Movie Review – Napoleon: Director’s Cut
Principal Cast : Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Rupert Everett, Ben Miles, Ludivine Sagnier, Matthew Needham, John Hollingworth, Youssef Kerkour, Sinead Cusack, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Phil Cornwall, Edouard Philipponnat, Jannis Niewohner, Miles Jupp, Edward Bennett, Ian McNiece, Paul Rhys, Catherine Walker, Gavin Spokes, Mark Bonnar, Anna Mawn, Davide Tucci, Sam Crane, Scott Handy, Tim Faulkener, Abubakar Salim, Kevin Eldon, Sam Troughton.
Synopsis: An epic that details the chequered rise and fall of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his relentless journey to power through the prism of his addictive, volatile relationship with his wife, Josephine.
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This review is based on the extended Director’s Cut of Napoleon, now available on Apple TV+.
Ridley Scott is a director on a mission. As he enters the latter years of his life and career, his legacy across five decades of cinema is as potent, compelling, and inert as a filmmaker of his calibre might remain. He has lost none of his eye for brutal, bloodthirsty action and crisply kinetic visual style, although his inability to crack halfway decent characters continues with the Director’s Cut of Napoleon, his three-and-a-half-hour epic film detailing moments of the famous French military commander’s life as well as attempting to humanise this titan of world history with a great capital-L Love Affair, although the latter sinks like a stone when the firepower and extravagant showmanship takes a back seat. It behoves me to suggest that Ridley Scott’s attempt at retelling Napoleon’s life and uncovering some manner of human fragility hitherto unseen by audiences is a bit of a damp squib, a colossal failure despite all the money sunk into it by producing studio Apple TV+. Scott ain’t Abel Gance, that’s for sure, and the British-born director seems to treat his subject quite cynically, where Gance’s five hour silent film is a towering achievement that lauds the famous Frenchman without the same edginess as we witness in this; largesse is the canvas of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life, and truly enormous his impact on not just European but world history, and yet Ridley Scott, a man who can command legions of Romans and the vacuum of space without so much as blinking, fails to capture the romance, sexuality and adoration the man, the myth, the legend engenders to this day.
Plot synopsis courtesy Wikipedia: Napoleon is a sweeping historical epic that chronicles the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix), exploring his brilliance as a military strategist, his political ambition, and his complex personal life. The film intertwines grandiose battle sequences with intimate drama, focusing on Napoleon’s volatile relationship with Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), whose charm contrasts with his austere determination. From his meteoric ascent during the French Revolution to his crowning as Emperor, his disastrous Russian campaign, and ultimate exile to Saint Helena, the film examines the cost of his insatiable ambition. Featuring a stellar supporting cast, including Tahar Rahim as Paul Barras and Rupert Everett as the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon is both a visceral spectacle and a poignant character study of one of history’s most enigmatic figures.
The problem for Scott’s Napoleon isn’t that he infuses the enormous cast with notable names – the likes of Sam Crane, Miles Jupp, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Ben Miles will be familiar faces to cineastes – but that the two leads, Joaquin Phoenix and the exquisite Vanessa Kirby, have the sexual chemistry of a ream of A4 paper. Napoleon was legendarily smitten with his wife, Josephine, whom Kirby attempts to give layers of complexity and vivacity, although whether Josephine reciprocate the same affection with equal fire is a matter of conjecture. Either way, their romance, ending when Napoleon was forced to annul their marriage because she was infertile and could bear him no heir, was the stuff of historical legend; arguably equal to that of Antony and Cleopatra, or Paris and Helen of Troy of Greek myth, Napoleon seized power in France as a way to continually prove his love for Josephine, although one suspects the luxurious lifestyle afforded his status as leader wasn’t something he sneered at. Yet, their amorous rutting throughout the film, their early flirtations and eventual tragic parting (and, eventually, Josephine’s early death from pneumonia, noted as diphtheria in the film) never feel as intoxicating to us, the viewer, as they so obviously did to the real historical people. Phoenix and Kirby are not bad actors, but their on-screen attraction lacks any real conviction, as breathless exhortations of affection feel thinly true within their performances. Ridley is unable to capture their lust, their spark, in a way that makes both their tragic lives so profound, with this profundity evident in the romanticised narrative historians have deployed through the centuries since.
