There is much to admire in Ridley Scott’s latest historical epic, Napoleon. It has a stellar cast, namely Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby in the principal roles of Napoleon and his erstwhile paramour Josephine, a lavishly designed production that spares neither man or beast in its evocation of Napoleon’s great set piece battles, and a screenplay that, while bloated in parts, still gallops along at an engaging and watchable pace.
However, Scott’s film, for all its merits and obvious ambition, still manages to be much less than the sum of its parts. For me, the main problem is Phoenix, an actor with an undoubtedly heroic profile but also a highly mannered and idiosyncratic acting style which seems profoundly unsuited for the role. Scott and the screenplay allow Phoenix to retain a distinctive east coast American accent and speech pattern, which is highly incongruous, to say the least, in a portrayal of the pre-eminent European statesman of the early 19th century. Now, I realise that Napoleon is primarily intended for an English speaking (i.e. North American) audience, and it is obviously unrealistic to expect this audience to assimilate the fact that Napoleon might speak with a distinctly un-American accent. Nonetheless, for me Phoenix spent much of the film acting and sounding like he had wandered in from the set of a Martin Scorcese film, and this massively undermined the credibility of his performance in the film’s central role.
As Josephine, Vanessa Kirby seems a much more fully rounded character in her own right and more than deserving of her own biopic; the film seems very uncertain of what to do with her. She, too, is an enigma; apart from the heady aphrodisiac of power, it is not at all obvious as to exactly what she sees in Napoleon. Certainly, the forced, mechanical nature of their intimate encounters would not seem to inspire endless devotion on her part. Kirby battles heroically to make an impression in what could have been a thankless and marginal role, but even her efforts can’t overcome the deficiencies of the script. Her performance might be the film’s most redeeming feature, but that is simply asking too much of it.
It must be conceded that the character of Napoleon was always bound to be enigmatic, and Scott’s film is no exception in this regard. Napoleon was, after all, the self-appointed champion of enlightened and revolutionary ideals, scourge of both the illiberal ancien regime and the murderous excesses of the Terror, who nevertheless took the first opportunity to declare and crown himself emperor and attempt to establish his own dynasty built on a personal brand of demagoguery. Scott’s film, and David Scarpa’s script, does not shy away from the complexities and contradictions of Napoleon’s story, but one feels the need to reserve judgment; any film in our current age is invariably conveyed to its audience via more than one platform. There is a conventional cinematic version, the limitations of which present a severe challenge to the many complexities of the Napoleon story. However, the alternative streamed version has the scope and latitude to be more elaborate and episodic, and Scott himself has already foreshadowed an expanded director’s version, so one might hope that the many underdeveloped elements that detract from the cinematic version might yet find a more complete and satisfying expression.
The combination of Scarpa’s pastiche of a script and Phoenix’s seemingly disinterested, detached performance makes it difficult to discern the film’s true attitude toward Napoleon. On the one hand, Scott’s film eschews the sentimental, and the inclusion of the tally of deaths incurred by each of Napoleon’s campaigns serves to confirm this view, emphasising Napoleon’s callous disregard for human life and his well-deserved reputation as one of history’s greatest butchers. But Napoleon only truly comes to life during the brilliantly conceived and staged battlefield scenes such as Toulon and Austerlitz. This is clearly where Scott feels most at home, and the great eye for spectacle that Scott has honed and refined over the many years of his long career serves him best in these sequences. Much of the rest of the film, and Scarpa’s hollow script, feels like little more than a perfunctory interlude awkwardly filling the space between these stunning combat sequences.