Ridley Scott’s Napoleon begins in 1793, as the future military commander, world conqueror and cuckold witnesses the execution of Marie Antoinette with muted, meditative poise. The peasants and townspeople surrounding him froth at the mouth in exuberant fury. He’s clearly taking the scene in as a means to plan his next moves, a cascade of tactics and strategies which form a path through the life of the legendary Short King (Emperor, sorry), whose name now bears the title of an entire psychological complex found in insecure, diminutive men. Scott takes us through 22 years of Napoleon’s life over the course of two-and-a-half hours (although, he’d like us to see all four hours of his intended film), throwing up titles with names and dates to assist us in understanding the sequence of events. Of course, Napoleon is less about Napoleon’s exploits than it is about the man and the myth—the temperament which made him infamous in pop culture, partly dictated by his absurd relationships with women, no more important than his former wife, Josephine.
And yet the film doesn’t spend nearly enough time rooting around in Napoleon’s mind, leaving Joaquin Phoenix—in a role which acts as a surprising companion piece to his other 2023 film about a guy with mommy issues, Beau Is Afraid—with little to do, aside from do what he does best: Occasionally erupt in rage, occasionally be funny, but mostly brood around like a little gray storm cloud. Whereas Scott’s second-most recent French period piece, The Last Duel, was a compellingly structured drama about the conflicting ways in which men and women see the same world, Napoleon falters. It is less a rich, twisty drama than a journey through a historical figure’s greatest hits, punctuated by more engrossing moments of vulnerability and intimacy that only leave you wishing there were more.
I don’t need to go over Napoleon’s rise to power and all of his exploits (I was never very good at following along with this time period during history class, anyway), which are readily available on Wikipedia, and which Scott charts with a similar tact. We hit all the biggest beats: His siege of Toulon, the 13 Vendémiaire, brushing past his conquering of Italy and moving forward into his expedition in Egypt, his coronation, and the decisive Battle of Austerlitz, which Scott fictionalizes during a snowstorm on a frozen lake in what is easily the greatest and most exciting sequence in the film.
As the Austrian and Russian armies race across the snowy tundra, they do not realize that they are, in fact, treading precariously atop a frozen lake. In a cacophony of horror and mayhem, French cannons explode across the sky, breaking the sheets of ice and sending the opposing forces plunging to their icy deaths in a halo of blood and water (shot gorgeously by frequent Scott collaborator Dariusz Wolski), all while Martin Phipps’ anachronistic score hums and pulsates like a war drum. Such liberty with historical inaccuracy makes for an exhilarating action setpiece in a film which feels otherwise restrained by its facts.
The most gripping bits of Napoleon are when it depicts Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) and her coarse, cold and imbalanced, yet strangely affectionate relationship with Napoleon. A woman who was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror along with her husband—the latter of whom was executed and with whom she bore two young children—Scott depicts the Napoleon-Josephine meet-cute under droll circumstances. At the afterparty for a performance mocking the execution of Antoinette, Napoleon cannot help but transfix himself on Josephine and her boyishly trim hair. She confronts him, and he denies he was staring—after a comedic pause, he owns up to it. There are a number of other similar, humorous bits for Phoenix to sink his teeth into within the limits of the dour tone, which makes these moments all the funnier: Josephine calls Napoleon fat over a dinner with friends and he merely replies that “destiny brought me to this lamb chop.” Phoenix—having already proven himself adept at comedy with roles like Doc Sportello in Inherent Vice—is excellent at portraying a buffoon who isn’t in on the joke.
Josephine sees Napoleon for who he is—an insecure, power-hungry little boy with delusions of grandeur—and isn’t afraid of him. This is likely why Napoleon loves her so fervently, a perverse fixation on shame from a woman who matches him in height. When he deserts his army in Egypt upon the discovery that Josephine has been cheating on him (and that it’s even made headlines), he screams at her to say that she is nothing without him, until a quiet moment later when she insists the inverse back at him.
Their lovemaking is mechanical and without passion, as Napoleon mounts Josephine like a horse from behind and thrusts himself into her while she dons a face of mere ennui. Napoleon is anxious for Josephine to bear him an heir to the throne, but after Napoleon’s mother arranges for an 18-year-old test subject he can dump his load into, the ensuing bastard pregnancy confirms that it is Josephine who no longer has the ability to conceive. Napoleon divorces her, but the desperate love letters between them never cease, and Josephine replies in a tone mixed of pity and compassion. Napoleon eventually weds the teenaged Archduchess of Austria, whom he beams at with a preening sort of pride when seeing that he towers over her. Still, he yearns for Josephine for the rest of his life, even after she tragically passes from a bout of diphtheria.
By the end of Napoleon, which climaxes with Napoleon’s infamous defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, I realized I was just waiting for it to end despite mostly enjoying everything that led up to its finale. There is less urgency in Scott’s interpretation of the setback which finally sent Napoleon to his permanent time-out on the island of Saint Helena; perhaps intentional, as it was a drawn out, humiliating loss against the Duke of Wellington (Rupert Everett). It makes me curious as to exactly what was left on the floor from the original four-hour cut, most pressingly whether we’d get more moments between Josephine and Napoleon. Or even just more time with the man, the myth, the legend, to make up for the strange distance that the current version puts him from us. For a film that plays with that myth and takes beneficial liberties in battle, Napoleon is conversely restrained and safe and missing something, more focused on creating an accurate timeline of events accessible via Google than creating saucy drama within it—and there is enough already to expand upon. Still, for the Josephine-Napoleon love story, for the Battle of Austerlitz, for the excessive spurting of gore and viscera Scott seems to delight in depicting (nonetheless noticeably diminished compared to The Last Duel), for the joy of watching Joaquin Phoenix wear a giant hat that he does—at one point—pull over his face and scream into, there are ample pleasures to be found in Napoleon. But admittedly, I’m more eager to see if the director’s cut fills in the noticeable blanks.
Director: Ridley Scott
Writer: David Scarpa
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby
Release Date: November 23, 2023
Brianna Zigler is an entertainment writer based in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. Her work has appeared at Little White Lies, Film School Rejects, Thrillist, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more, and she writes a bi-monthly newsletter called That’s Weird. You can follow her on Twitter, where she likes to engage in stimulating discussions on films like Movie 43, Clifford, and Watchmen.