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Napoleon Movie Review

Napoleon is a 2023 epic historical drama film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby. It is an undeniably messy, but entertaining epic.

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“I am the first to admit when I make a mistake.

I simply never do“

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The movie offers a look at the military commander’s origins and his swift, ruthless climb to emperor, viewed through the prism of his addictive and often volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine. This is the first epic spectacle that Ridley Scott made after many years. ‘The Last Duel’ was more of a drama set in Medieval France while this film is more akin to ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ in its epic scope.

But there is also one other similarity to another of his recent movies and that one is surprisingly enough ‘House of Gucci’. Yes, in what continues to be the most comedic and commercial era of Ridley Scott’s career, Napoleon ended up being a comedy disguised as a historical drama. How he depicted the titular leader is definitely open for discussion, and although very amusing, it is quite problematic to portray him in such a joking manner.

Thus, the film begs the question whether or not it’s even possible to make a biographical epic about some of history’s greatest men in this current era as you cannot really glorify them for their violent wars that they waged, but you cannot really make fun of them as they are important historical figures after all. It just goes to show that historical epics about fictional characters or ones that sideline major figures are the way to go and not the biographical route.

At first, I was quite taken aback by Phoenix’s portrayal of Napoleon. I found him thoroughly miscast in this role as the actor simply doesn’t have the capacity to act out the full range of emotions and too often here I found him repeating his ‘Joker’ and ‘Beau Is Afraid’ shtick where he is either brooding to the camera or being whiny. Eventually, I came to like his performance as he relaxed much more into the role in the movie’s second half, but still this casting decision remains baffling.

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The characterization is ultimately the biggest problem here. While I did like the comedic tone, I did find the character assassination done on Napoleon to be deeply problematic. It feels too postmodern and biased to depict him in such an insulting manner, no matter how grounded in reality it might be, and even that is questionable in this instance. I loved his romance with Josephine and more on that in a bit. How he grew in power was also well explored and the scenes on the islands and his tactical decisions during battles were also well done, but his motivations remained murky throughout.

It was unexpected to see Josephine be a more interesting and better developed character in a Napoleon film, but that’s what happened this time as Scott favored her strongly in the amount of time given to her. Vanessa Kirby is absolutely incredible as this woman who knew that in order to gain power during this time period, you had to do it through a man, so she married a powerful man herself and ingratiated herself in high society.

Ridley Scott has always known how to write women as he gave us Ripley in ‘Alien’ and also two strong women in ‘Thelma and Louise’, so I wasn’t surprised that Kirby’s Josephine was so layered and instantly memorable. There is this one scene during divorce paper signing where so much emotion went through her face and Kirby was downright electric in that moment.

And this brings me to their romance, which is by far the best aspect of this epic. As a huge fan of ‘Gone with the Wind’, I am all in favor of bringing back the historical epics of yesteryear, the films that appealed to both men and women by including the romantic and sexual intrigue on the court as well as the intense battle scenes on the front. Ridley Scott definitely tried to do that with this epic, but he only half-succeeded at that. A better choice would have been to just focus on the romance as that was by far the least problematic and best crafted part of this otherwise messy experiment.

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While undeniably trashy and somewhat campy in the sex scenes, those scenes still worked as they were absolutely hilarious while humanizing Napoleon in the process. I would have done away with those annoying Freudian scenes where she tried to manipulate him, but other than that, their chemistry was great, their romance exciting and the dialogue terrific. The epistolary sections in the second half also worked and made the film quite moving while the death scene was also heartfelt. The film truly sparked whenever it focused on these two sex-crazed maniacs.

Technically speaking, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a towering achievement. This is the man who has always excelled at depicting history through so many carefully crafted details and this was no exception. The costumes were stunning, the cinematography confident, the overall production design mesmerizing and the score was also quite good, though far from iconic. The sound was too loud in a movie theater, but evocative nonetheless. Scott directed all of the battle scenes with so much of his signature prowess and it is difficult to imagine anybody else doing them better.

The Austerlitz sequence was of course historically inaccurate as most of this movie unfortunately is, but these films should be viewed as an artist’s interpretation of events rather than a documentary, which is why I forgave him for so many omissions or changes to the real life story. The ice scene was brilliantly executed and almost poetic, but in a very bloody and brutal manner. While the on screen graphic violence was excessive (horses’ deaths and Marie Antoinette’s decapitation being the worst offenders), the film was extremely realistic in every single battle sequence. These scenes were definitely quite long, but they were so meticulously crafted and exhilarating that they captured my attention every single time.

There is only one issue from a technical and narrative standpoint that plagued this Napoleon experiment and that is the editing. A director famous for his director’s cuts, the longer version will undoubtedly once again prevail as the better one. The theatrical version was so obviously cut to death as way too often the movie would cut from one scene to another with no proper explanation of transition. The most blatant example is the scene where Napoleon forms a coalition with the Russian tsar Alexander only to fight his troops in the very next scene.

So ultimately Napoleon is best seen as an epic romance that also contains brilliantly staged battles that are signature for Ridley Scott. But the film as a whole lacks a clear point of view as Scott is unsure how to approach his subject, though he very clearly verges on the derisive tone. Up until the third act, the film was at least somewhat confident in its vision until Scott introduced his shameless pro-British propaganda in overemphasizing the importance of Wellington and the British in what was supposed to be a story about Napoleon himself.

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