I Just Saw

I just saw Napoleon and now I’m being chased by men with butterfly nets. Also, the film was good. Directed by Ridley Scott and starring Joaquin Phoenix, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I was going to based on its trailer, with its “moody” pop and corny graphics (“LOVER… TYRANT…”).

The actual product however is a surprisingly well-paced 2 hours and 40 minutes with a decent tone, great performances, and magnificent sweep in its construction of old Europe as well as its battles. Phoenix’s work is subtle and effective, reminiscent somewhat of Ryan O’Neal in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), a man of ambition to be successful and beloved but without interiority. Historians have carped, as historians tend to do with films like this, Andrew Roberts describing Phoenix’s Napoleon as a “proto-Hitler” and Zack White as a “Corsican ruffian”.

My interpretation of the performance and character fit neither of these. In the film, he never seems genocidal, or thuggish. Napoleon in Scott’s vision seems like a product of a tumultuous and barbaric age when politicians were being dragged to the guillotine directly from parliament and protestors were cannoned in the street. He’s a man of appetite and ego but no real character, no moral or spiritual or even ideological force driving him, just a brutal urge to self-realise through conquering that he defends by claiming it’s for France.

Vanessa Kirby plays his wife, Joséphine, brought down not so much by her infidelities as her inability to bear him a son. I didn’t know what to make of her characterisation for a long time, though I think in the end I liked it. I wish that she was portrayed less as a sniping and cynical femme fatale, a little exploration of her as more than a sexual sparring partner would have helped, but you do get an interesting through-line about historical misogyny. Women and girls, having no real political agency much of the time, had to develop survival tactics based on their usefulness to men.

Possibly the most moving shot in the film for me was a fleeting one of a scared 18-year-old, presented to Napoleon as a means of determining whether he or his wife is infertile. She looks up at him from the bed as he prepares to undress, fear and vulnerability in her eyes, and in that one shot you can see so much about pre-feminist history. She bears him a son, but we never see her again.

A lot of the audience will probably turn up for the battles, which are excellently choreographed and shot, my favourite being that at Austerlitz. I also enjoyed noticing various British character actors in the background, including Kevin Eldon as the empress’ physician and Miles Jupp as a Russian emperor. My favourite performance was Rupert Everett as the Duke of Wellington. Seeing him share a scene with Phoenix was a bit like when Robert Downey Jr played Sherlock Holmes against Stephen Fry’s Mycroft. Both are great actors, but one seems more like an old European.

Rating: 3.5/4