Ridley Scott is one of the cinematic kings of visual spectacle, and in that sense, his biopic “Napoleon” is on par with anything he’s ever made.
However, he’s apparently got a four-hour director’s cut of “Napoleon” coming out on Apple TV+ in the next few months. And so my recommendation—unless you’re a diehard Napoleon fan with miniature Napoleonic battlefields in your basement and secretly enjoy wearing a replica of Emperor Bonaparte’s black felt bicorn hat (the one that just sold for $2.1 million at an auction in France last Sunday)—is that you stay away from the current 2.5-hour theatrical version.
Why? It’s a crashing bore. It’s a chronically under-lit, funereal-toned, dour-performances-packed nonhistory lesson. I mean, there’s a scene where Napoleon blows the top off Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza with a cannonball. And then opens up some golden sarcophagus (Pharoah Khufu, was it?) and sniffs the mummy, and pokes old Khufu in his parched face. Yeah, sure, that happened.
Actual History Comes Last
As Mr. Scott said recently in regard to historical accuracy, “There’s a lot of imagination in history books. When I have issues with historians, I ask: ‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut … up then.’”
Story, Sort Of
Beginning in 18th-century France, with the reek of the rabid revolution in the air, Corsican gunnery officer Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) ambles around with his hands behind his back, surveying troops and contemplating how to beat the British.
The first battle scene is 1793’s Siege of Toulon. Director Scott, who delights in destroying the human chest by having aliens explode out of it, here explodes Napoleon’s trusty steed’s chest via a baseball-sized cannonball. Not since Roland Emmerich’s “The Patriot” has the grotesqueness of a cannonball strike had such a ghastly depiction. It must be said, the cannons should here be nominated for an Oscar—they’re a character unto themselves, a kind of Greek (cannon) chorus. But as with Marie Antoinette’s chopped top, I didn’t really care to contemplate that much carnage.
A closing-card tells us that Napoleon fought in 61 campaigns. Five of these battles are showcased for the film. In addition to Toulon, there are the aforementioned 1798 Battle of the Pyramids, 1812’s Battle of Borodino, 1805’s Battle of Austerlitz, and finally the infamous 1815 Battle of Waterloo, where Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley (Rupert Everett) defeats the legendary Frenchman.
Napoleon’s battles generally had a success rate of 80 percent, and the man left some three million souls dead under his command. Imagine killing three million people.
Joséphine
Vanessa Kirby, best known from the “Mission Impossible” franchise, makes for a tempestuous, unfaithful, and possibly possessed Joséphine. We learn that she is a woman with needs, and when her “Corsican Ruffian” husband leads his army off to the Ottoman territory of Egypt, she’s fooling around with a dashing young courtier. Which leads to Napoleon dropping everything and rushing home, comically, to see if, after having been massively cuckolded, he can shed that snakeskin of shame. All of France is aware of the situation, after all.
When Joséphine then queries as to whether her husband has had affairs too, he responds with, “Of course,” as if a man of his power is so entitled. It’s one of many double standards that Joséphine has to learn to deal with over the course of their marriage.
Historians have suggested that Napoleon lacked sexual energy. But here the interpretation is that he’s quite energetic but entirely self-involved, which is funny, and Mr. Phoenix obviously enjoys the concept, sending up Napoleon by stomping his feet, whinnying like a horse, and champing at the bit to convey his fervent matrimonial intentions.
The Two-Hour Version
One imagines that the missing connective tissue here is within director Scott’s four-hour version, and this contributes to the tone jumping around so much and the lack of overarching cohesion in how the character is depicted. Which, again, give the comedic bits more of the effect of a Mel Brooks-style satire, instead of supporting a classic Ridley Scott historical epic.
But because Mr. Scott’s satirical take is also clearly intentional, casting Joaquin Phoenix and his zany theatrical choices makes sense. Mr. Phoenix’s stock-in-trade, after all, are disturbed men, often with sexual issues. Personally, I’d rather not link one of the greatest warriors history has ever produced with Mr. Phoenix’s über-creep, “The Joker,” in my mind, but I don’t know enough Napoleonic history to be able to tell if his is even a remotely valid interpretation. My guess is no.
Vanessa Kirby, on the other hand, takes a more grounded approach to the material. And while this does help the audience relate to her more fully from an emotional standpoint, it also makes it feel as if Ms. Kirby and Mr. Phoenix are in two completely different movies.
In Conclusion
Again, filmmakers often fiddle with fictional fidelity when adapting history for film. They utilize history books as a template, which leads to creations of experiences that distort, bend, and morph the past into an entirely different entity. Multiple historical figures are often blended into one fictional character so as to produce a streamlined, unencumbered narrative. Timelines become flexible, allowing decades-spanning events to pack down into a year, or months, or even weeks—all in the name of entertainment.And this is all well and good if such a stand-alone, fictitious creation produces a good lesson to be learned—advice that audiences can take away, a moral to the story. What’s the lesson in “Napoleon”? While I was able, as always, to appreciate Ridley Scott’s technical virtuosity and painterly eye, I didn’t care about any of the characters involved, or have even a minimal personal investment in their outcomes.
As was mentioned at the outset, by his own admission, this cinematic rendering of “Napoleon” is literally only half of what Mr. Scott originally intended, so the fact that the whole thing comes off as half-cocked is hardly a surprise. And so, while there’s nothing immediately apparent to be found here, the lesson in “Napoleon” may yet be forthcoming in the four-hour version. But I also have to say, after having seen the two-hour film, I have zero interest in the four-hour one.
