I couldn’t have been more excited to see the new Napoleon movie.
First off I love the director Ridley Scott. I remember going to see his sword and sandals epic Gladiator with my parents at a theater in Mariemont, Ohio. I was twelve and had experienced nothing like it. Non-stop high stakes action existed alongside an emotionally engaging plot all wrapped in almost exaggeratedly pretty cinematography and dream sequences. At this point, even though I have seen the film probably a dozen times, I am always up for one screening.
Then we have the story of Napolean. American high school history does a terrible job with Napoleon, treating him as a sort of odd ball outlier. He’s a hubristic footnote to the French Revolution and an antecedent to the horrors of the 20th century, at best a master tactician done in by overreach and poor planning. To this day a Napoleon complex means a short guy with a sense of inferiority.
Honestly I didn’t know much about him until I read Andrew Robert’s masterful biography.
Napoleon revolutionized the French state in the wake of the revolution. The Grand Ecoles, France’s Ivy League, were created by him. Napoleon had an eye for detail and organization, as well as love. After Jesus, Alexander the Great, and Hitler, he’s probably the most important historical figure of all time.
So I decided that a movie of this epic magnitude deserved an epic old school experience. On Lincoln Road is a multiplex that gives strong 2006 vibes. They have an IMAX screen and this seemed like the perfect setting. After a long year I was ready to escape 2023 for a little bit.
The theater turned out to be a bit disappointing. All the right cues were there, big comfy seats and a giant screen, buttery popcorn, but somehow it was all off. It felt stale, musty, like something that should have been left in the past. The audio was a bit too loud and the previews were a bit too long. It hit all the right marks but somehow wasn’t quite right.
Much of this could also be said about the film Napoleon. On face value it's hard to complain. Like a high school textbook the film takes you from the French Revolution, step by step, to Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Along the way there’s action, romance, and political intrigue.
Vanessa Kirby is a revelation as Josephine. She managed to portray the paradoxes of the character, an inveterate philanderer who was also in love with Napoleon. Someone with iron resolve but also a weak will. An empress who handled shame and ignominy with grace and poise while engaging with the human costs of these losses. I bought her in this role.
Then there were some pretty impressive set pieces and visual effects. For me the real climax of the movie was the Battle of Austerlitz where Napoleon defeats the Austrians. Set on a frozen lake, cannon fire breaking through the ice creates a spectacular scene where you really get the fear and desperation of the Austrian troops facing fire above and frozen death below.
Ridley Scott has a real flair for lighting. The movie was at its best in foggy and frosty winters landscapes and in debaucherous nighttime party sequences. There’s real expertise in the use of candle light and fire to express temporary but intense passions.
That pretty much sums up the good, not unfortunately we have to contend with the bad.
The worst part of the movie is Joaquin Phoenix, he’s just not convincing as Napoleon. The American actor plays the French Emperor as a sort of cuck buffoon, a leader propped up by a cocktail of ruthlessness and luck. Something about Phoenix’s natural stoner Californian accent really put me off. For most of the movie he seemed to inhabit a sort of resting bitch face with occasional emotional outbursts. My impression was that he saw Napoleon as a spoiled child constantly upset that his Christmas presents weren’t enough.
Even with another actor the character of Napoleon as written would be flat because there’s no mechanism in the film for us to get a glimpse into his inner dialogue. As I mentioned Gladiator uses dream sequences to achieve this, why not employ something similar for Napoleon? Watching the film I have no idea of the leader's motivation. Why does he care so much about conquering the world?
Then we get to the pacing and repetitiveness of the movie. A major plot point is Napoleon’s divorce with Josephine. To this end the script contained at least three to four scenes where this was discussed. No new information was added, it just felt like the same thing over and over in gilded rooms. Also, why were there so many carriages arriving at buildings? We got it, they took a carriage, how else were they supposed to get there? These establishing shots are boring.
Beyond being repetitive, the film had a lot of pedantic moments. We all know he was exiled but why does the film need to take a ten minute detour to show us? Again we lose interest watching Napoleon ride a horse through a historic town. No new characters are introduced and it does little to advance the sense of drama in the movie. A lot of the film, like a school history course, feels like a box checking exercise, Napoleon did it so we have to make an ass covering attempt to show it.
All of this I could overlook if the battle scenes were better, but outside the already mentioned battle of Austerlitz they felt stale and cliche, almost like they were generated by AI. The battle at Toulon, which launched Napoleon onto the French national stage, is small and doesn’t do credit to his genius.
The most disappointing was Waterloo. We all know the history but it’s the job of the screen writer to forget that defeat is a foregoing conclusion. The way the film is constructed makes it clear that Waterloo is a lost cause for Napoleon, but he clearly did not believe that at the time or he would have never entered the battle in the first place. It just felt off and undramatic.
There are good and bad parts of this movie, but overall it was a disappointment. I am exactly the intended audience, a history buff who fanboys for Ridley Scott and even I couldn’t get into this film. It’s a shame because this director with one of history’s biggest stories should be a slam dunk.
If I was in charge I would recast Napoleon and restructure the script. Ridley can still work out the battles and bring his signature touch to the look of the film. We would definitely be keeping Vanessa Kirby.