Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte is an iconic figure in French history and is still remembered as one of the country’s most impactful rulers. After rising in rank within the French military, supporting the French resistance due to a shared hatred for the French monarchy, and eventually housing a coup against the then ruling faction of France to eventually become Emperor himself, his period of rule housed several monumental combat victories that demonstrated his brilliant prowess on the battlefield, resulted in an expansion and modernization of France and Western Europe through various negotiations with neighboring countries (whether peaceful or otherwise), and climaxed with his forceful abdication and eventual death in exile. While a complicated figure and one that seems to house many shades of grey, it’s hard to deny that he was a figurehead that would be fascinating to delve into, especially through the lens of Hollywood. While there’ve been films in the past (all of which didn’t do particularly well) and even a Stanley Kubrick passion-project that never fully materialized, Ridley Scott was the one who decided to bring this French figure back into the limelight with his 2023 picture. In the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, a young Napoleon (played by a distractingly not-young Joaquin Phoenix) grows in prominence after succeeding in multiple military escapades and eventually helps overthrow the Directory (which was the governing five-figure committee in the French First Republic) and declare himself Emperor. Despite multiple attempts at producing an heir with his former aristocratic wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais (played by Vanessa Kirby), their relationship bears no children, which eats away at his fragile psyche as he continues to wage war against and defeat several other countries in the name of the country he loves. However, after cooperative talks with Russia fall flat and the resulting conflict is sour enough for France to force him into exile, Napoleon will have to find his way back to the country he loves (as well as the woman he loves) in order to take part in the Battle of Waterloo. With little fanfare upon release and a critical and audience reception that was very medium at best, Napoleon didn’t manage to win people over and further perpetuates the outdated filmmaking model Scott continue to create movies under. While not the worst, the cons of this film are very apparent from a tonal, character, acting, visual, writing and especially directing standpoint.

A lot of the film’s poor quality seems to stem from Scott’s harmful direction, which paints it not as a film that has a purpose to explore and highlight the life of an individual, but rather a personally constructed project with unbelievably shallow execution all for the means of showcasing flashy fight sequences and presenting history how the one in charge sees fit. Due to his past success with huge historical epics, he seems unable to evolve with the times and notice that those movies are no longer relevant or even sought-after anymore, resulting in this film feeling dated, stale and unbearably simplistic. There’s no sense of depth to any of the content shown on-screen, the historical inaccuracies are rampant and do more harm to the film than good (actively presenting situations that are the exact opposite of what occurred), the pace is all wrong and makes it incredibly hard to follow or stay invested in, it juggles between bland mediocrity and bizarre puerility on multiple occasions (a tone that Scott is definitely not capable of portraying authentically) and it all boils down to a story that fails at exploring Napoleon, as it feels like the audience knows next to nothing about him by the film’s completion (despite the almost three hour length). To be fair, it would be hard to condense a person’s entire life into a singular feature-length running time, but what they choose to focus on (his military victories and his relationship with Joséphine) are not handled well and don’t suck you in. This is due to a very poor script by David Scarpa, whose past track record is minimal, yet still souring (he wrote the 2008 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still), explaining why the movie has such an awkward and unengaging flow to its narrative and dialogue. It fails at presenting the story in a manner that feels authentic or even that fulfilling, the constant jump forwards in time are handled fairly well by text bubbles but aren’t managed in a way that feels interesting, and the flow of the story is so jerky and since it consistently drops crucial plot points the second they stop having relevance, it feels more like a streamlined history lesson (a falsified one at that) rather than a proper cinematic picture.

