Napoléon

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.

Back in 2005 Ridley Scott's 144 minute version of 'Kingdom of Heaven' premiered in theatres to somewhat mixed reviews. A couple of years later the vastly superior 190 minute director's cut version finally arrived, with the general consensus that the final product was a masterclass in storytelling, directing, acting and cinematography. - without doubt the best motion picture ever made about the crusades.

Almost 20 years later we are yet again treated with a compiled highlight reel of a Ridley Scott movie in the theatre, rather than a full-fledged historical epic, since it has already become official that 'Napoleon' will be released later on streaming with its entire runtime of almost four hours, which clearly is needed to flesh out many parts of the movie and fill in the emotional and historical blanks, because this - somewhat butchered cut - moves in a breakneck speed and feels too rushed.

Whereas the underappreciated 1970 movie 'Waterloo' starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte, featuring thousands of extras, portrayed events only during the 100 days campaign in 1815, Scott's 'Napoleon' takes us through decades of various major events and battles beginning with the siege of Toulon in 1793. In this version we never really learn why Napoleon was so powerful. Why did he win the admiration of so many? It's almost as if he stumbles through greatness. He was a great politician in real life, but here he is portrayed as a childish brute? It felt like the focus was more on setpieces and his troubled relationship with Josephine, than on him as a ruthless and cunning emperor, and in the theatre cut there really isn't a lot of places where Joaquin Phoenix truly shines as an Oscar contender. Maybe the director's cut will remedy that.

In spite of its shortcomings (no pun intended) 'Napoleon' is still one of the best movies I have seen this year, but I am baffled. Because if people can sit through 3+ hour box office hits like 'Avengers Endgame', 'Avatar 2' and 'Oppenheimer' - why the need to release just a very extended trailer of 'Napoleon' in the theatre, especially when everyone know that they can just wait a couple of months for it to arrive on streaming in its entirety? An attempt by Apple at a cash grab? "You need a subscription to our streaming service to watch the whole thing"?

With that being said, I do predict some Oscar nominations here. Ridley Scott yet again proves why he is one of the best filmmakers out there. But a word of caution: If you only plan to see this once, you might consider waiting for the director's cut.

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.

Ridley Scott's Napoleon is a high-budget cinematic exercise in "Whatever, man, that'll do." The film, both in terms of what it presents and how it presents, reeks of hollowness. Characters are shadows(not defined enough to even be considered parodies or mockeries of their real-life counterparts as some people like to see them), story is a shadow of a proper story( at times feeling as if written by A. I), atmosphere, with the exception of some of the battle scenes and the Russian segment, sterile and practically non existent(disasterous for Scott who is known to be one of the greatest world builders in history of the artform). Stuff just happens in the film. No significance or weight to anything or anybody... Sure, it's not all bad. The classic Ridley Scott elements are here - battles are engaging, the costumes and set designs very well-done. Something he can't help but always be good at.

Overall, Ridley Scott's Napoleon feels like a simulacrum, a reduced copy of a real film, where, it seems, all life is sucked out . If I had more reverence towards the post-Gladiator Ridley Scott, I'd, perhaps, think of the film as some kind of metajoke, a self-aware self-parody, but, frankly, I think it's just a matter of the filmmaker not caring much. Just another day at work for Ridley, gotta keep working, do one thing, move on to the next one immediately, have fun, try things out, don't overthink it - this seems to be the way to go for the good ol' Ridley these days. Can't blame him, he's 85, for Christ's sake, but the movie's not good, kind of proto A. I-produced entertainment.

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.