Without a real believable central emotional connection, the film becomes a dry reproduction of Napoleon’s triumphs and failures. From his escapades into Egypt, his treaties with Russia and eventual invasion into Moscow, as well as the legendary Battle of Austerlitz and eventually his misjudgement of the Duke Of Wellington (a terrific Rupert Everett) at Waterloo, Ridley Scott mounts some dynamic and gorgeously photographed action sequences that are as grand and epic-scaled as anything DeMille or William Wyler could have asked for. There’s plenty of blood and gore; one early sequence sees a cannonball explode into a horse, nearly killing Napoleon, a graphic nose-tap by Scott to the audience as if to suggest this is the kind of film he’s intending to make. Unfortunately, a lot of the action sequences are merely signposts in the expansive attempt to retell Napoleon’s life amid his great love with Josephine and his resolute endeavours to put France first as a world power.
The screenplay by David Scarpa pieces together a potted history of France’s political upheavals, starting at the end of the Terror (in 1793) and ending with Napoleon’s final exile to Saint Helena, which serve as ballast rather than meaty supplemental aspects to the events as they transpire. It’s easily one of the more difficult things for a historical epic to pull off well: how do you condense an entire lifetime of political and militaristic activities into a compelling single narrative without losing a grounding in realism and maintaining audience understanding? The simple answer is that for Ridley Scott, despite an absolutely daring attempt to convey just how determined and tragic Bonaparte’s life was, the film’s sheer bulk and lack of an emotional core (that works) undoes almost all the good work of the superb cast and expensive production values. As you sit there watching it, you can’t help but start to wonder if Ridley simply bit off more than he could chew. Gance took over five hours to adequately tell Napoleon’s story, perhaps there’s too much hubris from Ridley to think he could do the same in three.
At the very least, Napoleon is a terribly pretty film, with gorgeous cinematography from maestro Darius Wolski and his team, while the costume design and location sets are all sublime. The film’s score from Martin Phipps didn’t really captivate me like I had hoped it might, although perhaps my expectations of a Dr Zhivago-esque sweeping battlefield triumphant theme were too grand for what the film was attempting to do. The action battle sequences are hugely entertaining for their scope and human complexity, and as he’s proven many times before, Ridley’s ability to choreograph organised chaos is masterful, borderline genius. The violence is gritty and bloody as one might expect – the 18th Century wasn’t noted for its gentle wars – and there’s a lot of gratuitous screaming, wailing and yelling as various vast armies collide in an orgy of cannon fire, muskets and swordsmanship. Problematically, Napoleon’s tactical brilliance is undermined by Scott’s whirling camerawork and the editorial flourishes to make everything seem chaotic, and this goes some way to undercutting Joaquin Phoenix’s taciturn portrayal of the French Emperor’s mental acuity; as human as he was, he was a giant in many respects but an infant in others, namely his interpersonal relationships. Although Phoenix tries hard, the softer side of Napoleon comes across as neutered, almost childishly immature in parts. As I have alluded to, Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby are not known for being terrible actors, and both their respective performances are committed in every respect, but with a screenplay this cluttered, and an emotional through-line lost by lack of chemistry, it’s all so very disappointing.
Napoleon’s Director’s Cut is a three-and-a-bit hour swing and a miss. But what a swing. Grand, opulent, yet fraught with emotionless passion around which the fate of the free world is said to have circled, Ridley Scott’s historical epic is a puzzlement of excess tripped up by enthusiastic misjudgement. As one can expect from a director with the temperament of John Ford, the film plays fast and loose with historical accuracy and condenses a lot of Napoleon’s life into bite-sized parcels, but one can see the gears grinding as Scott tries to entertain the viewer with sheer force of will. I almost – almost, mind you – sense a “will you look at how fucking cool I can make this” hubris behind the camera in parts, notwithstanding the director’s seminal battle photography and gory violence he sure does make 18th Century France look like both an absolute shitstain and a grand old holiday spot all in the same frame. I suspect that had the actors playing Napoleon and Josephine had any kind of chemistry on screen at all, even just the teensiest smidgen of attraction to each other, Napoleon might have been a Titanic-sized success – the film hangs on this part, and because they fail to ignite with passion, the film’s core is a chasm of dark angst. Alas, Napoleon is a bit of a dud, only worth seeing as a solid effort that never comes together as it ought.
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