“Napoleon” (2023) is Ridley Scott’s latest film, an epic biopic about Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix), his rise to power and his relationship with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). It starts with the execution of Marie Antoinette (Catherine Walker) and ends with Bonaparte’s death in exile. The little over two and a half hour film (a four hour director’s cut exists) takes its viewers on a sumptuous yet tedious paint by the numbers tour of the self-appointed Emperor’s life offering little to no insight into the man, the people around him or the time, but prioritizes mocking the little man—not in size, but in terms of insecurity—and hoping to displace historical and cultural memory of him by becoming the definitive film about the man. Unfortunately to do so, it would have to sustain a viewer’s interest for the entire run time.
I was very excited to see “Napoleon” because I had comp time burning a hole in my pocket (if a holiday falls on a Saturday, and you work on the Friday before and Monday after the holiday, you get a floating day off that is good for 30 day). It was my first daytime screening and first double feature screening day—the other film was Eli Roth’s “Thanksgiving” (2023). I love Ridley Scott, an entertaining director who has made some of my favorite movies: “Alien” (1979) and “Blade Runner” (1982). He has also made movies that I have despised such as “Prometheus” (2012). His latest films, “All the Money in the World” (2017) and “House of Gucci” (2021), have been about the pitfalls of famous families with money set in Italy and are great prurient fun because these movies feel like you are seeing something private and exclusive. It is mostly spectacle where viewers can leave feeling superior to the people on the screen, and “Napoleon” seems to be more in line with that goal, and not like his deeply serious action-adventure dramas like “Gladiator” (2000) and “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005) in which Scott respects the protagonist. So if you are expecting “Napoleon” to be like one of his fact-based, somber films like “Black Hawk Down” (2001) or “American Gangster” (2007), keep on moving.
If you are looking for a film that looks as if Scott has a time machine and took his equipment and crew with him, then “Napoleon” is the movie for you. It is sumptuous: costumes, sets, the three major battle sequences. The coronation scene was a recreation of Jacques Louis David’s painting, “Coronation of Napoleon.” The most stunning battle is the film’s centerpiece: the Battle of Austerlitz. If there was no audio, the film would be perfect. With the audio, Scott made some bold creative choices that did not work and provided more insight into the director than the titular historical figure that Scott purported to be making a film about. Side note: while I studied the French Revolution and the period following, I am not making any allegations about whether Scott’s film is historically accurate and do not have an educated opinion about the real-life Bonaparte. I do not care enough to do a historical deep dive, especially since Scott is very vocal about not caring either. These are my impressions of Scott’s thoughts on the period based on his film.
Scott is not a fan of the French Revolution and is a royalist. Also as a British person, it is not a surprise that maybe he would have a bias against Bonaparte and the French, feel a bit tenderhearted towards queens and prefer an established class structure instead of a more fluid approach. “Napoleon” opens with the execution of Marie-Antoinette, and it is a scene filled with pathos: a mother protecting her children, the cruel crowd taunting her, recording Marie-Antoinette’s breath to reflect her fear and effort to keep it together. He shows no such sympathy to subsequent former revolutionaries in danger and sees them as hypocrites using ideals to get wealthy and supplant the royals. He sees their pain as a grand joke. Scott initially depicts Bonaparte as above the emotional fray, quietly observing, focused and seems to admire Bonaparte most when he is at his most humble, undercover, and making battle plans. Bonaparte gets the ragged breath treatment during the first battle, the Siege of Toulon. Once Josephine hits the scene, he becomes a blowhard, pathetic, one-minute lover, a bumbler who humiliates himself every minute of the day, which is fine, but monotonous for a long movie. Josephine gets straight up depicted as a whore, not only a married woman who had lovers. Josephine had descendants, and if I was Scott, I’d watch my back.
[Side note: French versus American/British films have very different sensibilities and tone when it comes to sex and adultery. I have no idea how Bonaparte and Josephine felt about their relationship, and again, do not care to read their letters to each other, but my gut tells me that a British person would lose something in translation and automatically consider adultery to be a character defect and a sign of immortality whereas French films barely lift an eyebrow at couples have multiple lovers and knowing about it. Bonaparte was not a typical French man, but considering that these lovers did not end up dead, and Josephine was the love of his life, it feels as if any British or American director would be incapable of not projecting their own prudish judgment on this couple.)
“Napoleon” is one of those films where most of the actors speak with a British accent, which tends to be confusing. The action unfolds in Britain, France, Egypt, Austria and Russia. If everyone speaks in a British accent, how is the viewer supposed to know that they are in Austria. It requires being riveted every second of the film and knowing that if you see people playing cards in a long opulent hall, bang, the scene is in Austria. You’re welcome. Now you will know. The film flashes brief a person’s name and title appears. The location is not always indicated though Scott is generous with indicating the month, day and year and will divulge the location, but it is rapid and more inconsistent than it feels. The problem with the sun never setting on the British empire, including with casting of movies, means that it puts more of a burden on the filmmaker to provide other clear context clues, and Scott kind of does not care. His attitude is, “Who is going to check me, boo.” The box office.
Anyone speaking a foreign language appeared during Napoleon’s battles outside of Europe, including Russia, which shows which countries Scott thinks of as other or not European.
If there are French people in the cast, they are not playing the most prominent roles. Edouard Philipponnat, who plays Tsar Alexander, is a Finnish French actor. Phoenix is American and other than being a good actor, if I’m being generous with my analysis, his American accent may symbolize how Bonaparte was an outsider, a Corsican born Frenchman with Italian noble heritage. What does that mean on a practical, empathetic level? No idea, Scott only references how Bonaparte’s class and birthplace makes him unlike others in the ruling class, a boor, but does not expand further and seems to root for his displacement so the hierarchy can be securely back in its proper place. Even when creating a villain, the villain should be interesting, but Emperor Commodus is not in the building. It felt as if Phoenix reprised his fictional alter ego version of himself from “I’m Still Here” (2010) and became a LARPer. He is having a great time playing a buffoon who says the most outlandish, self-congratulatory things that even the briefest fact check would reveal as a lie, but it is tiresome to hit the same joke repeatedly as if you were watching the last half hour of “Saturday Night Live.”
If you are looking for a performance that makes you forget that you are watching a film and feels lived in, you will have to wait until the denouement when the Duke of Wellington (Rupert Everett) finally puts a stop to Bonaparte’s shenanigans. He is the only person who reacts like a real person would. After the British capture Bonaparte, Bonaparte holds an impromptu court over breakfast lecturing a group of sailor children. Wellington walks in horrified and astonished that anyone allowed such foolishness, and Everett’s exasperated tone and line read showed the right amount of astonishment at his men’s incompetence. It is a genuinely funny moment and made me wish that there was a way to get more Everett. The other jokes are about laughing at someone’s expense whereas the punchline is about relatability to a completely unrelatable man, a war legend and political figure from another time.
“Napoleon” is a gorgeous movie, but you won’t see it when you fall asleep between battles. The combination of pitch perfect visuals with comedic, outlandish dialogue does not ever gel, and Scott lacks the necessary pacing to let everyone enjoy the joke. Perhaps he should have partnered with Terry Gilliam.
