Director: Ridley Scott | Writer: David Scarpa
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby
Like The Northman in 2022 or The Last Duel in 2021, Napoleon is an excellent film largely ignored in its year, for unfathomable reasons of bad taste. It’s not a coincidence that Ridley directed two of those three; is it the violence audiences don’t like, the history, the savagery, the darkness, the death, the way Ridley gives humanity to terrible humans? To me, that’s cinema, because that’s storytelling, and this is how it happened, life is brutal, and only some have the courage to explore that. Add in phenomenal acting that gets ignored because its in a war movie and what you’ve got are films that don’t get the love they deserve, because audiences have such weak stomachs.
This is the story of Napoleon Bonaparte, the rise and fall of an Emperor who was no more than a mere mangy, minuscule, mortal, man. At a time when France was revolting against its royal oppression, an ambitious soldier rose quickly through the ranks with intelligent strategy and ruthless egotism. Conquering a government, conquering a continent, and then becoming Emperor of the realm, Napoleon let nothing stop his meteoric rise. And yet love, passion, arrogance, and recklessness would bring him crashing down. But not to the level of the common man, because an icon had already been made, a king who was larger than any humbling of history and bigger than the stories that would be told for centuries.
Napoleon is a fine example of the epic war drama, a historic account of a tyrant who wanted to rule the world, and the events he initiated that shaped its history. I don’t know why audiences and critics don’t like these movies; they showcase the same elements as other awards darlings, they just set those elements against a much broader, richer, more complicated background. The acting here is excellent, the story fascinating, the comedy timely, and the visuals stunning. What’s not to like? The killing, the tyrants, the depravity, the evil? Well, that’s life, that’s real, and this movie is an example of what we sometimes don’t like to imagine. Of course, like Braveheart, this isn’t pure history, this is drama after all, we understand that. But there is enough here that’s blunt and true and hard to stomach, paired with all the key, fun features that we go to the theatre to see; for my money, there’s little else that’s better.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