Surprisingly, the legendary historical figure Napoleon Bonaparte has never had a historical Hollywood epic, and the grandiose new epic Napoleon doesn’t live up to the potential this story has to offer. Despite some stunning battle sequences and astonishing production values, Ridley Scott’s highly ambitious retelling of the French emperor and military commander has many high and low spots where it loses dramatic momentum and energy during much of its lofty running time. While the film hints at greatness and the big budget shows, mediocrity isn’t enough, and the film doesn’t quite have the heart of Scott’s other epics like The Last Duel or Gladiator.
While the film holds some impressive visual grandeur and commonly known historical perspectives by screenwriter David Scarpa, Napoleon holds many of the same hits and misses of many historical epics we have seen before: breathtaking production values, elegant wardrobe design, breathtaking battle sequences, and an impressive cast playing larger-than-life roles sprinkled in with melodrama, romance, speechifying, and much downtime in between the set pieces. While Scarpa, Scott, and lead Juaquin Phoenix attempt to generate darker humor and Vanessa Kirby is a scene stealer, the result becomes unevenly droll, as much of the narrative and human drama on display becomes dull and dramatically inert. Ridley Scott holds plans to air a four-hour director’s cut of Napoleon on Apple TV+, and he has stated that the theatrical cut trimmed down much of Kriby’s scenes as Josephine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoleon, who Napoleon loved to his very end. She is the most compelling character in the film, and in each scene, she ignites with Phoenix. However, you can sense that a lot of her scenes don’t connect well and are butchered. Perhaps the director’s cut could be on par with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America? While you can sense Phoenix is still searching for the character from the script, it’s Kirby who gives the film some dramatic flair. Perhaps Sofia Coppola should direct a Josephine de Beauharnais movie next?
Courtesy Apple TV Productions
Of course, on a visual and technical level, Scott succeeds. You can sense some passion put into the film. One of the most monumental sequences in the film is the Battle of Austerlitz sequence. We see Napoleon and his French overpowering the Russians and Austrians on a frozen link, where many of the soldiers end up falling into the ice lake from the arm cannons and sending a massive amount of opposing soldiers retreating. It’s one of Scott’s most bravura and chaotic sequences he has ever filmed. Only if the rest had as much passion and momentum. It doesn’t help that Phoenix’s performance in Napoleon is quite inconsistent in a messy film.
While Scott and screenwriter Scarpa have a field day jeering at Napoleon’s insecurities, especially after Josephine scolds his weight and gluttony during dinner for not being able to bear children, as Napoleon screams, “Fate has brought me to this lamb chop,” and while it goes from humor, the films tonal shifts from absurd humor to the melancholic are discrepant.
It’s not to say Napoleon and Phoenix could pull off the humor; we have seen historical epics with wit and playful humor with Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lydon, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite. Yet those films period drama, melancholy, and wit clashed seamlessly where the tonal shifts feel more awkward with Scott’s execution. Some of the weakest writing in the narrative involves the politics, which attempts to draw parallels to many modern politicians yearning for power today, but the dialogue and decorum feel ill-conceived.
While many will have quibbles on the historical inaccuracy of the film, Napoleon really didn’t fire a cannon at a pyramid, and he wasn’t present during Marie Antoniette’s death to the guillotine. Scott, however, has a lot of opportunity to make an evocative revisionist historical epic about an insecure, power-hungry narcissist trying to inspire a nation and empower his troops to conquer parts of the world and to get the final defeat on England. Eventually he becomes a man of exile, and even with that buildup, it becomes a missed opportunity as I can only attempt to imagine what Kubrick would have done with such opportunities of isolation.
While Scott’s last epic, The Last Duel, was bone-crunching and at least engaging, you can certainly sense consistency with the actors as they turned the Rashomon-inspired film of sword play, battle sequences, and perspectives into something more enthralling. Casting the eccentric Phoenix may have been ill-advised, as he often plays distressed characters, but you never feel he goes deep enough with the role as he has in the past with other masterful roles such as The Master or even Joker. Only if Napoleon had been more dynamic, more internal, and more dimensional in the final outcome would it probably have somewhat lived up to the 1926 Abel Gance silent masterpiece. Sadly, the end result is an undeveloped historical epic, one that ridicules instead of empathizes, and Scott and writer Scarpa fail to define him as a man.
