Napoleon - Not What I'd Hoped For

Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Joaquim Phoenix, was the historical epic that everyone hoped would close out the year in spectacular fashion. Unfortunately, it turned out to be something... different.

[NormieNerddom]

Napoleon needs an entire miniseries, like John Adams did. He had an entire era named after him, you need to narrow your focus signifocantly. Waterloo alone had an entire film devoted to it.

[Mischkyy]

The best analogy I heard about this movie: "It's like if they said they made a Beatles movie, but you find out 90% is about Lennon and Yoko."

[Ulick]

We should give the promotional team for this movie a lot of props for managing to make a trailer that makes the footage from a poorly written character drama about Napoleon’s relationship with his wife look like a historical epic about Napoleon Bonaparte.

[Chrisfeb]

Napoleon rolled Europe for 20 years. There's no way you can put his entire life in a two hour movie. Especially somebody so complex as Napoleon.

[SotheAlbion]

Scott telling historians to "get a life" is self explanatory.

[NuclearAutism]

You can’t condense Napoleon’s life into 3 hours. He need a TV show that’s 10 seasons long

[ComedyJakob]

Imagine a 4 season Napoleon show on HBO shot over 8 years. Cast a guy in his early 30s and make him look slightly younger at the beginning, and by the end make him look slightly older and he can very easily portray Napoleon's aging process

[MarkSerenadesYou]

"Napolean is more of a victim of its own ambitions, weighed down by the sheer scale of what it was trying to accomplish"
The duality of this sentence is quite lovely.

[NastyCupid]

Ridley Scott admitted that he refused historians advice on the project, thinking he could capture the scale of Napoleons historic significance himself by looking at a Wikipedia page. But like all men filled with hubris, he failed.

[The_Laughing_Cavalier]

The scene where he said "I am the Senate", did a flip and threw Mace Windu out of the windows of Versailles was true cinema.

[pixtilla]

The French historian who is widely recognised as the best specialist of Napoleon I, the lovely Jean Tulard, who also happens to be a self-professed Ridley Scott fan, hated this film; he jokingly suggested Scott must be getting on a bit, at his age (Tulard himself is 89 old) but he was also very serious about his reasons to dislike Scott's latest work.

Tulard pointed out to the fact that from a historical perspective, Napoléon Bonaparte has to be separated into two distinct entities: the young, hungry, ambitious consul Buonaparte ('Boney', as the English infamously nicknamed him), and the Emperor—what power made of him. Both are fascinating men in their own right, but they would require two very different movies. Not to mention, these are very complex moments in French history we're dealing with and the details are so potently interesting that one wonders how Scott managed to miss all of them out in favour of a much more ordinary story.

As for Napoléon's great love for his first wife Joséphine, which was elected as the focus point of the film... The idea that Boney's passion for her, although undeniable and well documented (seriously. Their correspondence is abundant and _raunchy_), somehow hindered his formidable tactical spirits is laughable, at best. Bonaparte was a political beast, a master of military strategy, and quite the ruthless, driven creature. His love also waned as he came to realise that his wife could not give him an heir, and he repudiated her remorselessly enough.

By the way, Ridley Scott cast Joséphine as an actress FIFTEEN YEARS YOUNGER than lead Joaquin Phoenix, which is rather frustrating for the historian considering the real Joséphine de Beauharnais was SIX YEARS OLDER than her brand new husband—whom she married out of marital strategy and ended up loving in time (their affections mirrored, since she grew fonder of him as his own passion dwindled)—who had been with only one woman beforehand, a prostitute; whereas Joséphine was the widow to one of France's most raging libertines, the marquis Alexandre de Beauharnais, who died under the guillotine, a man said to have inspired Laclos the character of Valmont in _The Dangerous Liaisons...!_

(And the puzzling choice to have Joaquin Phoenix play with this stony, witless face all along when Bonaparte was renown by all to be an extremely animated, passionate, charismatic man... I don't know if it's French bashing but it certainly beats history to a pulp.)

[shotyew]

This was the first time in my dads 52 years of life that he walked out of a movie halfway through. He has a history degree and he essentially called it a mockery of napoleons life and French History. He even tried to give it another chance but then the food fight scene between napoleon and Josephine came on and he couldn’t take it.

[darwincity]

The mere idea of condensing the whole adult life of Napoleon in 160 minutes was in and of itself insane.

[Longshanks]

There are two fundamental problems with this movie.
The first is that it's not the movie we - or History Buffs to be specific- wanted it to be. We wanted to see the young, ambitious, cunning, intelligent, brilliant Corsican officer rise to become Emperor using his wits and talents.
We wanted to see his genius in planning battles and why his men followed him to the bitter end. We wanted to see the political climber who used lies and manipulation to claw his way to the top and stay there. We even wanted to see the Liberal reformer who made many compromises in realising his agenda for France. However, Scott wasn't interested in any of that. He wanted to tell a much more personal tale of Napoleon and Josephine, showing the world through their eyes and romance. An interesting angle but ok.

That then brings us into the second problem with the movie as it fails spectacularly at that too. Who is Napoleon? Who is Josephine? Why do they love each other? Why does she cheat on him and why can't he let her go? Why are they so obsessed with each other and what draws them to each other? I sure as hell can't tell you based on the text of the film. We're never given any of the details to help us understand who they are, why they're drawn together and why it's tragic when circumstances force them apart. We just don't understand or care about them as we're never given the time to as so much attention is spent on battles and the political moves of Napoleon which, again, also aren't very well developed so rather than being a deep dive into Napoleon is instead a jumbled, confused, unfocused mess.

And what's so frustrating is that all of the pieces are there! Phoenix and Kirby could have been great, the set pieces are spectacular, the movie in general looks gorgeous and with more time or a better script, could have been great.
Really, I think Josephine should have been the main character. Call it "The Emperor's Wife" or something and frame it through her eyes, so no battles or politics, just show how she viewed him on her own. That's the only way it could have worked.
Cos trying to do ALL this, and for a theatrical cut? It was as doomed for failure as invading Russia.

[danielg]

Just saw the movie and I didn't see Napoleon on the screen, I just saw Joaquin Phoenix. It's not just because he was too old and didn't look like him. Ciarán Hinds didn't look like Caesar in HBO Rome, but I still saw Caesar because he did such a fantastic job in his performance.

[darylzambrana]

I think my brother put it pretty well when he said: “This feels like a parody of Napoleon”
It’s hard to argue with that idea considering that some parts of the movie felt as if they were mocking Napoleon

[CharlesB]

I think Rod Steiger will always have the best one in 1970's "Waterloo". Despite it being over 50 years old, the damn near perfect historical accuracy and practical effects, including copious use of live extras, just makes the film.

[revolverDOOMGUY]

The ENTIER Italian campaign is not even mentionned ONCE in this movie. The most important event in Napoleon's life after the Russian campaign and Waterloo, and it is not ever even IMPLIED that Napoleon went to Italy. In fact the Italian campaign is probably the most formative years of his life, that basically shaped all of his skills and life view and brought him to the international spotlight. NOT a single word.

[PlayerOne.StartGame]

Napoleon was such an interesting microcosm in history. A person who shouldn't have been able to make a mark on history, according to the rules of society. Yet he defines an entire era of Europe.

[corey]

When Ridley Scott makes a film, God flips a coin.