Napoleon Review
Sumptuous and expansive, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a gorgeously told epic, but struggles to truly capture the famed Emperor and his exploits, despite its expansive runtime. Perhaps Napoleon simply did too much to be reduced into a 2 and a half hour film?
The film follows Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) as he progresses from a lowly soldier to the ruler of the French Empire, charting his journey from a first win against the British, through revolution, across continents and countries, to exile and back, ultimately ending with his defeat at Waterloo. It also explores his relationship with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), from their meeting to their eventual separation.
Ridley Scott turns Napoleon into a suitably massive epic. If you’re a fan of gigantic historical epics, Napoleon certainly provides in spades. There are sumptuous battles aplenty. If you’ve ever wanted to see Napoleon fire a canon at the pyramids, this is your film! The standout battle is undoubtedly an ice-field based one with a huge amount of destruction and tactical thought.
Vanessa Kirby is a standout here. Her performance is wonderfully nuanced. Phoenix plays the titular character as a petulant narcissist, completely cuckolded by his wife. While it certainly makes his relationship with Josephine interesting, it also completely decimates any belief in his ability to rouse the comradery of his men that the real Napoleon was so known for. This comes across the most in a scene where the returning Napoleon, fresh from exile, turns a group of military men sent against him to his side. Of course, for the real Napoleon, this actually happened, and his men loved him so much they defied orders and reinstated Napoleon to the throne. But in this film, that transition makes no sense, because Phoenix’s Napoleon is such a creepy weirdo, we never feel in any way that these soldiers care for him as a brother, a friend, or a god-like leader.
Ultimately, this version of Napoleon - as beautiful and sumptuous as it is - falters because it is so obsessed with setting it apart from other biopics, and playing into the ‘human’ element of the man in his relationship with Josephine. It feels like a film that adapted that relationship to try and make it feel more modern movie, but that decision completely hamstrings any legacy this movie might have. While that is perhaps down to David Scarpa’s script, it is compounded by the ways in which Scott portrays the hero, and the now tried-and-true way that Phoenix plays a ‘weird loner’.
