Napoleon

Joaquin Phoenix is one of my favorite actors. His range isn’t huge, as he seems to greatly favor self-serious, intense characters, even when appearing in comedic films, such as Beau Is Afraid from earlier this year. But he does his thing so incredibly well, it’s hard for me to care. The Master, You Were Never Really Here, Her, Inherent Vice, and so on. He’s absolutely incredible in all of them. I haven’t seen the one for which he won an Oscar (2019’s Joker), but he’s yet to let me down.

Which was enough to get me interested despite my lack of excitement over Ridley Scott. I know it’s become a theme, but what can I say? Another culturally revered and important director, and another shrug from me. Of the four Scott movies I’ve previously seen, I wasn’t impressed by any of them. And I must say, his press tour ahead of Napoleon’s release hasn’t done much to endear him to me. But hey, I don’t have to like the man in order to enjoy a film he makes. Maybe this will be the one!

Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) is a man who needs no introduction. Instead, we see his beginnings during the French Revolution, watching the beheading of Marie Antoinette (Catherine Walker), and angling for a promotion. He strives to prove himself on the battlefield, and to navigate the treachery of the political situation in the country he loves. Meanwhile, he falls in love with and marries Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), a widow of an aristocrat, with an eye towards siring an heir. This relationship becomes an all consuming distraction as he consolidates power and rises to the level of emperor.

The plot is a bit hard to talk about in broad strokes for a few reasons. For one, it’s mostly a recounting of many of the most important historical points about him. Famous battles, conspiring to seize power, and so on. I have no deep knowledge of Napoleon, just the key points, but I still recognized many of the events, if not by name then at least by what happened. Him taking back a fort from the Royalists, as well as violently putting down a rebellion in the streets, and of course all the way to Waterloo. We jump through them fairly quickly, sticking with each for only a few scenes, which is part of how Scott is able to cover the 25 or so years of Napoleon’s activities in 150 minutes. But as such, we don’t have time to really settle in, nor to build complex and layered and grounded characters. Instead, most of it reiterates the same points over and over again, which gets somewhat tedious.

It also results in the whole movie feeling like montage, in a way that makes a mess of the pacing. Sometimes, that’s the result of rushing through each individual event, so the solution would be to make the movie longer so its scenes can breathe some more. In fact, Scott seems to agree with that, as the version which will be released on Apple TV+ next year is slated to be a director’s cut over four hours long. But I’m not convinced. The overstuffed nature of the theatrical cut makes me worried he’ll just add another 90 minutes of stuff to the movie, rather than taking the time to expand what’s there. He’s said elsewhere that it will focus more on Jospehine, and given that we don’t get a ton of her viewpoint despite her character being an undeniable force throughout, it sounds like my fear might come to pass.

But alright, stepping away from generalities, what’s the angle Scott and writer David Scarpa took here? What did they wish to say? Simple: Napoleon sucks. From start to finish, he is a vapid, superficial, buffoon. Part of why he focuses so much on military tactics is that it’s the one place he has any sort of prowess, which commands loyalty. He’s not a gifted leader, nor a politician, nor a great lover. He’s a tool to be used by those who are. And on top of that, he’s quite silly. His obsession with his hats, lack of physical coordination, and an approach to sex which entails fiendishly jackhammering his wife from behind, an act which we witness on two separate occasions.

So much to my surprise, Napoleon is a comedy. Although, it should be noted that at points it feels like the entire French people are in the cross-hairs. For example, at the end of the Reign of Terror when a bunch of people are let out of prison, we see a few rush straight to an abandoned banquet table and start gorging on the scraps they find, then cut to them outside falling to their knees in slow motion. And their general bloodlust is absolutely looked down upon by Sir Scott, context be damned.

But its titular character is the primary focus of this ridicule and derision, although the film is rarely going for the big laugh. Rather, it’s using all this to undermine and demythologize him, to make the point that he succeeded despite his brutishness. We’re very quickly shown this as he talks a big game heading into battle, but starts wheezing from anxiety as it begins, despite him staying on the sidelines at first. As the drama progresses, he’s used as a shield by others in so many ways that he got it in his head he was actually the architect of his own success, and thus took power when the opportunity presented itself…then wasted it.

Thing is, none of this lands. While watching it, you get it, because it’s impossible not to. But it all feels just clumsy and clunky. It feels like trying to make a point in lieu of telling a story, instead of using a story and characters to make the point. That montage feeling I mentioned earlier means that despite spending the whole movie with him, we never get to know Napoleon, his wants and desires, his fears and dreams.

Take the idea that we hear at one point, that Napoleon would be nothing without Josephine. He is in love with her to an obsessive degree, this is true. But he was already experiencing success and rising the ranks long before her arrival. And we see so little of their “relationship” that there’s no sense of what she does for him or what their dynamic is or anything. Most of their time in the same room is spent accusing each other of infidelity or impotence. So we’ve no real sense what it would mean if Napoleon had never met her.

As much as it surprises me to say this, part of the problem with this movie might be Phoenix. While I mentioned up top that he’s never let me down, I’ve finally found an instance where he did. He never seems engaged with the character, instead sleepwalking and scowling his way through a bunch of scenes. He’s unable to bring any of that interiority that has been the hallmark of his career. None of the passion is there, none of the nuance. It’s as if he also doesn’t understand his character, so he’s unsure how to impart an understanding on the audience.

It certainly doesn’t help to hear one of the most famous Frenchman in history speaking English with an American accent, while much of the French nobility speak English with a British accent. It’s as if they wanted to use this movie to put a very deliberate thumb in the eye of the French, so it should surprise no one that it’s been even more poorly received in France, where it premiered.

Oh, and how could I forget the score? In keeping with the odd tone of the movie, which is trying to make light of the brutality which pervaded the French Revolution, it’s often very jaunty and light and playful over some of the darkest scenes. The aforementioned jail break and execution have very light songs over them, as do some of the battle scenes. Its certainly deliberate, and in all fairness, does very quickly tell you to maybe not expect a historically accurate epic. But even knowing that, it just feels discordant and distracting, jumping out at you in a way that cannot help but detract from what’s being shown on screen.

The best biopics are the ones which leave you wanting to know more. You know they’re not wholly accurate, and so you’re spurred to figure out what was embellished vs. fabricated from whole cloth. They raise questions or unique perspectives that leave you thinking. In that light, Napoleon is at least somewhat successful, as I am curious just how much of his legacy is undeserved. But at the same time, the movie goes so hard and so blunt and so simplistically at the whole thing that it feels like Scott’s just got an ax to grind. So instead, I think I’m just gonna return to my previous state: not really thinking about Napoleon all that much.