Napoleon review: Ridley Scott's biopic of French ruler has a tender heart with rough edges
Ridley Scott's depiction of the romance between Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine is so watchable that the climactic war sequences lose their sheen.
Ridley Scott's biopic of 19th-century French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is a love story. Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) and his first wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) are star-crossed lovers united by the urge to be uninhibitedly themselves and divided by his ambition for power. Theirs is not an eternal love story, but more of a cautionary tale.
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Not Ridley's first tryst with Napoleonic Wars
France during the Napoleon era is no new turf for Ridley Scott. The filmmaker made his directorial debut with The Duellists (1977), a film set in that time, that even fetched him the Best Debut award at the Cannes Film Festival. He travels from the tributaries to the mainstream with Napoleon, but also makes sure to let his pro-peace stance known.
The film starts with the guillotine execution of Marie Antoinette. As she walks with pride towards her imminent end, the people of France boo her. We see a clear shot of her head getting severed, and an official holding the lifeless head up in his hand for everyone to see. A rather joyous music plays in the background as the oppressed celebrate the overturning of the throne. But there's only one face that looks rather solemn –-Napoleon.
He's not shown as a sadist conqueror who revels in wreckage and bloodshed. But his relentless quest to expand his empire as an attempt to achieve greatness only blinds him. When he executes his first siege, the last shot of the sequence sees blood (of someone he kills) smattered all over his face, as he covers his ears while ordering his men to open fire via cannon. After the dust settles, he even kneels to pay respect to his horse who sacrificed himself in the battle by taking a cannon shot up front.
But towards the half-mark of the historical, as Napoleon orders cannon shots to be fired on enemy forces stranded on thin ice, we don't see him cover his ears any longer. Composer Martin Phipps replaces the celebratory music of the French Revolution with a more reflective score, as shots of blood diffusing into the water under the ice cover the screen. Ridley also makes sure whenever he's establishing any Napoleonic war, the number of casualties features as prominently as the setting.
Ridley's politics, thus, looms large over even the grand war sequences. Dariusz Wolski's intimate and all-encompassing cinematography, Arthur Max's elaborate production design, and Claire Simpson's pulsating editing make for some stunning battle sequences. For a brief but unsatisfactory bit, Ridley also throws light on Napoleon's unique battle tactics and strategy. But ironically, the grandeur is eclipsed by the intimacy of what it follows – Napoleon's rocky romance with Josephine.
France and Josephine
Napoleon's obsession with Josephine is a micro representation of his relationship with France. He always wanted more, without paying heed to what persistently chasing may cost him. For instance, when he gets exiled for losing hundreds of soldiers to famine due to limited supply while travelling back from conquest in Russia, a parallel can be drawn to when he deserts a mission in Egypt to return home because he finds out Josephine is having an affair. Napoleon can't divorce his quest for greatness with the efforts to maintain his marriage.
Like Napoleon, Ridley also encounters a similar issue. He can't strike the balance between positioning a war film and crafting a bittersweet romance. He's certainly capable of perfecting both, had he chosen to focus on only one. He's burdened by the weight of his mission – to make a wholesome biopic of Napoleon – and of his legacy as a filmmaker best known for sprawling historical action epics like Gladiator.
The love story in Napoleon could be one of the most tender bits in Ridley's storied filmography. He bathes Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby's scenes in a rose-tinted amber light, emanating from a fireplace or the French sunset sky. Their chemistry is electric as the two neither keep their romance all clean nor turn it into a steamy affair. After a rough patch, Napoleon whispers into her ears romantically, “The harshness is in our past. I want you to be my most tender friend.”
There's always friction, but never dominance or submission. Even when Napoleon slaps Josephine during their divorce signing (because she can't give him an heir) and screams at her, “Do it for your country,” as if drilling the thought into his own head, Josephine continues to laugh as she reads out the divorce decree. Even after their divorce, they remain deeply connected. She stares at two swans separating and reuniting like them, as Napoleon continues his quest to expand his empire – horizontally through conquests and vertically through sleeping with someone else for the birth of his heir.
Ridley chooses to end the film with the death of Napoleon but leaves us with a crucial thought: What if he had given love a chance? A silhouette of Napoleon wearing his peculiar bicorne hat collapses on the ground against the voice of Josephine inviting him to join her in afterlife. One wishes what their romance would've been like had it not been relegated to the sidelines by history.
One also thinks the same about Ridley Scott – what if he made only a romantic film instead of aiming for a historical biopic? What if he came, he loved, he didn't conquer? The romance at the heart of all the violence and the violence at the heart of all the romance emerge as both Napoleon and Ridley Scott's best conquest as well as their proverbial Waterloo.