There are few historical figures more widely written about than Napoleon. His exploits and conquests have been thoroughly detailed in almost every imaginable medium. Many books and documentaries have been made about him, and Abba even famously won Eurovision with a song about his most famous defeat. Indeed, legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick spent years planning an epic based on the life and times of history's most famous general (a project that I believe still lives on in miniseries form, produced by Spielberg) but never realised his vision. However, a few decades after Kubrick's passing, we are finally graced with a large-scale Hollywood production based on the former Emporer's life, brought to us by another notable name: Ridley Scott.
Ridley Scott should need no introduction to most cinephiles. The director of such classics as Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator has enjoyed a long and extremely storied career, and now into his eighties, he shows no signs of slowing down if anything, the past few years have seen him become even more prolific. According to several interviews on the press tour for Napoleon, he went straight from this shoot into production on his long-awaited Gladiator sequel, which is due out next year. He came into doing this off the back of The Last Duel and House of Gucci, both released in 2021. Following Gladiator 2, he plans on moving straight on to another production (according to a piece in The New Yorker, which can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/13/ridley-scott-director-profile). It seems age has not wearied or slowed this titan of Hollywood one bit.
As a fan of Mr Scott's previous work, I was very much looking forward to seeing his take on the life of Napoleon. Of course, it didn't hurt that the film would be led by the supremely talented Joaquin Phoenix, reuniting him with the director under whom he earned his first Oscar nomination back at the turn of the millennium. It seemed like a perfect combination on paper. Sadly, however, films do not happen on paper.
Let's get the main bone of contention for many people out of the way first, that being the historical inaccuracies. Now, this is an instance where I will defend the movie and its creators, as I don't much care about historical accuracy, this film is not a documentary, it is a piece of entertainment. If I were wanting an accurate account of Naploeon's life and battles, I would read one of the several hundred books written by historians and experts, but as it happens, I went to watch a movie made by creatives, so I don't give a damn if the film gets the details right as long as I am entertained, and that is sadly where the movie does fall short of my expectations.
Not that the film is completely without merit; the battle scenes and cinematography are excellent, for one, to the surprise of no one who has seen Scott's previous works. It's the moments where cannonballs aren't flying which drags the experience down. The film wastes excellent performers on teaspoon shallow characters, first and foremost, with Vanessa Kirby's character of Josephine being the most egregious example of this. People come and go throughout the story, showing very few signs of life, and giving the audience even fewer reasons to care about them.
The inconsistent tone of the film is another thing which drags it down, in my opinion. It flails wildly between incredibly well-realised and engaging battle re-enactments to scenes of Napoleon being a horny weirdo in scenes in which I can't quite tell if they're supposed to be played for laughs or to show his ever-increasing sense of self-importance. Either way, they fail in both tasks as they just came across as faintly ridiculous. I'm all for a film not taking itself too seriously, but it made for a very jarring juxtaposition between the genuinely effective scenes of devastating historical battles, and the ones where the lead character is suddenly pretending to be a horse to instigate sex.
I didn't leave Napoleon feeling like I had watched a bad movie, it is undeniably an incredible technical achievement with some truly excellent moments, but I did leave feeling disappointed. It was a movie and a combination (Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix) that seemed so perfect that it simply being a decent movie fell well short of my expectations. A good movie that had the potential to be great is often ten times worse than a bad movie nobody expects to be good, and I doubt adding another hour-and-a-half to its already bloated runtime for the Apple TV director's cut will help matters. When it comes to artistic endeavours related to Napoleon, I think I'll stick with Abba in the future.
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