Napoleon – a disappointing epic

First off: my review contains no spoilers. Any information stated here is featured in trailers that have already been released.

There’s no doubt that Napoleon will divide opinions. It’s already splitting my own opinion, as if my heart’s beating two separate beats. Scott’s craftsmanship of his opulent signature style in historical films remains beyond all doubt. No suprise there. After all, he’s the one behind the pieces of art that are the films Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and The Last Duel (incidentally one of his most underrated works).

But outside of its many battle scenes, Napoleon has hardly any qualities. And this certainly does come as a surprise. Especially with the cast; with Oscar-winning Joaquin Phoenix playing Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor, rebel, tyrant and conqueror. A proven recipe, yet still a miscast. But this isn’t the only problem.

So, what went wrong?

What Napoleon is about

It’s 1789 and the people of France are revolting. While the monarchy lives in abundance, the population is suffering from hunger and poverty. The last queen of France, Marie-Antoinette, is beheaded, leading to the final fall of the French monarchy. In the middle of it all is a young and ambitious artillery commander: Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon quickly demonstrates his outstanding strategic and tactical skills to the newly established French Republic, for instance, in 1793, during the liberation of the coastal town of Toulon. Napoleon rises to become a general – and ends up directly in the arms of Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), an established figure with connections to influential circles in Parisian society.

The rest is history.

A movie made for the big screen

I’ll be honest – this movie review could soon be out of date. But it wouldn’t be my fault. Rather, the movie studio Apple would be the culprit. Apple is only bringing the film to theatres in a shortened, two-and-a-half-hour version so that it fits the criteria for an Oscar nomination. Afterwards, Napoleon will be streamable on Apple TV+ in its original, four-hour cut, as confirmed by director Ridley Scott at the beginning of October.

That puts me in a pretty pickle. Is the movie good? In its current version, certainly not. As with Kingdom of Heaven, the movie theatre version seems half-baked and full of gaps. Meanwhile, the director’s cut, which was released months later as an expensive DVD box set, was anything but. Again, it seems as if so much meat has been cut off the bone.

Take Napoleon’s military genius. Most of the time, he just looks on unimpressed during battles, with a strangely glassy gaze and without really doing anything, except for initially stretching out his hand to signal the start the cannon bombardment and then just covering his ears. C’est tout. Was there really nothing more to the screenplay? Or is there simply something missing that we’ll see in the four-hour cut of the movie?

No clue. As it stands now, we only hear about Napoleon’s tactical skills when others talk about him. I would have preferred to see more of said skills. I’m thinking of scenes like the one in which he’s hunched over a map in his command tent with his generals, devising tactics. Napoleon later criticises the lad – that is, the Russian tsar – for merely copying but not understanding the tactics. What tactics? What’s the tsar doing wrong? In what way does the French commander take advantage of others’ mistakes? It’s plot hole upon plot hole. And the battles? There’s hardly any structure to them. It’s pure chaos. Now, that’s not a bad thing per se. You could say it’s credible, even, because it’s unembellished. But I’m missing the part with the thinking, which would stand in contrast to the death and madness, highlighting Napoleon’s intellectual superiority.

Don’t get me wrong – despite everything, Scott’s production almost screams for the big screen. For one, because of his rare use of computer effects. Scott prefers to paint breathtaking handmade action shots featuring hundreds of extras, which are rarely seen in movies these days. Napoleon’s two most iconic battles stand out: the one at icy Austerlitz and rainy Waterloo. They’re among the most visually beautiful and gruesome that cinema has had to offer since Steven Spielberg’s landing at Normandy in Saving Private Ryan. Or Maximus’s battle against the barbarian tribes in Gladiator, to stay with director Scott.

Joaquin Phoenix – a bad casting decision?

But apart from epic battle scenes, Napoleon has little to offer. Even assuming the director’s cut will fill these gaps, as was the case with Kingdom of Heaven. I’m annoyed; I have no choice but to analyse what Apple’s released in theatres. Namely, a Joaquin Phoenix who appears not to have taken to Ridley Scott’s direction. In fact, I say he was miscast. Not because I think he’s a bad actor. On the contrary, he’s one of the best of our time.

But another big problem with the movie is the almost non-existent chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix’s Napoleon and Vanessa Kirby’s Empress Joséphine. The whole movie stands – or, in this case, falls – on this. Scott has structured the movie as an interplay between Napoleon’s battles and his marriage to Joséphine – destructive and toxic, but marked by emotional dependence.

Why is this so? Well, it’s never shown. We never see any beautiful, albeit rare, moments that would explain why the two of them absolutely can’t live without each other. At one point, a maid actually asks Joséphine if she finds Napoleon attractive at all – something I’d been wondering, too. But love each other they do. With a fiery passion, as they proclaim in letters, though they do nothing but insult and fight each other in real life. Unless, of course, they’re having absolutely ridiculous sex, during which Napoleon rams into straight-faced Joséphine from behind, vigorously as a rabbit, without the slightest drop of eroticism.

Tell me, how am I supposed to believe that they’re each other’s air? If there was at least chemistry between the two actors, I might turn a blind eye. But in no scene do Phoenix and Kirby appear to have a real-life relationship beyond «hello» and «goodbye». And this rubs off on their performance. Notably, in the scene where Napoleon crawls under the richly laid table to travel up Joséphine’s skirt, grunting like a pig. Joséphine grins and lets him get on with it. I assume this is supposed to come across as cheeky and sweet. But just five seconds earlier, Napoleon was reproaching Joséphine for not bearing him an heir. Shaking my head.

The script repeatedly commits such faux pas in tonality. Or Phoenix does. I have no idea who’s doing this is. In some scenes, Phoenix acts like an Oscar-worthy Joker. In others, he plays Napoleon like a caricature from Saturday Night Live. As brilliant as Phoenix looks in the trailer, I just don’t think he’s a successful cast member in the movie.

My verdict: unsatisfactory – at least for now

Napoleon isn’t 85-year-old Ridley Scott’s next great historical film. Perhaps this is down to the truncated cinema version. Almost certainly so, looking at Kingdom of Heaven. The Crusades film set in Jerusalem, the seemingly eternal centre of conflict, is one of the greatest masterpieces the big screen has never seen – and is more relevant now than ever. A similar fate could befall Napoleon.

In fact, I hope it does.

Brutal as this may sound, the cinema version is the cinema disappointment of the year for me. The historical material, the cast and the director are too good not to raise high expectations – expectations the film ultimately fails to meet.

Mind you, the film is visually stunning. No doubt about that. But outside of the magnificently staged battles, Napoleon is merely a movie that tells us that the French commander was a man with an irrepressible desire to lead his country to success. But it never tells us why. Instead, it focuses its emotional core on an absolutely implausibly portrayed marriage and seems to be in a constant battle with itself over whether it’s a biography or caricature of the commander Napoleon.

If this mess can still be saved, then it’ll be by a Ridley Scott director’s cut.

Napoleon hits theatres on 23 November 2023. Runtime: 158 minutes. Age rating: 12.