Napoleon

The success of any film depends mostly on the script. Why Scott would initiate such an expensive project without ensuring a refined and sophisticated script is a mystery. I'm not convinced there is a single interesting scene that provides insight into the characters or captures through language the prevailing political ideas. Scott's frequent missteps as a director reflect a greater interest in the cinematic rather than in the dramatic. However, this seems inevitable when your priority is delivering a blockbuster that will have broad appeal instead of digging deeper into culture, society, or history. A colossal waste of an extraordinary opportunity to create an important film about a fascinating historical figure.

History is an undesired guest taking the backseat in Mr Scott's sprawling epic on Napoleon's life.

Mr Scott's craftsmanship is such that it's undoubtedly able to offer the viewer some unique experiences. But stunning battle visuals and great performances by the lead actors don't make up for gross historical approximation.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Mr Scott knows his history and, if he didn't, he surely has a fat staff of assistants to tell it to him; so what he does here (as he did already in Gladiator) is a very deliberate and blatant choice to bend historical reality to the purposes of his own art, which looks like an act of unforgivable artistic hubris.

Ridley Scott directed one of the best movies ever made set during the Napoleonic Wars: unfortunately, that movie is not Napoleon but his cinematic debut, The Duellists, forty years ago.

Unsurprisingly, The Duellists had a strong source material (it was based on a novel by Joseph Conrad which it often followed almost verbatim), while Napoleon has an uneven screenplay by David Scarpa.

Even past the age of eighty Sir Ridley can still shoot pretty and energetic pictures but his hits and misses depend on the scripts he picks, and he hasn't always shown the best discernment.

The elephant in the room is the large amount of historical inaccuracies. Even as a history buff I can forgive many of those: cutting or simplifying events for the sake of narrative, or even some overdramatization like the meeting between Napoleon and Wellington (it never happened) or Napoleon being present at Marie Antoinette's execution (he wasn't); however, stuff like Napoleon charging with his troops at Waterloo is absolute cringe, a kid's (or a lout's) idea of history.

Still, the big problems here are characterization and pacing.

The movie is a demythologization (some would say emasculation) of Napoleon. If you want to take this route then fair enough, but the character here fails to be consistent. I can buy a Napoleon who is an egomaniac and an overrated tactician (like in Tolstoy's War and Peace). I do not buy one who is an anxious, insecure, uncharismatic cold fish but also a stern tactical genius and an effective leader of men, one who flees from Egypt because Josephine is unfaithful but is also an unflappable military mastermind.

Phoenix is a great actor and does what he can but the two sides of the character just don't gel with each other. You can't have parodic moments like Napoleon rolling down the stairs during his coup against the Directory, despondently pouting as he waits for the rain to stop at Waterloo or awkwardly climbing on a box to stand face to face with a pharaoh's mummy (with his diminutive stature becoming a not-too-subtle metaphor of his overall mediocrity)... AND THEN have him magnetically charm the French soldiers into obedience after the Elba. This gawky Napoleon would have been shot to pieces there.

The other problem is pacing. A single movie about the whole life of Napoleon is in itself absurd, like making "a movie about World War 2". There is material in Napoleon's life for a VERY dense miniseries (which Steven Spielberg is reportedly planning).

Napoleon's first wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) plays a huge role here but I would argue the movie has either too little or way too much of her. This needed to be either focused mostly on Napoleon's personal life or to drastically reduce the (fairly repetitive after a while) moments where Napoleon is obsessed with his wife.

As it is now, it tries to tell - but rushes through - twenty very eventful years of European history and yet devotes more time to Napoleon visiting Josephine after their divorce than to his Russian campaign.

It's like making a D-Day movie which keeps cutting back and forth from the Normandy landings to Hitler spending time with Eva Braun. You can have either The Longest Day or Der Untergang, not both.

Still, it's not worthless. There are some interesting moments and set-pieces and, while Phoenix is saddled with a contradictory character, Kirby at least is excellent.

6/10.

Ridley Scott's Napoleon is more hysterical than historical. History is like an uninvited guest in this movie. Stunning battle visuals don't make up for gross historical approximations.

If you want to watch a masterpiece then see Waterloo, with Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer. And if you want a historical enumeration then watch the Napoleon series with Christian Clavier, Isabella Rossalini, John Malkovich and Gerard Depardieu.

This movie was made for Apple streaming. Then they made a butchered version for cinema to be able to compete for the Oscars. The original Apple streaming version will be at least 2 hours longer. This cut version for cinema is somewhat rushed, disjointed and, as a result, confusing.

We never really learn why Napoleon was so powerful and won the admiration of so many. Here it's almost as if he stumbles through greatness. He was a great politician in reality, over here he's shown as a childish brute. The focus was more on set pieces and his relationship with Josephine.

Joaquin Phoenix can play odd or troubled characters well. Here he barely succeeds in persuading the viewers that he is Napoleon. He's too old for this role (Napoleon was 24 when Marie Antoinette was guillotined) and made the character seem bizarre than a charismatic leader. Vanessa Kirby as Josephine gets more traction.

The cinematography by Dariusz Wolski is of a very high order. The battle scenes are filmed well. Ridley Scott knows how to make action scenes slick and impressive. But overall it's a below average movie. Napoleon deserves better than this shambolic movie.

There's so much available content to tell this story. Why the hell was it a 2.5 hour film rather than the multi part limited series it deserves to be? The film has over 20 years of history to cover but includes so many huge time skips that you can't help feeling that you're missing out on a huge amount. This should have been a series and given the writers and the actors the time they deserved to tell the story properly but instead we get something that seems rushed and has huge gaps in time where things are shunted forward just se we can reach the end of the story before time runs out. The acting is above par (Despite Phoenix mumbling through some scenes) and the action sequences are excellent but there is just a feeling that it could have been so much more.