THE REAL Napoleon was a minor Corsican noble with a military school education. In director Ridley Scott’s movie, several call him out for having no manners. He may have been brusque, but he surely had enough charm to make his troops and officers follow him all across Europe and elsewhere, risking their lives in battles.
In the movie there’s no indication how this happened. Scott’s vision of Napoleon is simply a gruff military man.
Joaquin Phoenix being older for the part isn’t a problem, but he’s a large actor so he’s not convincing as a small man with a Napoleon complex. His diction is imprecise throughout for reasons unexplained. Director Ridley Scott touts the movie as concentrating on Napoleon’s obsession for the unfaithful Josephine, but he never makes the case that they were in love or even that Napoleon was in love with her even if she didn’t love him. For the movie theater version, the pair are mercifully clothed for their explicit jack rabbit love scenes. Napoleon and Josephine, played by Vanessa Kirby, never express affection for each other. Instead they read letters, as voice overs, which is supposed to show that they cared. The real Josephine apparently never opened Napoleon’s many letters to her.
The love scenes between Napoleon and Josephine, the battle scenes and everything else are filmed with filters, or altered digitally later, that make everything shades of twilight/grey. Despite a huge amount of money spent on historical costumes and sets, it’s not enjoyable to see them half lit. The only time the filters are off is to depict blood in a battle scene in winter and for the Sphinx so that it could appear a natural sandy color.
The battle scenes may be violent but the violence at times is so stylized that it’s not too hard to watch. A horse flipped high into the air must have been computer generated. In general, the horses are the scene stealers because they are all gorgeous and it didn’t matter if they were half lit. When he is seen riding, Joaquin sits tall in the saddle, which is elegant. The real Napoleon slumped in the saddle and moved all over when he was cantering or galloping yet he never fell off. The reason for this possibly is that Napoleon suffered from chronic hemorhoids.
Another thing lacking in the film is Napoleon’s motivation for wanting to be emperor. There’s no discussion of why he decided on this course of action. All of a sudden there’s an elaborate scene for the coronation that appears out of nowhere.
A member of the audience, Jimmy Donnellan, spoken to at random after the movie, concurred with many points here, “I felt that the movie lacked depth. Scott seemed intent to show the horrors of Napoleon’s battles with his infamous stomach-bursting-alien gore. But Napoleon the man, his romances and shortcomings, Josephine’s own plight, …all of that felt shallow.”
Despite these criticisms the audience seemed interested enough to sit through the entire 2 ½ hour film. No one left the theater.
