Matthew

Napoleon Bonaparte was a deeply flawed and insecure person. Replace the name with virtually any man or woman to exist and it holds true. I’m all for showing the full man when it comes to portraying them in any capacity whether it be a biography or full feature film. However, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was shown as a complete sexually deviant, ignorant, tiny example of a man with little to no redeeming qualities. Even as a huge fan of historical epics and of Napoleon himself, I found this hard to watch. Without getting lost in the details of this extremely complex person, Napoleon was without a doubt one of the greatest military tacticians, lawgiving, intellectually competent, liberal (in the philosophical sense), humans to walk the planet. Many countries to this day hold some semblance of the Napoleonic Code embalmed in their legal system. He transformed the planet for better or for worse (re-instituting slavery in Haiti, war crimes in Jaffa, executing a political enemy with a semblance of proof, etc). None of which could be gathered from this movie. The only thing that could be discerned from Phoenix’s portrayal was that he was a uninspiring imbecile who had the sexual maturity of a pubescent teenager. When he returns from exile and his troops welcome him back one is left questioning why the hell his troops like him so much as we see no character development outside of his relationship with Josephine (a quick side note, Kirby’s portrayal of Josephine was 5/5 perfect and the best part of the movie). There were no scenes depicting the close knit bonds Napoleon formed with his troops. Not a single Marshal of his was even referenced. There was no sentiment portrayed that Napoleon was successful at anything. The movie ends with “Napoleon fought in 61 battles… 3 million people died.” Which I think any sane person would agree that is an absolute travesty on humanity. However, I found this extremely lazy on Scott’s part. Why not show the human carnage and show how Napoleon’s ambitions wrought destruction in the movie? So at the end you can give a much more nuanced summary to the character other than the infantile conclusion that he was bad for humanity. A perfect example would be All Quiet on the Western Front; I felt the pang of arrogant leaders leading their men to death in the film not by text on a screen. If that is the lens in which Scott wanted us to view Napoleon he should have shown it to us. Put into terms for an American, this movie was like watching a biopic on George Washington where for 2 hours and 15 minutes he meanders around wanting to fornicate with Martha. It then has a 10 min interlude of him crossing the Delaware then skips ahead to a 30 second cut scene of the surrender at Yorktown. It doesn’t show anything of his presidency and ends with the text “George Washington owned slaves.” In all fairness the battles of Toulon and Austerlitz were cinematic masterpieces and the coup scene was extremely entertaining. I will look forward to watching the directors cut in the hopes that with an extra 2 hours of material Scott can figure out how to make this movie make sense.