If the movie was trying to be more of a hyper-realized version of the events instead of a proper historical tale, maybe the quirkier elements and gross historical changes could’ve been excused (like what projects like The Favourite or The Great accomplished), but due to Scott’s horribly moody and bleak directing style, it feels horribly inauthentic, and not just because of the aforementioned issues, but also because nobody sounds the least bit French. While the film doesn’t need to speak in the French language or have a majority French cast, the fact that no one has a French accent is very hard to ignore. With exception to the lead (who speaks in an American accent), most of the cast have strong British accents (which is ironic considering how they state in the movie how much they hate the British), which would be pretty funny if it wasn’t so distracting. It also doesn’t help that most of the performances, while not bad, are not strong enough to make it not an issue. Joaquin Phoenix has proven his capabilities as an actor plenty of times previously, and on paper, the idea of him playing a man who was known for his ingenious mental games yet also a hint of a dark crazy side, sounds like a role he could eat up, but his distracting voice, the obvious age differences (there is no planet in this universe where people would believe he is in his early twenties) and pathetic direction makes him fail quite badly. His lines are generic and forgettable, he seems to play him quite different from the real life person (coming off as more brutish, petulant and easily shaken), we never see him plan strategy or carry any qualities that Napoleon supposedly had outside of an obvious inferiority complex, the strange tone makes many of his scenes with Joséphine come across as incredibly childish and bizarre, and it never feels like an actual character or a portrayal of a real person, but just an actor reciting lines for a role. The rest of the cast isn’t much better, staggering to survive with roles which could’ve had purpose if the script wasn’t so shakily constructed. Vanessa Kirby is trying everything in her power to save the character of Josephine, but is unable to as she’s given nothing to do outside of give a snarky remark every time she isn’t fawning over or having sex with Napoleon, and while actors like Tahar Rahim, Ben Miles, Matthew Needham, Youseff Kerkour and even Rupert Everett are fine enough in their parts, their roles are so bland and lack any sense of character that they barely leave any impression. The only actor that actually feels like they stand out is Édouard Philipponnat as Alexander I, the Tsar of Russia, as despite how minimal his role is, he brings enough composure and charm to stand out amongst a crowd of dullards.

Since it seems like the only reason Scott made this movie was to return to his comfortable standards of producing a film within a bygone era that showcases some climatic and grand action sequences, it’s only fitting that they are the only things that are close to decent in this entire picture. While they don’t hold a candle to moments he’s created previously, and the movie as a whole is so limp in its execution that it’s hard to care about anything going on, these moments do still have nice scale, a sense of practicality that is appreciated, and some very nice technicals and shots that show them off in a flashy way without going too extreme. The cinematography by Dariusz Wolski doesn’t provide the most magnificent visuals (with most of the standard scenes being portrayed with relatively mundane angles), but most of the shots during the battle scenes are decently cinematic, well composed, and show off what could be a pretty unimpressive and repetitive experience, in a solid manner. Despite this, it isn’t enough to hide how ugly a good chunk of this movie is, which comes from the severely drab and washed-out lighting and color palette that seems to infect the entire environment (Ridley Scott sure does love his white and blue hues of lighting). This is a bit unfortunate as the production value, while not fantastic, isn’t awful either and this middle ground matched with the ugly appeal of the picture makes it feel even less inviting. The production design by Arthur Max and the costume design by David Crossman and Janty Yates does appropriately capture the distinct look of this era of France, yet it doesn’t feel punchy or sparky enough to truly stand apart from other period pieces which have tackled this seem era even in a similar style. The music by Martin Phipps would fall into this same category, but the occasional flourishes of French instruments does liven up what could’ve otherwise been a stale piece (ironically it might the only openly French thing in the entire movie).

Napoleon sounded like a complicated figure who might have been hard to pin down. Whether people want to view him as a prolific tyrant who exploited other lands as a means of hiding his own securities, or as an intelligent and capable ruler who put his country above all else and did what he could to pull it out of anarchy, both have the potential to be true, but the main takeaway should be that he was someone who couldn’t be viewed from a shallow perspective. This film is nothing but shallow, and a lame attempt at capitalizing on an old-fashioned trend that a director refuses to let die, producing an unmemorable, tonally confused, sloppy, ugly, and all-around forgettable and unengaging mess. Considering the reaction Scott has had to people’s criticism of this movie (which is vocally unprofessional), it paints a picture about what kind of movie this is; it’s not for the French population, it’s not for history lovers, it’s probably not even for fans of historical epics, it’s a movie for himself and how he saw the story of Napoleon, and that is not something anybody else should want to see. It has some sound elements like its production and some of its cast, but the choppy pacing, pretty yet hollow action scenes, juvenile characters and abhorrent direction and scripting do so much harm to whatever good will was supposed to come out of this. A French story with no French elements in sight, this film definitely falls short.