Blood sinks alongside the body that once contained it, the limited sunlight striking through the translucent, now-broken ice and causing the water to shimmer with red. Cannon fire and screams and hoof-slaps are muted by the layers of water; the ice breaks; a body falls; blood streams around him. Atop the ice, Austrian and Russian soldiers retreat in zig-zag over the frozen lakes, avoiding both the cannon blasts from the French ambush and the blue-grey gaze of history’s most notable not-actually-that-short general, Napoleon Bonaparte.
This scene, depicting the Battle of Austerlitz, is what fans of Ridley Scott’s new epic Napoleon could reasonably use to defend their admiration. It’s full of everything you may hope for from this film: a huge, palpitating action sequence with Joaquin Phoenix, excellent as usual, playing Bonaparte as a man with enough brilliance to justify his arrogance. Alone, this scene is as thrilling as anything Scott has directed before.
Unfortunately, there are over two hours worth of other scenes in Napoleon. Scenes where Bonaparte wanders into vibrant rooms only to stand in the corner pouting like a toddler whose naptime was interrupted. Scenes where he has fully-clothed, rapid-fire sex with his entirely disinterested wife, Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). Scenes where everyone else speaks in aristocratic dialogue and Bonaparte, for whatever reason, has lines seemingly lifted from a sitcom tween, such as “You think you’re so great because you have boats!”
My father described the film as “like a British sketch-history show that Joaquin Phoenix was a guest star in.” He is correct. The problem with Napoleon is that while each moment may be memorable, taken together, they feel like a mess. This discohesion perhaps arises from the difficulty of a life-spanning biopic: the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, a citizen and general and consul and emperor and exile, is too full of “important” events to pack them all in. Some films limit their scope by choosing a contained moment of Bonaparte’s life (see Spencer) or by focussing on one or two themes and diving deeply(see Oppenheimer). Scott and his writer, David Scarpa, instead seem to have skimmed the table of contents on their subject’s Wikipedia page, written single scenes about each moment, and shoved them chronologically together. This method creates discordance and denies every character (other than the titular one) any space for nuance. This is particularly true of Kirby’s Josephine: she is supposed to be the emotional fulcrum of the film but instead feels static.
This is no fault of Kirby, of course; instead, it is the rule for performances other than Phoenix’s throughout. His portrayal of Napoleon surprises in its commitment to depicting the famed emperor and conqueror as a deeply weird, horny manbaby who oscillates without pause between infantile neediness and hyper-masculine control. This version of Napoleon is certainly compelling, given both its deviation from expectations and the strength of Phoenix’s acting. But this distinctness from the other performances then makes Phoenix’s portrayal seem strange and self-indulgent.
In the back half of Napoleon, Bonaparte easily escapes from his first exile and takes a boat to the mainland. A small group of soldiers meets him on the shore, and they slowly march until they encounter the actual French army, muskets all pointed at the emperor’s chest. He walks, slumped and pouting, towards them, and essentially says, “You know me!” in a voice devoid of volume or passion. The army looks at each other, laughs, and cheers in support, joining Bonaparte’s side. The scene seems aspirational from Scott: love from an audience based solely off of reputation, despite a lackluster plea. But unlike these weird, unreal soldiers, modern movie-goers aren’t so easily duped.
