The Pitch: Ridley Scott is no stranger to the historical epic, nor is he shy about turning those sumptuous tales of big-budget Old Hollywood grandeur into withering takedowns of the power-hungry figures at their center. But sometimes, Scott’s ambition requires the space to execute it: Kingdom of Heaven notoriously flopped with critics and audiences before finding a second life in a longer, more focused director’s cut.
And so it (probably) goes with Napoleon, a Swiss-cheesed biopic of France’s most infamous dictator (Joaquin Phoenix) that tries to skewer the man’s emotional and political smallness (to say nothing of his fabled physical smallness, which Scott alludes to in a few group shots) but ends up feeling formless as a result.
We first see Bonaparte as a dispassionate witness to Marie Antoinette’s execution at the tail end of the French Revolution; while everyone cheers around him, he seems bored by it, a creature obsessed with little beyond his own ambition. From there, he hatches a scheme to fulfill his mother’s ambition (only really shown through brief narration of letters, more evidence that major elements of the film will be fleshed out when the inevitable longer cut arrives), as he becomes a great military leader, engaging in his campaigns again Rome, Egypt, and elsewhere, and orchestrating a coup against Robespierre that would eventually bring him to power.
But along the way, he too longs to secure his legacy with an heir, drawing him to his future empress Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby), a fancy-free woman who has her own ambition — to bring Napoleon to heel. Sure, he may rule the world, but she rules his heart, and will break it happily whenever it suits her.
Bonaparte Is Afraid: Napoleon is naturally filled with grandiose battle scenes, particularly two bookended past each other whose practical scope — loads of extras, blazing cannon fire, the horrifying bloodbath that ancient artillery wrought on human and horse body alike — is frequently, frustratingly hidden beneath some obnoxious day-for-night filtering. But really, Napoleon hews closer to Scott’s recent triumph The Last Duel, functioning best when serving as a droll comedy about the absolute losers who used to rule the world (reminding us of the losers who still do).
That’s most clear in Phoenix’s performance as Napoleon, glassy-eyed and petulant in equal measure. From his pugnacious visage to stone-faced boredom and childlike outbursts, Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa take great pains to highlight the political and spiritual impotence of the man. And yet, so little of it registers, and when it does, the joke feels one-note. Sure, it’s great fun when Phoenix nods off when ally Paul Barras (Tahar Rahim) rattles off exposition about politics or spits back at an unhelpful British general, “You think you’re so great because you have boats!”
Napoleon (Apple TV+)
