Ridley Scott does not meet his Waterloo in Napoleon, his headline-hopping spectacular about the man who conquered a huge chunk of Europe under the guise of a liberator. But nor is he covered in glory. This strange film has neither blockbuster smarts, nor arthouse depth, and is little use as a historical resource. If you don’t know Napoleon’s story already, you’ll struggle to keep up with what’s going on.
In what are almost a series of sketchlike snapshots, it follows Napoleon Bonaparte the outsider upstart Corsican as the tactically brilliant army officer is swiftly promoted through the ranks. Napoleon saves the French Revolution from itself then mounts a coup d’état. He crowns himself emperor. He has victories in battle throughout Europe before the Russian winter gets the better of him and he crashes to defeat in 1814. First exile in Elba. His return and final defeat at Waterloo. Second and final exile to St Helena. School-exam stuff. Please write on both sides of the paper.
But for all the battles, was Napoleon, Scott and writer David Scarpa seem to want to suggest, really a lover not a fighter? Not “lover” in the sense of a man skilled in the art of lovemaking – sex with Napoleon is depicted as being, like the man himself, nasty, brutish and short – but a man whose military ambition was driven by his attempt to live up to the expectations of his wife Josephine? He’s a low-born thug, the film suggests (not historically true), she’s a classy dame. Did most of Europe fall under Napoleon’s sway because he was trying to impress the other half?
The film is best in this territory. And though you’ve got to wonder if an entirely different, shorter, more intimate film might have done it better, Scott and Scarpa weave something of a spell with this strange, tricky relationship, which endured even after Napoleon divorced Josephine because she couldn’t give him the heir he wanted.
Which brings us to Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby as Napoleon and Josephine. Though Napoleon and Josephine are a bit psychologically opaque, Phoenix and Kirby’s performances are beautifully matched, suggesting that for all their differences these two were drawn to each other by a similarity of spirit. This central relationship is the film’s throughline, not the battles for supremacy in Europe.
To an extent this is the film Stanley Kubrick was going to make after 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Sergei Bondarchuk’s properly epic War and Peace series (four movies and just over seven hours’ running time) had exhausted interest in the period which the box-office failure of Bondarchuk’s follow-up, 1970’s Waterloo, starring Rod Steiger, only confirmed.
Kubrick went on to use much of his research in Barry Lyndon, which Scott visually references in a couple of candlelit-interior scenes, while he pays homage to Bondarchuk, too, in his vast battle montages, which is where the film also excels. The battles are interesting, detail-rich, narratively satisfying and spectacular, particularly the one set on top of a frozen lake, and given that the whole film was shot in about 60 days, the question arises: how the hell did Scott do it? By using 11 cameras and assembling everything in post-production is one answer. Another is: look at the number of people employed on this movie – the list goes on for ever.
Perhaps, ironically, Scott lost control of the grand vision because he couldn’t marshal his vast army of cast and crew. Perhaps it was never there. Scott and Scarpa have said they junked Kubrick’s screenplay but kept his structure for their film. Given that the “structure” is chronological schoolboy knowledge you’ve got to wonder if they’re just using Kubrick as some sort of fall guy (for the interested, Spielberg is also working on a TV seven-parter based on Kubrick’s abandoned movie).
For another take on the Napoleon story, see also the under-regarded The Emperor’s New Clothes, a whimsical take on Bonaparte’s final days, with Ian Holm as the emperor escaping exile and returning to Paris, where no one will believe who he is.
Napoleon – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
