EPIC BATTLE FOR EUROPE

PHOENIX RECREATES CHARACTER FROM THE ASHES OF HISTORY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Director Ridley Scott makes no mistaken understanding from the opening scene sequence onward that this epic film is shot from the point of view of the title character.

The camera spots Napoleon out from the crowd of actors and background extras all dressed up in fancy period piece costumes. Several later scenes are shot through a spyglass.

A delicate balance is achieved throughout the historical biopic film between visually pleasing scenes that stimulate the senses and the actors immersed in their character development telling everybody the reason for their presence on screen in the first place.

Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby co-star as Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte in the 2 hr 38 minute biopic that also keeps scenes in the costume drama genre by showing off how beautiful everything has been made for the story in Napoleon (2023).

And if you have not guessed it yet, the film is all about love and war and all the pretty things made by the French civilization.

Phoenix portrays Napoleon as an ambitious military commander supporting the leadership still stirring the French Revolution into a second decade until the French Revolution all but falls apart under its own inertia.

The title character is shown to have a bit of a brooding inferiority complex in private that has become masked by the great power of his position and military accomplishments know to the public. Napoleon had a public life although he had few true personal life experiences.

Tahar Rahim plays Paul Baras as the representative of the Directorate reaching out to Napoleon as the Revolution falls into a Reign of Terror more feared and despised than the French monarchy that impoverished the population.

Scott though is not retelling the story of the Revolution, and instead wants to only introduce people to the backstory that brings Napoleon to a position of absolute power as Emperor of France.

Everyone knows that story. The camera instead focusses on Phoenix and Kirby consumed in character development and building the relationship between historical characters.

The foreknowledge of historical battles still to come, and Napoleon’s war with the rest of Europe, drags everything and everybody down the film narrative while the love story unfolds.

Scott makes every scene worthwhile along the way using wide angles to depict the characters within the detail set design of period Paris as well as the many costumes created for the pomp and circumstance of the revolutionary court.

The French have been making love or war for centuries and Scott makes either or look beautiful.

Scott is a visualist with a highly stylized film voice that draws the audience into his films.

For Napoleon, the filmmaker shoots as much as possible in the natural light of the era, including outdoor public shots and intimate moments inside ornate rooms often at the expense of the actors faces falling into darkness, although that might have a bit of meaning as well.

The camera creates a dark brooding superficial tone and atmosphere for many scenes that gradually lead to the much anticipated battle sequences. Phoenix shows Napoleon as plotting and a bit methodical in his ambitions but also bubbling only on the surface for the simpler pleasures of love and power.

Kirby shows Josephine as ever more superficial, trying to survive in an impoverished Paris after her military general husband has been guillotined by the Revolution, leaving her widowed to care for two children.  Kirby puts on several different faces with the help of the makeup department in various circumstances from sordid moments of submission and bubbling frivolity to the glamorous coronation scene when Josephine becomes Empress of France.

The use of light or manipulating the absence of light is bent into the narrative by Scott. The characters often walk from the outside light into the interior darkness without set lighting. And several battle scenes are filmed at night while the rest of the selected battles for the narrative layer onto this established sense of gloom.

Even in love, Napoleon lacked a bit of emotive depth and sophistication. The director places the historical characters in context by presenting them a bit disconnected from the chaos of Paris and the number of military casualties in the fields of Europe.

Napoleon went to battle for France but also for himself as a self-made personification. Like the Revolution and the Monarchy before, Napoleon believed in the ideals of equality and fraternity but becomes consumed in self-interest to the point that his love for Josephine becomes all about the need for a male heir, while the film diverts into a parallel narrative about the Empress’ inability to conceive a child.

The narrative exhibits a bit of brilliance by bringing together complex and diverse historical events into a visual story for film using at times a simplicity moved forward by a rational sequential release of information.

Napoleon is all about power, making love and building a legacy for his family. Scott portrays the biopic character in a manner that explores the inner motivations of humanity within the historical circumstances only for everyone to discover a reserved personality consumed by the great hubris that so often accompanies positions of great power.

The narrative seems oddly rudimentary at first with visceral dialogue about the love or perhaps absence of love between Napoleon and Josephine. Similarly in the battle scenes, the Emperor shows a cold and calculating nature often pressing forward with an agenda only at great cost to humanity, with many casualties on the hopeless battlefields of Russia and at Waterloo.

This simplicity is so simple as to be interesting by shifting what would normally be attention on the signs from the actor’s facial gestures, body language and dialogue to the beauty found in the urban and rural landscapes of an epic era of immense historical significance.

Every inch of the camera frame has been beautified with a particular pallet of hues and tones having been carefully chosen to stimulate viewers like a painted masterpiece on the gallery walls of Musee du Louvre might. Interior sets show off the architecture and the ornate costumes created by civilization while the outdoor scenes display the unforgiving cruelty of nature.

One dark battle scene becomes lit a bit by falling snowflakes while another battle scene might appear brighter from the smoke and sparks of canon fire drifting across the night sky. And a few leaves may flutter by neither here nor there. At disastrous Waterloo, the smoke and rain give the scenes a realistic depth.

Scott has a few other tricks that build on each other in layers to produce an emotive effect, such as several scenes interspersed throughout the film that are shot in various degrees of slow-motion capture.

The first half of the runtime is consumed in subtleties as the formation of the Napoleonic court is explained. Contemplative moments arranging increased military and political power are contrasted with intimate scenes between lovers. This slow-moving methodical acquisition of everyone’s attention becomes juxtaposed with the conflict and violence of the military, such as the canon ball that strikes Napoleon’s white horse in the chest or the opposing soldiers falling through the ice in retreat across a frozen lake.

This beautiful film has several odd moments seemingly by design with the cold calculating Emperor not quite grasping the gravity of his actions and the historical events unfolding before him.

Also problematic is the shortened theatrical release runtime where 30 more minutes of film may have made all the difference with more intense battles and perhaps better detailed intimacies between lovers.

The reversal scene sequence, as a result, seems sudden with Napoleon being overthrown immediately after his disastrous retreat from Moscow when the march into Russia occurs too rapidly from the outset, leaving everybody unprepared for what historical remains come next.

Napoleon is at times an unusual blend of film genres that unravels a bit gingerly, like Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel, War and Peace, set in 1812 during the Napoleonic Wars.

Napoleon is an Apple TV+ Original film currently screening in theaters.