Napoleon
Ridley Scott crams thirty-two years into his overly ambitious, sumptuously photographed biopic of the French emperor.
Embattled: Joaquin Phoenix
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is an epic of wondrous moments. If only he had managed to contain himself. Opening with the decapitation of Marie Antoinette at the height of the French Revolution, the film lollops through the ages as the ambitious young Bonaparte eyes every new rung on the ladder to his eventual station as “the French Caesar.” Unfortunately, Ridley Scott shares the same ambition of his subject and has served up an often-plodding history lesson that lasts all of 158 minutes. Of course, it all looks amazing and many scenes are studded with the sort of attention to idiosyncratic detail that you are unlikely to find elsewhere. But no sooner do we begin to sink into a chapter of Napoleon’s remarkable life than we are whisked off to the next to meet a host of new characters and to embark on yet another campaign.
As the revolting French retaliate against the cost-of-living crisis – there are riots in the streets of Paris, a national pastime – the Corsican soldier looks on stiffly, weighing up his position amidst such political turmoil. Napoleon seems less concerned with the monarchy than stoking his hatred of the British. Snapping at the English ambassador, he snarls, “You think you are so great because you have boats!”, although he does have a nice word to say about the Cotswolds. In this biopic Joaquin Phoenix continues the tradition of the French Emperor as played by an American (Brando in Désirée, Steiger in Waterloo), while the rest of the cast represents a Babel of accents. Ridley Scott has never cared about such things, as he showed in his very first film The Duellists (1977), in which Harvey Keitel played a Napoleonic soldier. Sir Ridley is more interested in the visual than the aural. On this front, the film delivers in spades, particularly in the battle scenes, in which we witness the horrific damage that cannon fire can do to a horse.
The great biopics tend to focus on a particular moment in time, rather than cramming a whole lifetime into a single film, and here the viewer is left gasping for breath. Thus, the human being and the motivation of Bonaparte are given little space, other than some embarrassingly brief bedroom activity between the Emperor and his missus, Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby). She is cold, he is stiff (not in the appropriate sense), while a raft of characters comes and go at a rate of knots. Miles Jupp makes a brief impression as Francis I of Austria, if only for putting on an Austrian accent, while Rupert Everett manfully attempts to breathe life into a surprisingly aged Wellington (the Duke was actually 46 at the time of Waterloo). But Sir Ridley is less concerned with historical fact than historical spectacle and it has to be said that few directors today can mount a battle like Sir Ridley.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Mark Bonnar, Rupert Everett, Youssef Kerkour, Ian McNeice, Ben Miles, Jannis Niewöhner, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Paul Rhys, Ludivine Sagnier, Riana Duce, Edouard Philipponnat, Miles Jupp, Scott Handy, Abubakar Salim, Sinéad Cusack, Audrey Brisson, Sam Troughton, Julian Wadham, Catherine Walker, Honor Kneafsey, Phil Cornwell, Dominic Coleman, Richard McCabe, Edward Hogg, Robin Soans.
Dir Ridley Scott, Pro Ridley Scott, Kevin J. Walsh, Mark Huffam and Joaquin Phoenix, Screenplay David Scarpa, Ph Dariusz Wolski, Pro Des Arthur Max, Ed Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo, Music Martin Phipps, Costumes Janty Yates, Sound Michael Fentum and James Harrison, Dialect coach Zabarjad Salam.
Apple Studios/Scott Free Productions-Sony Pictures/Apple TV+.
158 mins. UK/USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 22 November 2023. Cert. 15.
