Ridley Scott's latest is an expensive historical biopic bankrolled by two electronics giants, the duo perhaps angling for some award season glory for their respective motion picture subsidiaries. Napoleon though is absent a great deal of the fawning hosannas that are usually deployed to justify the existence of similar films. The piece consistently works against the potential for its subject to be viewed in terms of sainted legend. Given the mammoth spend associated with simulating the massing armies of the distant past, often there's a sense, conceptually, that biographical epics should impart some sort of lesson. To simultaneously bring history to life while reassuring cagey, modern viewers that their time (and money) is being invested responsibly. Clocking in just under two hours and forty minutes, Scott's Napoleon betrays no such pretension. The film abandons the structural propriety, not to mention grave intonation, of this particular genre to arrive at a method of communication that gallops about, restlessly, in both time and space. Scenes begin with very little warning or preamble: the subjects of these arrangements often even seem momentarily startled that they have instantly arrived in these temporal situations.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon throughout the film, no matter how young or old he is supposed to be. He is our constant, maintaining his usual, indignant murmur regardless of the occasion. Instead of chocolate box laurels, Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa have approached the life and military achievements of Napoleon Bonaparte in terms of a sporting or artistic career: specifically, the ups and downs experienced by, or exerted on, an expert strategist. Campaigns and conquests are presented as individual projects that are often portrayed in terms of one striking image to denote a high (like, for instance, a cannon ball striking The Great pyramid of Giza), rather than a more serious, scholarly interrogation. The human neuroses that powered this series of violent expansions are afforded no small attention too, with the infatuation Napoleon feels for Vanessa Kirby's rather less enthusiastic Joséphine being particularly crucial. This preoccupation is important first in terms of revealing a grunting, human side to this monarch; later though Scott and Scarpa use the relationship to lightly pick at the idea that first-loves - the ones who supported their partners when they were climbing - are held with a regard that transcends any other pairing that follows. So, after his son is born to an Austrian Archduchess, this Napoleon journeys across countries to present a swaddled baby to his ex: a strange, Martian attempt at palliation.
The hold that Napoleon's work-life has on the film is such that we are never subjected to inquiring glimpses into his childhood; no inciting events that shaped this personification of human ambition. Likewise there is precious little attention paid to Bonaparte's various periods of disgraced exile or the years surrounding his death. We view this Corsican brute as he powers himself up the social pecking order, usually through daring displays of explosive violence. Frequently, Napoleon himself is somewhere inside these swirling maelstroms: sometimes leveraging panic attack-level anxiety to blast himself up a siege ladder; other times riding into the midst of bloody scrums, his sabre drawn then striking. For every moment in Napoleon that teeters (knowingly) on the edge of farce, there's never any attempt made to invalidate the man's skill for arranging artillery or a bravery that sees him, at every level of power, willing to run into battle alongside his soldiers. Scott's Napoleon, for all its horseplay and physical humour, does retain this one note of pure adulation for its subject. As is often the case with Ridley Scott films, we are promised a significantly longer director's cut once Napoleon migrates to Apple's streaming platform. Unlike a Kingdom of Heaven though, the aggressive shorthand evident in this theatrical cut works. This assembly's clipped stanza emblematic of an ageing director who, quite simply, no longer has the time to fuck around with any material that doesn't interest him.
1 comment:
This film was my introduction to Napoleon as an historical figure and even I suspected it wasn’t a good film. There is a scene where young British midshipmen are listening respectfully to him as he is held captive but it doesn’t feel earned to me because we aren’t shown how effective Napoleon was as a ruler and administrator, and his military genius doesn’t get much more coverage; he refers to Tsar Alexander I copying his battle tactics, which means little when we don’t see most of his battles and have no clear idea of his favoured tactics. In fact, Napoleon doesn’t come off very well at all in the film, spending the majority of his scenes being awkward, emotional, or acting like the “Corsican brute” he is described as, such as having his way with Josephine under the dining room table while growling like a dog. Not that there’s anything wrong with making a character come across as unlikeable but they need some complexity to make them engaging!
Have you seen the 2002 miniseries of the same name where Napoleon is portrayed by Christian Clavier? Not saying it doesn't have its problems but it is a perfect demonstration of why this man’s life needs an entire TV series to do it justice.
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