DAVID ADAMS watches the new Ridley Scott epic, ‘Napoleon’…
Napoleon (AU – MA15+/UK – 15/US – R)
In a word: Sweeping
Joaquin Phoenix stars as Napoleon in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon’.
Telling the story of such a famous (or notorious) figure as Napoleon in two-and-a-half plus hours on screen is a challenging task. What do you leave in? What do you leave out? How much of the film do you devote to exploring the protagonist’s character?
“While the film also includes some intimate moments from his personal life, we don’t come away with much of an insight into what drove Napoleon to become the man he did (or indeed what was it that made him so popular among the soldiers whom he, at times callously, sent to their deaths by their thousands).”
Director Ridley Scott and writer David Scarpa take a largely broad brush approach with Napoleon in a film which spans the French general’s rise to power as France emerged from the terrors of the French Revolution, his stormy relationship with Josephine, his military conquests and decision to crown himself Emperor and his eventual defeats and exile, firstly to the Isle of Elba, and secondly to the remote island of St Helena.
While the film also includes some intimate moments from his personal life, we don’t come away with much of an insight into what drove Napoleon to become the man he did (or indeed what was it that made him so popular among the soldiers whom he, at times callously, sent to their deaths by their thousands).
In a performance which has both highs and lows (including some very odd scenes such as when he comes face-to-face with an Egyptian mummy), Joaquin Phoenix depicts a man who is certainly an opportunist but also who seems at times to have simply been carried on by cascading events.
Vanessa Kirby plays Josephine as a somewhat tragic figure whose – again largely unexplained background – leads her to make some disastrous decisions which threaten to turn her world upside down. And yet we see Napoleon in thrall at times to both her and the other dominant women in his life – his mother Letizia (Sinéad Cusack).
As might be expected with such a sweeping epic, there’s a star-studded supporting cast – everyone from Tahar Rahim (who plays politician Paul Barras) and Ludivine Sagnier (socialite Theresa Cabarrus) to Ben Miles (French military officer Armand Augustin Louis de Caulaincourt), Ian MacNeice (King Louis XVIII) and Rupert Everett, who plays Napoleon’s final nemesis, the Duke of Wellington.
The film – which has received a higher classification both for its, at times, visceral violence and a couple of sex scenes – is visually impressive with some spectacular settings and Ridley proves once again how deft a hand he is at capturing battle scenes on both the macro and micro level (think back to Gladiator).
Despite its epic framing, Napoleon doesn’t take itself too seriously (indeed there are many moments when Phoenix’s portryal of Napoleon teeters toward cariacature). But in the end, while we’re presented with the key moments that shaped Napoleon’s life interspersed with a closer look at some of his odder personal quirks, we come away without any sense of really connecting to the man underneath the facade.
