The Reel Review
Facts be damned! Director Ridley Scott’s grand but factually dubious epic charts the rise and fall of the world’s most infamous Frenchman, early 19th century Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) and Vanessa Kirby star in this biopic which explores how Napoleon’s obsession with wife Josephine shaped his life.
Napoleon is a bombastic period war epic, with lots of amazing costumes, elegant interiors and sweeping battle scenes with thousands of extras as cannon fodder. It immerses the viewer in the middle of that turbulent and gory period in history. But sadly, it is the shallow screenplay from David Scarpa (All the Money in the World) that is director Ridley Scott’s Waterloo. Ticking off Napoleon’s major battles like a Wikipedia article, it is bone dry and emotionless, with some very oddly idiosyncratic attempts at humor. Was this the result of Joaquin Phoenix’s script rewrite demand?
Kirby (Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Pieces of a Woman) does an impressive job injecting color into her Josephine, despite having precious little to work with. Those looking for insight into Napoleon’s battle expertise will be disappointed, instead getting a version of Napoleon in which he is portrayed as a master at war but a socially awkward buffoon. Much like his subject, Scott these days seems to be at his best on the big battlefield, much less so when it comes to nuanced storytelling.
REEL FACTS
• Ridley Scott says he will release a four-hour director’s cut of Napoleon on AppleTV+
• Scott, who worked with Joaquin Phoenix on 2000’s Gladiator, say Phoenix demanded a rewrite of Napoleon‘s entire script, which Scott says made the film better.
• Contrary to the film’s opening scene, Napoleon was not present during a not-so-defiant Marie Antoinette’s beheading in 1789, nor did he fire cannons on the Pyramids of Egypt. His wife Josephine actually died of pneumonia (not diphtheria) in 1814 and was actually six years older than Napoleon – Kirby is 14 years younger than Phoenix.
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