Napoleon opens in Theaters November 22, 2023
An excellent review, Robert. I am not sure when I will get around to it, but it is a shame to hear about Phoenix. He is a remarkable actor.
What a disappointment! Thanks for the review
This has been a HARD pass since I read the Phoenix casting report. Grossly miscast.
Very excited for this one. Can’t wait to see it
Great review .the previews looked like a movie I would like to see but after reading this review I think I will pass .
Not as bad as many critics contend. Phoenix delivers another excellent performance as napoleon. Great battle sequences, but what dragged the film down for me was the scenes of napoleon and Josephine. I didn’t care for Vanessa Kirby’s performance as Josephine. And at least this film shows the French actually fighting- before they became cheese eating surrender monkeys that bent over and grabbed their ankles for the nazis. And good that they do not speak using Pepe le pew accents. 3 of 4 stars
I might wait for this movie to come to streaming. If it is there already, I might seek it out. I don’t know. Visuals look stunning but I am sensing a bit of cheeseyness.
This movie outraged me. Napoleon was a great historical figure — it is not by accident that his bust appears in the U.S. Capitol, one of the few foreign citizens granted that honor. He was one of the greatest military generals of all time, ranked (https://www.historydefined.net/the-greatest-generals-in-history/) along with Alexander the Great, Caesar and Hannibal. He was a great scholar and patron of the arts — remember that it was a Frenchman who first translated Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone Napoleon’s army found while there. He was a maker of laws — the Code Napoleon is the basis of Civil Law, the other great legal system followed by the world’s nations (along with Common law, developed by the British, which most states follow). He is one of the most fascinating and complex characters in history. But instead of exploring this amazing individual, the movie turns him into a cartoon character. Ironically, I disagreed with French movie critics who panned the excellent Marie Antoinette directed by Sofia Coppola. In that movie, Coppola humanized and brought nuance to a figure who had been treated as one dimensional by history, and particularly the French. In contrast, French critics also criticized this movie. The reason, however, in this case I agree with. Director Ridley Scott made one dimensional and cartoonish a character who deserves in-depth character study. His simplification of this historic figure speaks poorly of Scott. The most dramatic example of Scott’s questionable choices in this movie came after the Battle of Borodino. After the battle, the chyron on the screen reads “28,000 French were killed at Borodino.” Right after that, Napoleon, as played by Joaquin Phoenix states “that was a great victory,” seemingly playing for laughs and making Napoleon seem out of touch. What is left unsaid, however, is that nearly twice as many Russians were killed in that battle, and strategically, the Russians never recovered from the loss. In short, Scott altered the facts to make Napoleon seem cartoonish when in fact he deserved credit for a great victory. Finally, I think Phoenix was terribly miscast. Not only does he appear old at the beginning of the move, when he was in fact still in his twenties, but he plays a wooden Napoleon — quite the contrast with his portrayal in Gladiator. I’m wondering if Scott wanted Phoenix to play such a dim Napoleon, or if that is just how Phoenix interpreted the character, but either way, it did the movie no favors. In my opinion, this review was generous — if I could give this movie negative stars, I would.
I was prepared to dread this, and I’m not particularly a fan of historical epics. But I was reasonably entertained and never really bored, and I kind of enjoyed the “unusual” depiction by Phoenix (which reminded me of Brando in some of his miscasting in historical epics), and I thought Vanessa Kirby and Rupert Everett were very good. However, like you I had trouble with the tonal shifts, confusing perspective, and the lack of frequent lack of narrative and character clarity or coherence. Perhaps the four hour version Ridley Scott promises will be more coherent … but although i thought this was “perfectly fine” and not at all the torture I thought it was going to be, I’ll never return to watch the longer version to find out if the problems are solved.
Overall, a disaster. Phoenix was completely miscast and abysmally unconvincing in the lead, in what surely must be considered his worst performance ever. The entire feel of the film is wrong, is is rushed, episodic and unfocused. Only fans of historical re-enacments will be reasonably pleased. That said, it is of course beautifully lensed and the costumes are impressive. Your own takedown here Robert, is superbly presented and spot-on!
This was like an SNL episode…filled with people I like, especially the host, but just never comes together and mostly sucks.
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