A film review by Craig J. Koban December 8, 2023

NAPOLEON

2023, R, 158 mins.

Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte  /  Vanessa Kirby as Josephine Bonaparte  /  Tahar Rahim as Paul Barras  /  John Hollingworth as Marshal Ney  /  Youssef Kerkour as General Davout  /  Davide Tucci as Lazar Hoche  /  Edouard Philipponnat as Tsar Alexander  /  Ludivine Sagnier as Theresa Cabarrus  /  Matthew Needham as Lucien Bonaparte  /  Erin Ainsworth as Hortense de Beauharnais  /  Thom Ashley as Charles de la Bédoyère  /  Anna Mawn as The Duchess Marie-Louise  /  Gavin Spokes as Moulins  /  Jonathan Barnwell as Bourrienne

Director Ridley Scott is no stranger to historical dramas/epics, whether it be his filmmaking debut in THE DUELISTS, the Oscar winning GLADIATOR, the very underrated KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, or - most recently - his RASHOMON-esque THE LAST DUEL.  

It seems only inevitable that he would tackle a film about Napoleon Bonaparte and explore the French leader's rise to power as a military commander and eventual Emperor and his later downfall.  Scott's NAPOLEON has the sprawling look and sweeping feel of many of the 85-year-old filmmaker's aforementioned works.  Its handsome production values are superlative, but the film never finds a way to actively engage with its very subject to give us a truly layered portrait. That, and I simply found Joaquin Phoenix (who Scott worked with 23 years ago on GLADIATOR) to be sadly miscast in the titular role; he gives a performance that's so bizarrely detached and mannered that it almost borders on caricature.    

What is this film even trying to say about this man?  Shockingly little, even within the confines of an already long 158 minute runtime (Scott, by his own admission, hopes to release a far longer version in the future...more on that later).  

There's obviously no question that the veteran director's reliably consummate craftsmanship is on awesome display here, but what good is that when David Scarpa's screenplay is seriously lacking in substance?  There's no doubt that most historians would agree that Napoleon is an endlessly complex figure, but Scott's film lacks even modest complexity and depth.  If any viewers out there have been magically living under a rock and have no idea who Napoleon was, then they would probably gather a fairly myopic portrait of him by watching this film.  He was a celebrated and controversial leader, to be sure, and is considered one of the greatest military minds and commanders in all history, but NAPOLEON gives us so startlingly little when it comes to embellishing these traits at all.  In this film, he's oftentimes shown as a cantankerous, egomaniacal, and sex-addicted man-child that was prone to wild outbursts.  How the man in this film could ever command armies - let alone win any battles - is beyond me.  For the most part, Scott and Scarpa are more obsessed with the tawdry soap opera elements of his life and times with his adulterous wife, Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), than they are with anything else.     

The film opens with a short prologue in 1793 that shows Napoleon witnessing the beheading of Marie Antoinette.  In actual fact, Napoleon was never in attendance as he was commanding armies at Toulin at the time, one of this film's many questionable historical alterations.  We then segue to that battle in question, and Napoleon's military victories there allow him to quickly rise up the ranks and earn respect from his fellow countrymen.  With more battles comes more victories and even more respect, which leads to the commander taking an any-means-necessary approach to ensuring that France becomes a massive global power player.  What he arguably wants as much as political and military power is a son and future heir, and this leads to him honing his romantic crosshairs on Josephine, who takes her time dealing with his advances, but ultimately acquiesces and marries him.  Regrettably for Napoleon, his frequent (actually...many) attempts to get his bride pregnant are failures, and adding to his frustration and paranoia is the fact that she has shacked up with other men while her husband is away on the battlefield.  Despite issues on the home front (and being more than a bit mentally deranged), Napoleon manages to segue from commander to Emperor and attempts as France's ruler to deal with enemies both foreign and domestic.  25 years are covered (although it doesn't feel that way), with everything culminating in Napoleon's crushing defeat in Russia in 1812 and, yes, his most infamous defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.  This leads to his banishment, estrangement from his already divorced Josephine, and later death in exile from nearly anyone that mattered to him.  

