Napoleon – Snapshot
Napoleon has some great battlefield scenes, beautiful locations, and ornate costumes and sets. But it fails to accomplish the primary mission of a movie – tell a meaningful, understandable story. (1.5*)
Where to Watch:
Stream: AppleTV
Rent: (Nowhere)
Napoleon – The Oscar Buzz
Oscar Nominations (3) / Oscar Wins (0) :
Visual Effects (Henley/Martin-Fenouillet/Coco/Corbould)
Production Design (Arthur Max/Elli Griff)
Costume Design (Janty Yates/David Crossman)
Napoleon comes to us from Sir Ridley Scott, the 87-year-old British filmmaker who has given us such wonderful experiences as the original Alien (and two recent sequels), the original Blade Runner, Prometheus, The Martian, All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, and the House of Gucci. A prolific maker of admired films, he wasn’t nominated for Napoleon, but he received earlier nominations for directing the acclaimed films Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. Sir Scott is obviously a force to be reckoned with in world cinema.
There are several problems with Napoleon and we’ll talk about them in the last section. One of them is in the unwieldy script. The screenplay for Napoleon was written by David Scarpa who also wrote the script for Scott’s All the Money in the World. Scarpa has only written screenplays for three other movies, although he collaborated with Scott on his recently released sequel to the successful 2000 film, Gladiator, Gladiator II. Scarpa, not too surprisingly, has never received an Oscar nomination – it takes a lot of practice to get to Oscar-level as a screenwriter. (Reportedly, Napoleon is based on a working script that Stanley Kubrick had developed, but never produced, although elements of it found their way into Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.)
Napoleon received three Oscar nominations, but didn’t win anything. The Visual Effects nomination was awarded, I think, for the remarkably realistic portrayal of the death and destruction of war. One of the best scenes occurs in the first half-hour where Napoleon secures his strategic reputation by not only capturing the fort guarding the harbor at Toulon, and then, using the fort’s cannons, he destroys dozens of British warships that had occupied the French city. There is another grisly scene where the horse Napoleon is riding is impaled with a cannon ball – since “no animals were harmed in the making of this picture”, that image was a CGI effect. Other battle scenes – and it’s about Napoleon so there are many – are equally convincing. The Napoleon nominees in this category include talented people who have been previously nominated for movies including Gravity (WINNER), Gladiator (WINNER), Rogue One: A Star Wars Saga, Superman Returns, The Creator, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.
Napoleon is most definitely a “period” movie and so it isn’t too surprising that it was nominated in Costume Design. Given the huge numbers of people that had to be dressed for roles scattered across Europe more than 200 years ago, the design and management of costumes was critically important. One of the nominees, Janty Yates, won the Costume Design for Gladiator, the Ridley Scott film from 2000.
Perhaps Scott’s steadiest collaborator might be Production Designer Arthur Max who was nominated for his work on Napoleon and for his work on three earlier Scott movies, The Martian, American Gangster, and Gladiator. The Production Designer’s work is outstanding in this film in selecting and maintaining terrific settings in Malta, Morocco, Paris, and London and in the building of elaborate royalty settings befitting an emperor.
I should also mention other talented members of his technical crew. Cinematographer Darius Wolski received an Oscar nomination for News of the World. Editor Claire Simpson won the Film Editing Oscar for Platoon, and was nominated for Constant Gardner. Sound engineers on this film won the Sound Mixing Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody and were nominated for four other films.
And, of course, our lead actor, Joaquin Phoenix won the Leading actor Oscar for playing the Joker and received earlier nominations for The Master and Walk the Line. His partner in this film, Vanessa Kirby as Josephine, was nominated for her outstanding performance in Pieces of a Woman.
Napoleon – Related Movies
Direct Ancestors:
Gladiator (00) (Direction/Production Design/Costumes/Visual Effects/Phoenix)
House of Gucci (21) (Direction/Cinematography/Film Editing/Production Design/Costumes/Sound/Visual Effects)
Other Ridley Scott Films:
Gladiator II (24) (Direction/Screenplay/Film Editing/Production Design/Costumes)
The Last Duel (21) (Direction/Cinematography/Film Editing/Production Design/Costumes/Sound)
All the Money in the World (17) (Direction/Screenplay/Cinematography/Film Editing/Production Design/Costumes/Sound)
The Martian (15) (Direction/Cinematography/Production Design/Costumes/Sound)
Prometheus (12) (Direction/Production Design/Costumes/Visual Effects)
American Gangster (07) (Direction/Production Design/Costumes)
Black Hawk Down (01) (Direction/Production Design))
Thelma & Louise (91)/Blade Runner (82)/Alien (79) (Direction
Other Influences:
News of the World (20) (Cinematography, Sound)
Constant Gardner (05)/Platoon (86) (Film Editing)
No Time to Die (21)/Ford v. Ferrari (19)/Bohemian Rhapsody (16)/3:10 to Yuma (07) (Sound)
Gravity (13)/Rogue One: A Star Wars Saga (16)/?Superman Returns (06)/Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (23/ The Creator (23) (Visual Effects)
Walk the Line (05)/The Master (12)/Joker (19) (Phoenix)
Pieces of a Woman (20) (Kirby)
Napoleon’s cinematic roots trace most strongly to two of Scott’s movies, Gladiator, released twenty-four years ago, and House of Gucci, a more recent movie. The Gladiator credits included crew members in this movie in Production Design, Costumes and Visual Effects in addition to actor Joaquin Phoenix. More recently, Scott has managed to bring over people from the House of Gucci crew in Cinematography, Film Editing, and Sound in addition to the same three departments shared with Gladiator.
