Review : Napoleon

Ever since we discovered the VIP cinema where you get a buffet, unlimited snacks and electronically-adjustable seats, we've been reluctant to go back to "normal" cinema. But by the time there was enough time to go, Ridley Scott's latest offering was no longer showing in VIP. Since I really wanted to see this one on the big screen, we were forced to choose another option.

... which turned out to be even better than the first. Oh, it's expensive. But you get actual table service during the film. Glasses made of actual glass. You pre-order your food and they bring it to you approximately when you asked to have it served. And the seats were even more comfortable than the first ! Little tables between each pair of couches with no more than a couple of dozen seats in total, on about four or five different levels so nobody gets in each others' way. I mean this is just a whole other level of civilised.

At this rate the next time I go to the cinema I'm expecting a full-on pool party with actual mermaids. But I digress.

Anyway, Napoleon. I personally loved it and rank it as one of 2023's great films, easily on a par with Barbie and Oppenheimer. Is it for everyone ? Certainly not ! For one thing there's no way this one will do anything but sink like a stone in France. But it works for me.

Like Oppenheimer, this one has in some ways plenty of breadth but little or no depth. Even more so than I was expecting, since I'd heard that it stopped before Waterloo, but that turned out to be false : it actually covers all the main parts of Napoleon's military career right up until his death. Necessarily, large tracts are omitted or glossed over. Of politics and government there is precious little. This is purely a character study with plenty of battles thrown in as a spectacular but also genuinely important backdrop : even Napoleon's harshest critics would concede his military genius, and I think this is more than apparent from Scott's film.

I also give major level brownie points since at no time have I heard any claims of historical accuracy being bandied about; this is a dramatization plain and simple. And I'm absolutely fine with that. I care not a fig that Napoleon didn't blast the pyramids with cannon or personally witness the execution of Marie Antoinette, because what difference does that make to anything ? Nothing. Likewise I'm fine with Gladiator not being historically accurate because nobody every made the claim that it was going to be, even though that too features real historical figures. This is clearly the film the producers wanted to make and dang anyone who wanted something else, and this is the correct way of doing things as far as I'm concerned*.

* This doesn't guarantee I'll approve of the final product, of course, which is a different issue.

And I like that Scott very clearly and openly has an axe to grind. While Napoleon's military genius is evident, especially at Austerlitz, Phoenix's portrayal is also petulant, vindictive, a raging egomaniac utterly convinced of his own greatness even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and sexually downright weird. 

By and large these attributes are blended together nicely. One thing that has become apparent to me as I've gotten older is that people don't really grow up, as such. They don't change from children to mature adults in quite the way you expect when you yourself are a child – they're generally still all the same kinds of weird as they were when they were younger, only maybe they get a bit more repressed*. And this seemingly paradoxical mixture of the extreme arrogance and insecurity in Napoleon is something I think Phoenix captures very well indeed. The film is almost purely a character study and I think the main point – look, this guy was bad, but he was also a complex human being – is done in a very satisfying, quite convincing and believable way.

* Not literally true exactly. It's perhaps more that the weirdness shifts around, changing but not really going away.

It's not how I would have chosen to do it, mind. What we get is essentially Napoleon on the battlefield and in the bedroom and little else. I would have liked more of the positive aspects of Napoleon's rule on Europe because to me that's genuinely interesting; I can't say I'm a fan of Napoleon, but I also wouldn't put him on the same pedestal of monstrous villainy as Hitler or Stalin. Certainly, at least not in comparison to other rulers of the time.

There's a reason for this (at times) almost-pantomime monstrosity in the film though, and it's a good one. I previously made a comparison between Gladiator's Commodus and Trump; here things are, I think, even more blatant. Not so much that one has been substituted for the other, but just with a nice, subtle slant on things. This is history interpreted very much to make a point, the transition from Republic to autocracy being too easy and too dangerous. Even at Austerlitz, when his military brilliance shines most clearly, Phoenix's Napoleon has a calculating, Putin-esque menace about him. 

There's also many references to Napoleon's lack of good manners, and if that's not referring to Trump then I don't know what is. And I'm completely fine with this approach. Realism is good, but not always necessary. To me it feels that while the movie is a character piece, what's it's primarily concerned with is not the character of Napoleon himself, but the viciousness of the autocracy he represents. The final ending screen may rub the viewer's nose in it, but I think in this case it should. To have those casualty figures in black and white is all by itself a damning indictment of those who would get too caught up with any benefits Napoleon might have brought throughout Europe; one should remember the tremendous cost behind it all.

And from that perspective, a more realistic, positive depiction of Napoleon would actually be in very poor taste. Movies have the capacity to reach audiences unreachable by traditional political avenues, and in the present era of would-be autocrats in the west, maybe now is just not the time for rehabilitating a despot.

I'd would someday like to see other versions though. I love the much earlier Waterloo, which remains to this day one of the most spectacular movies ever made, but that too gives a a tremendously one-sided (and again British) perspective. So, I can see why not everyone is going to like this approach... but what exactly is stopping the French from making their own version ? Exactly nothing. Go and make the version in which Napoleon is forced into conquering all of Europe and gives everyone better infrastructure and bestows the gift of surnames on the Dutch; this would be eye-opening for sure. But I for one like my villainous autocrats, so long as nobody's trying to convince me that this is really how things actually were.

Visually the movie just wins 2023 hands down. Barbie had its zany funtimes and Oppenheimer its arthouse minimalism (and of course that explosion), but Napoleon... that's where it's at. It doesn't have the astonishing depth of the emotive force of the charge of the Rohirrim, nor the sheer outrageous spectacle of Waterloo, but the whoosh of cannonballs overhead, the blood-soaked carnage, the freezing wastes of Russia, the grim and gritty sight of the armies clashing all conspires to give an effect all its own. It manages to convey horrendous chaos without being confusing. The audio-visual on this one is a real treat, with not only the big screen but also the big speakers really outfitting this as a proper, magnificent epic.

For me this is an easy 8 or 9 / 10. It's a thumping-good historical epic which makes me want to learn more about Napoleon. As a pure dramatization, I didn't take it too seriously and I enjoyed every minute of it.