Reviews: Napoleon

Final Rating: 3.5/5

Director Sir Ridley Scott gives us another historical epic in all its grandeur and glory. He knows his way around a battlefield, having brought us such films as The Duellists, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and The Last Duel to name a few. He’s back in the saddle with former colleague Joaquin Phoenix in the title role of Napoleon. The opening scene drops us into revolutionary France, and right away you can see the lush production value and set design we’ve come to expect from the director. Napoleon stands idly by as Marie Antoinette is beheaded. The crowd cheers and jeers in their bloodlust, and as her head is hoisted to applause. A stoic Napoleon coolly observes, eyes slowly taking in the scene. I may have imagined it, but just before the cut to black the faintest glimmer of a smirk might be seen creeping from the corners of his mouth. 

This little vignette is a very smart opening scene; it tells us where and when we are, what’s going on, and sets the table for our protagonist’s ruthless pursuit of power. The crowd is celebrating the end of monarchy, but Napoleon is simply recognizing that a throne just became vacant. (Nevermind that Napoleon wasn’t actually there; this is a film not a textbook. Or as the good Sir Scott so eloquently put it when interviewed: “Well, shut the fuck up then.”) But it’s not so much the Scott-Phoenix connection that jumps off the screen, as the Phoenix-Kirby connection. 

Phoenix’s Napoleon and Vanessa Kirby’s Empress Josephine share a strange, sickly romance that dances somewhere between obsession and infatuation (but seemingly never love). The push and pull of their turbulent twosome gives the film rhythm. Phoenix’s Napoleon is a driven force, which he brings to bear on his relationship. For her part, Kirby imbues Josephine with a grit and defiance that matches Napoleon’s brutality; eventually the two can’t help but be caught in the maelstrom of their dysfunction (at the expense of some very uncomfortable dinner guests to boot). Their relationship is the main focus, and that’s really the thrust of the film- not the battles. 

The battles themselves? As expected they’re spectacular. Scott makes good use of handheld shots to put us in the thick of the action, while being smart enough to keep overhead and wide shots nice and steady so it doesn’t become a chaotic mess. Hear that, Spiderverse franchise? His depiction of the siege of Toulon brings to mind the cinematography he used to great effect in his 2000 Best Picture winner Gladiator’s barbarian forest battle. He still has a knack for gritty, dirty fighting that doesn’t pretend at any romance when depicting the savage reality of war.    

As compelling as the chemistry between Phoenix and Kirby is, that’s also the only emotion you’ll get. Outside their stormy affair, there isn’t much in the way of sentiment on offer here. Napoleon’s career proceeds from point to point with sumptuous set design and wardrobes that are sure to garner Oscar nominations, but once Kirby makes her exit, the energy goes out of the film with her. There’s still a decent chunk of this epic left at that point, but the emotional highs and lows have mostly been had. 

The remaining runtime involves such highlights as Napoleon’s second reign, Waterloo, and his final exile, but it’s surprisingly flat in comparison to what came before. A generous viewing would take this as a reflection of Napoleon’s grief after losing Josephine, but it feels more like a subdued coda. 

As for Mr. Bonaparte himself, we never quite get to know him. Phoenix’s performance comes off a little one-note, with that note being ambition. We don’t really get a look at anything else going on with him besides his bottomless aspirations (and bottomless brunches, by the looks of his ever expanding waistband through the years). The only flashes of depth are fleeting moments of whimsy he displays with Josephine. Perhaps intentional to show she’s the only person who can make him come alive. But also a limiting performance that holds the audience at arm’s length. 

One recalls Phoenix’s OTHER emperor role in a Ridley Scott historical epic: Gladiator’s Emperor Commodus, where a bevy of emotions and layers were on display. Jealousy, love, obsession, sorrow, contempt, pain; all were woven through Phoenix’s melancholy emperor. By comparison, his Napoleon seems slightly dulled, somewhat numb. They are indeed different men, and it was certainly an acting choice, but not a wholly successful one. 

Outside the battles, things can move a bit sluggishly. It’s not necessarily too long at two and a half hours, but you do feel the runtime on the back half. Curiously, the film ends with a title card tallying the casualties of the Napoleonic Wars. The message being this man caused millions of deaths in the name of his vanity. And indeed throughout the movie the heads of Europe are often portrayed as reasonable and fair men, foils to Bonaparte’s belligerent upstart. Especially the Duke of Wellington, played with the driest Englishness ever by Rupert Everett in a performance he clearly enjoyed. Strange, considering the history of Europe is essentially belligerent upstarts invading each other in a bid for supremacy since Rome. The monarchs opposing Bonaparte were just as power hungry as he was, albeit not as successful. Alas, this is a film not a textbook after all.

Napoleon delivers a continent-spanning epic seen through the lens of the Emperor’s twisted love affair, a different angle than we’re used to in previous pictures on the Little Corporal. At 86, Ridley Scott proves he can still make historical epics of scale and splendor, and directs his leads to a compellingly toxic coupling between breathtaking battles. Unfortunately, Joaquin Phoenix’s Napoleon is too emotionally stunted (insert height joke here) to engage us, and when the cannons aren’t firing the film can drag. There’s good work setting the table and building the drama, but ultimately it doesn’t deliver the emotional energy to land it.