As the end title cards indicate, he oversaw more than 60 military battles in his lifetime that led to a cumulative three million deaths

It should be noted that 11 of these 60 battles are presented in NAPOLEON, and I won't chastise the film for not including all of them (what film could?).  It's here where most of the lion's share of praise should befall Scott's film.  His meticulous recreation of late 18th and early 19th Century France has a sort of classical Hollywood sheen of raw spectacle and overall bigness.  Emphasis is placed on many of Napoleon's battles, with the early shown Siege of Toulin being remarkably visceral and sometimes shockingly violent (that poor horse!).  There's a latter virtuoso sequence involving Napoleon's forces overseeing the burning of Moscow that creates legitimately stunned awe and wonder in viewers.  Scott is definitely enjoying himself in this sandbox of the past, and when it comes to harnessing all the blunt force brutality of Napoleon's greatest military triumphs and failures, this film is on resoundingly solid ground.  One thing that's not relayed at all is how Napoleon's mind operated as a battlefield tactician.  This film has unquestionable technical merits and definitely gives audiences a you-are-there sense of historical verisimilitude in terms of these bloody military campaigns, but as to precisely how Napoleon strategize within them...it's not brought to the forefront much here at all.   

Let's be clear: Phoenix is one of our acting treasures.  There's no doubt about that.  Unfortunately, he appears somewhat aloof and lost in his performance as Napoleon throughout much of this film.  In some scenes, he's refreshingly spare and restrained, whereas in other moments he's brooding and posturing in distractingly idiosyncratic ways.  I'm not sure that I could ever define this performance as "scenery chewing" or one that mugs for attention, but Phoenix is almost schizophrenic in his emotional range here.  Again, there's nothing on the page in Scarpa's script or in Phoenix's acting choices that tries to evoke a full-bodied encapsulation of what drove Napoleon and, most crucially, why he's so well regarded as a brilliant military mind.  Throughout the majority of NAPOLEON, he's a man driven to infantile tantrums and one that's so unhealthily fixated on his sexual appetites with Josephine to bare him a heir...and that's about it.  This builds onto some of the film's unexpectedly funny moments (and there are many) that involve what appears to be an in-over-his-head Napoleon lashing out at his rival country leaders like a petulant teenage high school jock.  My personal favorite involves him lambasting a British enemy, "You think you're so great because you have boats!"

Kirby - another routinely fine actor - also seems hopelessly adrift when it comes to playing Josephine (maybe this has something to do with being a last minute replacement for Jodie Comer - who gave a brilliant performance in Scott's THE LAST DUEL - after she had to back out due to scheduling conflicts).  Her character is given so much screentime here, but seems to be woefully underwritten and examined as a marital combatant in her husband's life.  She's more of a strange cipher than she is a psychologically grounded character with definable motivations.  The other problem tied in here is that Kirby and Phoenix don't have much in the way of heated chemistry.  I'm sure this has a lot to do with the fact that NAPOLEON isn't invested as much as it should have been with both of these people.  We get superficial scenes here and there of sexual tension and the bizarre rituals that typified their time as husband and wife, but there's very little dramatic foundation laid underneath of all of that.  It's clear that Josephine saw an opportunity to elevate her impoverished status to marry this man, and then later became trapped in said relationship with what amounts (here at least) to a raving madman.  Even though Napoleon conquered the battlefield, he was mentally defeated by his wife's infidelity and inability to give him a son, which only seemed to fan the flame of his lunacy.     

I'm reasonably sure that Napoleon's domestic existence was as complicated as his lustful political and military desires.  But that is just the problem here: NAPOLEON is too scattershot and disjointed in its focus.  It's a rare kind of Scott-led historical epic that feels paradoxically rushed even with a relatively long running time.  As an examination of Napoleon the man and legend, this film is wildly uneven and - more often than not - comes across like a greatest hits package of dispensing historical details versus seriously deep diving into any of them.  I don't think that I have any problem, per se, with this film's historical inaccuracies (it's a work of drama and takes reasonable dramatic license...so...yeah...him attending Antoinette's beheading or - in another instance - him ordering his army to cannonball the Pyramids of Giza before withdrawing from Egypt didn't altogether upset me).  But NAPOLEON's ultimate failing is that it's more in love with sensationalistic romance angst and Scott's attempts to marry sordid melodrama with mass spectacle are weak at best.  As I exited NAPOLEON, I was left with nagging thoughts that this is one of 2023's crushing disappointments.  It's both decadently polished and unpardonably unfinished.