‘Napoleon’ a fascinating misfire from Ridley Scott

The battle sequences are breathtaking, but the film itself can’t ever really get a handle on what it wants to say about the French emperor and conquerer

Image: Apple

With Napoleon, Ridley Scott has succeeded where Stanley Kubrick famously failed, in completing a large-scale, epic biopic of the French general, emperor, and conquerer Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Scott’s film is indeed made at a grand scale, but it’s still something of a disappointment. Despite some very impressive battle sequences, the film sports a rare not-so-great outing from Joaquin Phoenix. And beyond that, it never really gets a handle on its subject. Napoleon is lacking in any particular insight or big thing to say about Napoleon. 

Napoleon, directed by Scott from a script by David Scarpa, covers the man’s life over about 25 years: Starting with the French Revolution in 1789 and depicting Napoleon’s rise through the military and political ranks throughout the revolutionary period, all the way up until his defeat at Waterloo in 1815. (No, we don’t see the French side of the sea battle from Master and Commander.)

Image: Apple

The other major thread is his relationship with Empress Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), which is often volatile, especially when it becomes clear that she cannot provide him with an heir. 

The battle sequences, especially the snow-plagued Battle of Austerlitz, are first-rate and presented both clearly and compellingly. Brutal and beautiful, the best thing about the film by far. 

Less successful is just about everything else. 

Joaquin Phoenix is an actor who rarely misses, but this is one of those misses. He plays this historical figure as a guy who looks bored most of the time, which may or may not reflect the actor himself being bored. (Also, he’s not short- although historians are divided on whether Napoleon was all that diminutive- that was the joke behind Danny DeVito’s character in Get Shorty having played Napoleon in a super-prestigious biopic.) 

Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid, not Napoleon, is Phoenix’s great performance this year. 

Meanwhile, the film itself isn’t obvious what it wants to say about Napoleon, his legacy, and who he was as a person or a leader. Is the film, which is not based on any particular book or other source material, going revisionist, or sticking more with understanding of historians? 

All Scott can particularly come up with, it appears, is that Napoleon was an avatar of toxic masculinity. There’s likely something to do, but that’s already getting to be a bit of a cliche at this point- and besides, Scott already explored that subject, to much better effect, two years ago with The Last Duel.

The film goes a lot into the psychosexual power dynamics of Napoleon and Josephine, with both weaponizing jealousy against the other. But the Hulu series The Great, featuring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult as Catherine the Great and her husband Peter, was a much better version of what Scott is going for here.

Image: Apple

As for the numerous coups, revolutions, and shifting European alliances of the periods of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, the film can’t do much with them, mostly because it fails to do much work establishing the different characters. Édouard Philipponnat is a highlight as Czar Nicholas I, as is the long-missing Rupert Everett as the Duke of Wellington, but other than that it’s difficult to keep track of who all these people are. Also everyone, regardless of nationality, speaks English, with either an American or British accent. 

Scott is a frequently great filmmaker who is capable of great swings; this is one that didn’t quite connect. It’s damned impressive for a guy in his mid-80s to be this prolific, especially with large-scale projects. But Napoleon is not nearly as strong as either of Scott’s 2021 films, The Last Duel and House of Gucci. 

The theatrical cut of Napoleon is about two hours and 40 minutes, and Scott has said that he is preparing an even longer cut for its Apple TV+ release, to run over four hours. That version might tell the story better and get more of a handle on this historical figure, but based on what I saw, I’m not all that eager to watch a longer version.