back home victorious to Josephine is taken away from Napoleon, his recklessness mixed with disinterest takes on its bloodiest form yet. The battle of Waterloo rolls around, Napoleon loses, has zero remorse over the million dead, like some inept current global heads of states it might remind you of, and finally out of steam, reverts to “the dude” persona, now exchanging repartee with literal children. He goes back into exile, making even more jokes, and one day, seemingly hallucinating about his ex-wife, topples over and poof.
How much of this is historically accurate, ridley scott clearly doesn’t care. The man is shooting Gladiator 2 with Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, and Pedro Pascal right now.
