Napoleon (2023)

Rated R for all of the sex and gore.  In a movie about a famous general who led charge after charge in war, you'd think that the red flag in that movie would be the massive death.  Well, this movie has massive death and it is a red flag, but the bigger issue is the almost insistance of showing sad, graphic, on-screen sex.  It's just all a choice.  R.

DIRECTOR:  Ridley Scott

Whut?

Like, seriously. I heard that this movie wasn't great.  But it looked real pretty and it looked like it was going to just be a telling about Napoleon and the many conquests he made.  I mean, if it was that, what could go wrong?  And for all of the griping I'm about to do, there's a fair amount of attention given to making sure that the French Revolution and the reign of Emperor Napoleon looked accurate.  But then this is a movie that almost forgets that it has a duty to be a movie.  Considering that Joaquin Phoenix is in almost every scene as Napoleon Bonaparte in a movie called Napoleon, who the heck is Napoleon as a character?

Both Henson and I had the exact same response to this movie.  Ridley Scott's Napoleon posits the age old question of "What if one of history's most famous generals and people who saved the world was just a huge nerd that was completely unlikable?"  Honestly, Vanessa Kirby as Josephine?  I know what's going on with her.  She has a kind of a linear story.  She goes from popular socialite to cheating on her husband to being attracted to power.  That's incredibly watchable.  But Napoleon?  According to this movie, he was a person that history fell around.  He's the opposite of charismatic.  I bet the real Napoleon wasn't charismatic.  But in this one, he's a guy who gets a shot to take down the British, doesn't really have to convince anyone, and just keeps getting promoted very quickly.  At one point, he's just offered to be Emperor.  

Now, I don't deny that history probably reflects something along those lines.  But the reason that we have these historical biopics is to fill in the gaps between what history offers to us.  But every single one of Napoleon's scenes is just defined by chaos.  Some of it might be based on letters Napoleon wrote to Josephine.  After all, those are scenes in the movie where we hear him dictate letters.  As not a Napoleon expert, these might be accurate.  I honestly don't care enough about this movie to really look this up.  But Napoleon is supposed to be the grounding element of this movie.  I'm not even really blaming Joaquin Phoenix.  I blame this movie, script and director, for not knowing what to do with this character.  Everything is just throwing weirdness at the wall and telling me that those are choices.  Heck, there's even a way to make Napoleon Bonaparte a huge nerd and make the movie pretty good.  It all comes from a degree of consistency.  I'm thinking of Donald Glover's character in The Martian.  Donald Glover's character (a name I should totally look up) knows something that no one else knows that's vital to the survival of the mission.  He's social awkward.  He's probably somewhere on the spectrum.  But what makes him compelling is that he has to overcome his own awkwardness to tell people how he's seeing what no one else has the ability to see.  That's not really this story.

If anything, the story of Napoleon is that he wasn't that good of a general.  It's the story of a guy who fell to the top.  That's kind of the message of the story.  He's a guy who made a few good decisions, but then started to believe his own press.  That's not even accurate.  Napoleon in this movie sees himself as the best general of all of history.  He falls into the place of Emperor and wears that crown aggressively.  Now, part of me wants to understand if he covets that.  Is that his goal?  I have no idea what Napoleon's goals are in this movie.  He loves France.  I get that.  He's very all about France.  I likes himself because he demands that Josephine spend every moment waiting for his present like Padme does with Anakin in Revenge of the Sith.  But it's all about just a vibe, not a motivation.  There needs to be something that ties this whole movie together.

Instead, we kind of get a collection of scenes.  Sure, did I learn about the Hundred Days?  Yeah.  I learned about the Hundred Days, because I texted Henson and asked if Elba and Waterloo were that close on the timeline.  But that was me doing some heavy lifting.  Everything about this movie is almost screaming that Napoleon wasn't that important to history.  But the movie isn't ever explicit that is the message of the movie.  Instead, everything comes across as a bit muddy.  I love the visuals.  In terms of cinematography and attention to detail, sure, I'll support this.  But it's Tora! Tora! Tora! in a lot of ways.  I can't believe that I was getting bored considering that there was so much to look at throughout the piece.  

It's just so...meh. How do you spend so much money and put so much effort into a movie and it just comes across as unfocused.  I mean, I should know by the end of the movie if the director loves or hates his subject matter.  I don't know that.  Honestly, I'm a guy who hates having his phone within reach.  I kept going back to the phone under the auspices of asking what actors are in this movie.  I still haven't spotted Mark Bonnar and I know he's in this movie.  I even did a Google image search.  Nothing.  I just was a big ask for a meh movie.  I only feel good knowing that I'm not alone on this one.  I'm sure that there are people who are all about Napoleon.  

Also, why did they name the cake after that guy?  My Ukrainian grandmother made a bunch of those things and it's nothing like this movie.