NAPOLEON (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Napoleon, Columbia Pictures / Apple Original Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 20, 2023

If Napoleon Bonaparte had remained an anonymous military officer or even a renowned strategist under the command of a stable mind, he likely would still have been great. Perhaps that wouldn't have been true in terms of his moral standing and personality, which are suggested by director Ridley Scott's Napoleon to have been doomed essentially from the start. Certainly, though, Napoleon would have been celebrated in his time and studied after his death for the means by which he obtained his military successes.

Then again, a good number of those campaigns probably wouldn't have happened under the rule of a person of sound mind. The period in which Napoleon rose to power—from a meager revolutionary, to a decisive commander, to a powerful general, to arguably the most influential man of his era—was neither stable nor sound.

There was the revolution in his homeland of France, during which the reigning monarchy was violently overthrown, and the proceeding Reign of Terror, which didn't discriminate whose head was placed under the blade of the guillotine. A new government rose, after the authors of the revolution and the mass executions learned the meaning of irony too late. Pro-monarchy movements murmured and rioted, and it became clear that most people in France just wanted order to emerge from the chaos, even if that meant putting into power an unstable man who could provide the illusion of order.

Indeed, Napoleon is an illusion as presented by Scott, screenwriter David Scarpa, and actor Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the man of such seemingly unlimited power with the demeanor of a bored, petulant, and pathetic child. The first glimpse we get of the film's Napoleon is of him watching the execution of Marie Antoinette, among a cheering crowd but looking on with a purely impassive face. Politics, even ones with as violent ends as these, bore him, and now that this fight is finished, he's simply waiting for the next one, because then, at least, he'll have something to do that interests him.

Isn't this the way and manner of most or all of history's supposedly great leaders who exceed their station of power in some way? The historical jury is and probably will remain out for some time on whether Napoleon was a tyrant, inventing wars that needn't have been fought, or a strong ruler who simply reacted in what he saw as the best interest of his empire.

This film is decisive and convincing in its assessment of the man, because it sheds all of the pomp, all of the political debates, and even a good amount of the esteem of Napoleon as a master strategist. It leaves him bare as a deeply flawed human being, who probably would have been killed in some battle (as he almost is in the only combat he actively, fearfully participates in), reached the peak of his influence in some military capacity, or lived a lonely and unloved life—if not for the perfect alignment of a country's fears and insecurities with his own.

That perspective makes Scott's film a pointed, piercing, and unexpectedly funny character study, even as the director gives us all of the spectacle and battles—filled with the awe-inspiring scope and realistic scale that seems to have been forgotten by Hollywood filmmakers as of late—we would expect from this tale. Scarpa's script covers its subject's career from the death of Marie Antoinette until Napoleon's own.

During the time in between, the story is filled with seemingly important but ultimately meaningless battles, where tens or hundreds of thousands of men die bloody and brutal deaths—often just so Napoleon can make the point that he deserves to noticed, respected, and have some meaning in his miserable little life. He becomes the notion of the petty tyrant personified.

This, of course, means that a lot happens in this story—from the chaos of the French Revolution and its aftermath, to the political intrigue of a new government forming and re-forming with every jump forward in time, to the once and wannabe future emperor earning enemies and making, as well as breaking, alliances across Europe and into Russia. It's technically overwhelming, in that characters are introduced with minimal fanfare (Some on-screen text accompanies the key players) and of uncertain purpose within the politics.

In addition to the fact that the politics are intentionally muddled (because they actually were), most of these players are largely unimportant to the story, except in how Napoleon perceives them. What could have been a confounding history lesson, in other words, takes on a different focus and meaning, simply because Scott and Scarpa remain so tightly fixated on their main character.

Napoleon's own fixations include wanting to prove his worth, needing the love and affection he never received from his controlling and judgmental mother, and an obsessive infatuation with "his" Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), a surviving member of the nobility who makes her own needs for and methods of survival and comfort clear—although he's too self-involved to actually comprehend what that means. The couple's tumultuous relationship is, in a way, the heart of this story, if only because it displays how such an enveloping desire on Napoleon's part can be so readily dismissed when it comes into conflict with a more pressing and present one—such as siring an heir so that his rule can be seen as more legitimate.

The whole of this character study is one of constant irony. He's a man of such vaulting ambition, military genius, and unchecked power, but Napoleon is nothing more than an insecure man in every element of his existence.

The one apparent exception, of course, is his mind for military strategy, communicated quite clearly in the battle sequences of Napoleon (How he routes an opposing army to their doom on a frozen wasteland is a highlight of Scott's logistical and narrative control here). Then again, how brilliant can he really be, given his two major defeats in one massively fatal winter in Russia (The payoff in Moscow is haunting in the scope of its futility) and at the famous field that would put a sound end to any future ambitions he may have had? The way he finally and casually passes the blame for any real or perceived failure on his part is a perceptive, potent punch line for this intimately focused epic.

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