Jonah Naplan   November 22, 2023

“Napoleon” is a troubled tale of two halves. Its best parts are the outstanding battle sequences that are equally as harrowing as they are unforgivingly gruesome and relentless. Its worst parts are the clumsy story beats that connect them. Despite another excellent performance from Joaquin Phoenix, “Napoleon” is so often at odds with itself, delivering on the spectacular grandeur we’d come to expect from a film about such an accomplished war general, but self-defeating in the sense that it never entirely examines the man responsible for millions of deaths, and whether there really was any humanity in his being. Director Ridley Scott, whose vast filmography typically explores similar themes with a more thorough inspection, proves himself more than worthy of helming an epic of this caliber, but ultimately fumbles over providing the audience with something to chew on this Thanksgiving weekend, other than lots of blood, lots of death, and a question of if it’s all worth it.

This biopic opens in 1793 with the beheading of Marie Antoinette in Paris, France. Despite historians who have refuted this fact, the movie shows Napoleon Bonaparte (Phoenix) present during her execution, watching the mobs of his country at their most aggressive. Those are the people he will eventually rule over, ascending to the top by being stubborn and manipulative. The film then moves to the Siege of Toulon in the same year, a nighttime assault led by Napoleon on a little port town characterized in staggering detail that unnerves as much as it rivets. Similar to Scott’s 2001 Best Picture winner “Gladiator,” the violence here is painstakingly brutal and realistic, each battle captured so well you feel as though you’re right there alongside the soldiers, fighting for your country.

The technical acumen of this crusade and many others is the film’s most impressive feat. Equal parts virtuosic and dense, Scott, working with frequent cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, shoots these scenes with an intrinsic eye for scope, and uses certain (and probably deceiving) camera tricks to exaggerate their ginormous depth. His niche for striking visual cues burns powerful images into our head long after we’ve departed the theater; a horse being blown up by a cannonball, a soldier inching towards their severed limb among other decimated brethren, troops falling through thin ice on a lake, their pure red blood swallowed up by the liquid abyss. He makes art out of the carnage and “Napoleon” is his gallery, strolling through the various exhibits as they intensify the character of Bonaparte—a man so intoxicated by the scent of warfare that it sent him on a bloodthirsty spree through European towns, racking up a considerable body count wherever he set foot.

Yet “Napoleon” seems to understand that action setpieces don’t make up a movie, probably having evaluated several of the failed blockbusters of the last ten years that think theatergoers will be contented as long as things go boom. But the problem is that the screenplay, written by David Scarpa, cares less about defining the motives of Napoleon and more about portraying him as an intimidating figure who talks a big game but is truly empty on the inside. There are, however, a select few things that excite him. Bonaparte comes to life when he crosses paths with the stunning Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby) in 1795, a relationship that frustratingly lacks the sexy prowess necessary to be compelling or at all worthwhile. Kirby gives a dedicated performance but doesn’t have much chemistry with Phoenix, ultimately deracinating the relationship’s credibility.

As in the movie and as in real life, Napoleon is frequently derided for his small stature (though at 5’2, he wasn’t actually that short for his time). He takes pleasure in being dominated by his wife—in both mental and in physical ways—allowing her to catch him at vulnerable moments, ridiculing him, insulting his power, and making him feel as though he’s really just a small man. Yet as much as Scott examines the role that sex plays in their relationship, similar themes were explored better in this year’s overlooked “Sanctuary.” Napoleon wrote frequent letters to Joséphine, but this narrative corner is not embraced with nearly as much intimacy as you’d expect, and the emotional appeal falls flat. The movie never really explains what attracted Joséphine to Napoleon, or vice versa; when the two first met, Joséphine was a widow with two children whose husband had recently been sent to the guillotine, and as far as women with significant others went, she was fairly poor.

When the two eventually marry, in a scene that reminds you just how extravagantly weddings have evolved since the eighteenth century, Napoleon begins his quest for a male heir, testing the infirmity of his marriage when it becomes evident that Joséphine cannot provide him one, ultimately leading to their relationship’s demise. That Napoleon would sacrifice the very apple of his eye just for offspring—although that doesn’t not seem like a commonality for his era—would organically lend itself to the rest of his prejudices, and the blatant observation that maybe he wasn’t such a “heroic” figure after all. There’s similarly nothing else in the movie to support his apparent humanity, just more counterclaims that refute the movie’s thesis statement.

Joaquin Phoenix is great. And it’s clear that he’s trying his best to do what he can with such a poorly written character. He finds interesting avenues into the role of Napoleon, perhaps ones that the movie doesn’t even ask of him. He’s self-deprecating as much as he is wickedly vain, and more compelling onscreen than most inferior actors who’d stick with traditional routes. It’s unfortunate that for a movie serving him up as the protagonist, he’s mostly subjected to remedial fare that doesn’t give him much to do, aside from battle sequences that have him riding on a horse, demolishing armies of foreign soldiers. If it weren’t for historical context, the Napoleon of this movie would be no different from William Wallace or Maximus or Leonidas I.

You might be wondering why all these issues still equate to the positive rating at the top of the review. That’s because none of this captures what a marvel of filmmaking “Napoleon” is from beginning to end. It may be enough to validate its existence as a war picture, even if it still leaves you feeling like you’ve just watched less of a human biography than another big, boomy blockbuster with a troubled man at its center. Perhaps “Napoleon” is better this way, and maybe Ridley Scott is more fit to navigate a large-scale epic than a character study that’s intellectual in comparison.

Either way you look at it, “Napoleon” is certainly too long, running 158 minutes with a lot of dead air that proves irrefutably superfluous. Scott has already communicated his desire for historians to “go to hell,” and doesn’t much care how accurate his movie is. But if that’s the case—and I’m not too terribly offended if it is—then the movie has no excuse for being this much of a time-consumer. You can’t have it both ways. What it ultimately speaks to is the influence of a leader so embattled by his own demons that he destroys the posterity of an entire nation and kills millions of people. We’ve seen identical leaders before Napoleon and after him, and the movie at least emphasizes the idea that people respond harshly to such a propagandistic force. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful that “Napoleon” knows better than Napoleon.

Now playing in theaters.