Napoleon review – Chunky and Grumpy
Director: Ridley Scott
Writers: David Scarpa
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix,Vanessa Kirby,and Rupert Everett
Running Time: 157 minutes
Please note there may be spoilers below.
If Napoleon reminds us of anything, it’s that Ridley Scott’s latter career will be one of a commercially minded director rather than an artistic one. Napoleon huffs and puffs his way through the French emperor’s greatest hits, spinning a bleak and darkly colored yarn heavy on scale but light on personal revelations. Compression is the name of the game here. Spread over 28 years, the film is fixated on fitting in every notable historical moment, even at the expense of emotional logic. Like Scott’s prior work, there’s a ruthlessness to his storytelling, an ability to freely discard depth to his work for the sake of commercial breadth, and in Napoleon the commercial requirements feel carefully adorned. The look and scale all feel pleasing to the eye, until you realize you’re actually watching a sleek aftershave commercial starring Napoleon Bonaparte.
Whilst Scott seems keenly aware the heart of his film is the central relationship between dictator and manipulator, he’s willing to dispense focus on the successful parts to briskly rush into the next event on the timeline. The fact that he’s already revealed there’s a four-and-a-half hour director's cut of Napoleon says a lot of the theatrical experience, one that feels both too long and too short. Like his work on Kingdom of Heaven, he seems content to provide a narratively truncated experience. Important connective tissue is missing, and the result is a film made up of ‘scenes’ rather than a cohesive dream.
His star is certainly keen to convince. Aside from his age, Joaquin Phoenix is emotionally perfect for the role. If Joker (2018) and You Were Never Really Here (2017) prove anything, it’s that Phoenix can provide deep introspection with little dialogue. He drives a compelling broodiness few leading actors can. Directors brave enough to turn down the score and not cut away to the next scene are paid dividends with Phoenix’s ability to hold the frame. With Napoleon he successfully indulges his funny bone. As he straightly marches through the stately rooms, there’s a hideously funny narcissism at play, a figure worthy of ridicule. The film comes alive with its love story – Joséphine and her clear-eyed view of the world offers us a chance to laugh outright at Napoleon’s eccentricities. Sex is the key joke. Napoleon huffs at her like a dog in heat, awaiting her permission to pounce. We are treated to multiple scenes of doggie-style that reveal an impatient husband and a deeply bored wife, the motions of 18th-century marriage playing nicely against to our modern lack of naivete. Whilst Napoleon is deeply in love, Joséphine remains contradictory. Hers is a marriage of social dependence (she is was a widow) but she is also drawn (as are we) to Napoleon’s ridiculous humor, his private silliness. You forget this comedic figure is the tyrant of Europe.
It’s a brave and admirable take on Napoleon for the first half. For Scott and Phoenix to give in to the obscene aspects of this man strips the movie of the dull seriousness I expected. The formal, stuffy historical biopic is, for a time, elevated to a sex comedy that wouldn’t look out of place in the filmography of Yorgos Lanthimos. In one witty scene, Napoleon's own mother requests him to complete the ‘unpleasant’ task of impregnating a young 18 year-old mistress to test his fertility. One can’t help but laugh and stare at the abominable and fascinating high social life of post-revolutionary France. Marriage, gender, and power are all laid out for analysis. Alas, not all good things last. Too soon the momentum of history comes to distract us.
Due to his skill-set, it seems almost burdensome for Ridley Scott to provide battle scenes in each of his pictures. The violent peak is Austerlitz, which provides him an icy blue backdrop for the warm red blood on offer. Napoleon spends the battle, as he does all battles, staring out at the violence from a distance, his expression focusing on the only thing he believes in: his ego. Once his enemy is pushed unaware onto a frozen lake, the drama hits its crescendo once French cannons are fired. The enemy is drowned amid blood spreading out like ink drops in water. Scott demands your attention on both the dead men and on Napoleon’s eyes. This is not a celebratory battle or a devastating one. It’s simply a moment to make the audience wonder what on earth drives leaders to such dictatorial excesses. Napoleon offers no answers or suggestions.
The scale is up there with Scott’s largest vistas. They rely heavily on his trademark muddy visuals and extensive CGI. The battles are impressive, but without compelling characters to take us through the proccedings, they become experiences of artifice rather than art. In one way this is the success of Ridley Scott, The Producer – provide entertainment in line with audience expectations, even when they add little to the emotional thrust of your movie. I can’t help but feel Ridley Scott, The Director, the man who made Blade Runner, would have accepted his current work as faultless. As the movie follows Napoleon into his latter years, guiding us to Waterloo, the process feels so mechanical, too distant. His abdication of the throne should feel like the narcissist’s worst moment, a enormous sucker-punch to his ego, but here its oddly stoic and procedural. Once again the inner life of Napoleon is left unexplored.
When the personal drama returns, we’re reminded how wonderful and delicate Vanessa Kirby’s Josephine is. Under candlelight reminiscent of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Napoleon tells the love of his life, “My affections must yield to the interests of my people.” She is childless and therefore expendable. Joséphine laughs at Napoleon’s attempt to make this moment about France, rather than about him. Kirby plays her with the complexity we crave – as a manipulator, seducer, victim, and ultimately Napoleon’s greatest supporter, only for her life to be swept aside by the waves of history. Napoleon remains impenetrable to us, but Josephine is the character with real dimension.
She is sidelined for the Eastern Front. As Napoleon invades Russia, the framework for the history is his letters written to her. Punctuated with melodrama, his yearning for his discarded wife intensifies the further away he gets. The last hour declines into a swift skip through history, one that’s forced and unnatural, as if Scott won’t consider his film finished unless the death of Napoleon is on screen. It’s a shame, since the prior comedy of manners is terrific fun.
Yet one scene seems more important than the others, one that feels vital in all depictions of Napoleon. Upon escaping exile, he meets and manages to convince King Louis XVIII’s army into joining him. It’s vital because this moment is the totality of Napoleon’s ability to lead men, to charm them into following him into certain death. It should be the scene when you realize why Napoleon was able to achieve his military accomplishments. In Bondarchuk’s Waterloo (1970), a staunch Rod Steiger only needs a long, hard look to convince them, a magic trick of hypnosis. In Napoleon, Joaquin Phoenix provides a short, dewy-eyed speech, saying he misses his men and his home. Without pause, the men agree to join him. It’s an unconvincing moment. Napoleon may have been an insufferable tyrant, but he wasn’t without his occasional magic.
This story inevitably leads to Waterloo. It’s a dully colored battle, even by Scott’s standards. Rarely do movies depict the damage done to horses, but Napoleon reminds us by throwing them through the air at high speed. The fighting has physical bite but remains emotionally inert since Napoleon is more caricature than human. When he discloses, ‘I’m the first to admit when I make a mistake, but never do,” I suppose the point is that he’s disconnected to his failures the way most narcissists are. In my experience, spending less time with them is the trick