While Gladiator was a much applauded film, House of Gucci was not! I gave the film one of my lowest ratings (2*) for the 2022 Oscar year because the script and the director “fails to set a consistent tone”. Unfortunately, Sir Scott seemed to have lost track of just what story he wanted to give to the audience and how he wanted them to feel. Even the talented Adam Driver “appears to be lost and looking for direction.” Scott has let us down now on two movies. (More on all of this in the final section.)
Napoleon – What Others Think
I suppose some movie must fall at the bottom of my ranking system and this year it is Napoleon. Viewers rated it at the bottom, tied with Maestro. Viewer comments include “An interesting failure” and “A few words of warning for those with high expectations…”
For a change, critics agreed with the audience reaction. Brian Tallerico (RogerEbert) wrote that the film was “…a series of accomplished battle sequences looking for a better movie to connect them” and “Scott’s craftsmanship is on full display here, but it’s in service of a deeply shallow screenplay…with too little passion or purpose…” Jeffrey M. Anderson (San Francisco Examiner) agreed “A dull recounting of events with no poetry, nuance” and “…akin to a bored professor teaching from a droning study guide” and “…it’s difficult to keep track of all the names and dates and places..”. Curiously, Manohla Dhargis (New York Times) bucked the other critics, gave the film a Critics Pick, and calling it “a very big movie”. But she does note that “After Josephine appears, the movie soon bifurcates into two lines of action, one involving Napoleon’s military campaigns and the other the couple’s relationship.” (More on that in the last section.). Despite Dhargis’s exceptional opinion, critics overall, placed this film next to the bottom of all 38 nominees, only above Golda – which I haven’t seen yet.
If you average audience and critical ratings together, Napoleon comes in at the bottom of the pile – the worst movie of the year!
Napoleon – Special Mention
Napoleon’s Key Dates – One of the critical problems with this movie is that it attempts to encapsulate Napoleon’s entire life into one, not-so-short, cinematic experience. When dealing with a person as complicated as Napoleon, that is a risky proposition. Add in the fact that it is not entirely accurate (Director Scott’s rebuttal to that problem is that he ‘is a filmmaker, not a historian’) and you end up with a movie that can be a struggle to keep track of. So, in between my first and second viewing, I compiled a list of key dates for important events that are referred to in the movie, and sometimes, appropriately labeled. Maybe this will help you too!
1769 – born on the island of Corsica of Italian parentage.
1779 – family moved to mainland France
1789 – supported the French Revolution
1793 – established his military creds by winning the siege of Toulon against the British
1796 – conducted successful military campaigns against Austria and Italy
1796 – married Josephine de Beauharnais
1798 – moved his military campaign to Northern Africa
1799 – engineered a coup to become France’s First Consul
1804 – became emperor of France
1806 – waged campaigns in Eastern Europe and Russia
1810 – Marriage to Josephine annulled, married an Austrian royal, Marie Louise
1812 – invaded Russia but winter weather forced a retreat
1814 – enemies capture Paris, he abdicates, and is exiled to the island of Elba. Later he escapes, returns to France, and recaptures Paris with 1000 men
1815 – enemies defeat him at Waterloo, he is exiled to St. Helena island
1821 – dies in exile, age 51
Although Napoleon did accomplish some good things as emperor, like public education, middle class equality, and reducing church power, he also abolished free press, ended direct elections, exiled and jailed critics, banned immigration of blacks, and violently repressed uprisings against him. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for being responsible for the deaths of more than 3 million men on the battlefield. So keep all this in mind as you watch this movie.
Napoleon – Michael’s Moments
Ridley Scott has given us some terrific movies, but Napoleon is not one of them. Scott’s biggest problem is that the script just does not connect the dots. A $200 million budget can buy beautiful settings, hundreds of extras, extravagant period-specific costumes, and graphic visual effects. But if the script does not work, then what you have is an expensive exercise in throwing beautiful things at the wall and seeing just what sticks.
Joaquin Phoenix, Oscar winner for his Joker performance, reportedly told Scott before filming started that he “didn’t know what to do.” Of course he had read the script, and he knew what the lines were, but he was probably very confused about how the script was telling him to interpret Napoleon’s character. And, honestly, it shows in his performance. There is one scene, among many, that is just stunningly without reason. Around the 42 minute mark where, after berating Josephine for taking another lover during his absence to Africa, she suddenly turns the conversation completely around and Napoleon begins groveling. Is this a lesson in sexual dominance? If so, where does it come from, and maybe more importantly, what does it mean? There is no follow-up!
The gist of the movie that Scott and his much-less-experienced screenwriter, David Scarpa, are trying to give us is that Napoleon’s relationship with Josephine is the source of his battlefield successes, and failures. And, as multiple writers have noted, Napoleon ends up being two almost disconnected movies – one recounting his battlefield successes and failures with dramatic settings and visual effects. And the other, a story of an interesting relationship between Napoleon and Josephine, told with embers of passion from Phoenix and Kirby that never really get blown into full-blooded passion. We get hints at how deep their relationship might have been without any involvement in their story. And if we can’t get inside of them, then how are we supposed to understand its effects on Napoleon’s military campaigns?
It is reported that the great Stanley Kubrick nursed along a Napoleon script for decades, but never decided it was good enough to produce. It is also reported that Scarpa used the basic outline from that script to write the screenplay for this one. Based on the results, we can say with confidence that Scarpa is no Kubrick and should have trusted Kubrick’s better judgment. The resulting Napoleon movie has moments of high craftsmanship – as its three nominations suggest – but it is missing the whole point of a movie: to tell a compelling story that is understandable and emotionally meaningful.
There is a very good reason why this movie is at the bottom of the rankings. See it only if you can’t find anything else to watch. (1.5*)
