Napoleon: Bonaparte and Scott, Great Men Bogged Down by Ambition

Napoleon stands as one of history’s most influential figures. A man whose conquests and arrogance, in equal measure, are renowned the world over and a man whose ambitions exceeded his abilities. Ridley Scott is one of America’s most influential directors. At his best, he is one of the most captivating storytellers in all of Hollywood, a man responsible for some of the most referenced, quoted, and influential movies of the last forty five years. You may not love all of his movies, but, when watching, are you not entertained? Well this time around, only partially. While a vast step up from his last real-life biopic, the utterly dreadful House of Gucci (possibly in part due to the fact that nobody in this is attempting an insane and misguided french accent), Napoleon ends up a long and uneven journey that can’t deliver a cohesive vision of one of history's greatest figures.

Ridley Scott’s latest film follows Napoleon Bonaparte across a two hour and forty minute runtime from lowly Corsican gunnery sergeant, to general, through the French revolution, to his eventual ascendancy as emperor, to his military blunders in Russia, and his eventual defeat and exile at the battle of Waterloo. Not to even begin to mention his long and complex courting and relationship with Joséphine de Beauharnais, played by a reserved and impressive Vanessa Kirby. Herein lies the central issue with Napoleon as a film; even at an impressive runtime approaching three hours, the film is torn between not having the depth to explore each of these events in one of the most momentous lives anybody has ever lived, and covering too much ground. The editing and pacing felt out of sync with what the film was trying to accomplish, making the length of the film truly felt, in contrast to this year's other expansive historical epics in Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon which seem to breeze by effortlessly. Napoleon’s eventful life makes for filmmaking that, at times, feels more like checking off boxes on a long list of historical events rather than exploring the relationships and dynamics that make his life interesting

The movie shines the most in its first hour and a half, as we watch Napoleon’s rise. It is no coincidence that this half of the movie also contains the most shared screen time between Joaquin Phoenix as our titular character and Vanessa Kirby’s Josephine. When allowed to act against each other, the duo are impressive. Phoenix is able to balance Bonaparte’s fragility and insecurity with his narcissism and crippling ambition while Kirby works as a powerful foil as a woman who is emotionally powerful but physically and politically powerless. The scenes with the two of them give us the best insight this film is capable of offering into Napoleon’s psyche and the inner vulnerability and fear that dominates his greed and insatiability for power. Napoleon is not suave or sophisticated when around Josephine and Ridley Scott is not even remotely flattering in his depiction of the Emperor. Scott depicts Napoleon as a man whose ambition and greed makes him a fool, a dunce deserving of humiliation, not reverence.

The scenes between the film’s two leads also help to exemplify one of the film's more surprising traits: its effective sense of humor. I never thought I would get the joy of writing this sentence, but this film seriously seems to suggest that Ridley Scott has both seen and is a fan of this legendary video. At the press screening, there were numerous moments where the audience genuinely burst out into short bursts of laughter. The comedy in the film often comes at the expense of Napoleon himself, whether it's him sprinting in fear from a mob of his own creation, taking away the dessert privileges of an officer who informed him of Josephine’s indiscretions, or complaining about Britain's affinity for boats. The film is more interested in portraying Napoleon as a little man figuratively than literally. Scott expertly uses these brief moments to undermine Napoleon in the eyes of the audience and to offset the cold tactical Napoleon seen through the first two thirds of the film’s runtime. As Napoleon’s conquests begin to falter and we begin to witness his inevitable downfall, the film’s comedy also becomes less present. Scott uses the comedy as a tool throughout the first pieces of the movie to bring Napoleon down a notch from the mythologized version most audience members have been exposed to prior. By the final third of the movie, Napoleon’s own actions do this more than well enough on their own.

The most impressive display of Napoleon’s prowess as a leader and tactician, the Battle of Austerlitz, also ends up being the film’s most impressive display of Ridley Scott as a director. I have a personal vendetta against many modern trailer editors and their propensity for spoiling or over-revealing pivotal moments in films. It is a shame that so many parts of this scene have made it into every single Napoleon trailer that has been released as its impact in the film is immense and would probably hit even harder with less explicit information. That being said, it still shines as a sequence that encapsulates so much of what makes Ridley Scott great as a director and what he gets right in this movie. All of the combat in Napoleon is sufficiently bloody and brutal—I cannot recall a movie in recent memory that I have seen with more on-screen horse death—but the Austerlitz sequence is the absolute pinnacle. Overlaid with a haunting choral-orchestral score and doused in icy blue, we watch as an emotionless Napoleon clinically decimates an opposing Russian-Austrian force. A frozen lake is made incarnadine by the blood of the soldiers sentenced by Napoleon to die there, and it’s the only color that is allowed to pierce the otherwise glacial tones of the cold battle.

All of the battles throughout Napoleon feel visceral and heavy in a way so many other modern blockbusters seem to lack. This is, in part, due to the sound design of the movie. Every cannon blast, of which there are many, cracks and booms with power. Each slice of a sword, and collision of lead and flesh is felt as much as it is heard, as if the battle is taking place around you. The other thing that sets Napoleon’s set pieces apart from so many other contemporary epics is its sense of scale. It is becoming rarer and rarer in modern Hollywood to see large crowds of actual extras in scenes, with studios often eschewing this for CGI implementations. While it's no secret that CGI must have been employed to make these massive battle sequences work, the legions of soldiers have a tangibility to them that is only obtainable with real actors. The simple inclusion of large collections of real human extras adds such a grandeur and immensity to each battle and grounds each segment. In feeling, this harkens back to the epics of old such as Ran, Lawrence of Arabia, or even the more modern Lord of the Rings. However, each of these indomitable classics is not just remembered for its sense of scale and sprawling narrative, they are also visually striking, vivid films. One of the biggest missteps of this entire film, and a trend that seems to, worryingly, be growing among major Hollywood films, is its desaturated and entirely drab cinematography. For a story composed of brightly colored uniforms, opulent palaces, and explosive battles, there is no excuse for so much of what's put on screen to be washed-out and occasionally downright ugly. Given the subject matter, it's already a baffling choice, but it's made all the more confounding considering that cinematographer Dariusz Wolski has previously worked with Scott on a number of projects including Alien: Covenant, The Martian, and The Last Duel, all good looking films that have defined and coherent styles in line with their subject matter. I can’t fathom why the stylistic choice for a man with one of history’s most colorful careers would be a palette of mud.

In a year that has seen Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Priscilla, and soon to be Ferrari—some of America’s most prestigious directors making extended epics reevaluating immense historical figures and events—this may not be at the top of the pack, but it still has something to offer. With the extended slate of interesting films being released between now and the end of the year, at almost three hours, this is not the best use of your time in a theater, though it certainly benefits from the massive screen and loud sound system of a theatrical experience. Ridley Scott has a four and a half hour director's cut that he hopes to release at some point. According to him it would contain a lot more of Kirby’s Josephine and her relationship with Napoleon. Vanessa Kirby was one of the shining lights in this uneven movie, so more screen time for her certainly sounds promising. But for a movie that already very much feels its length, an additional two hours of undersaturated footage doesn’t really get me excited. I’m still looking forward to the highly anticipated Gladiator 2 but, until then, if I get a hankering for Ridley Scott, I’ll be revisiting one of his earlier masterpieces long before I revisit this.