Fim Review: Ridley Scott's Napoleon

My wife and I went to the cinema last night to see "Napoleon", Ridley Scott's latest historical epic.

Fair disclosure; I've studied the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period for many decades. This includes many years re-enacting the period, sewing uniforms from the Napoleonic era, reading primary and secondary sources and studying original uniforms and equipment (which nearly got me thrown out of the Musee de L'Armee in Paris, but that's another story...)

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay - generic image used, to avoid treading on Hollywood IP !

As I review this film, I'll break it down into a few categories and then give my conclusions.

Sets and Costume

Whoever was responsible for the wardrobe did an incredibly good job (some digging on IMDB shows David Crossman as the military uniform costumier). The uniforms were spot-on, and reflected the changes in military fashion over a 25-year period beautifully, from the sans-culotte look of the early Revolutionary armies to the Bardin regulation uniform introduced from 1812.

The civilian costumes also appeared to be very accurate for the period, and there was clearly an effort to dress Napoleon in iconic outfits seen in many of the paintings of the time.

Flags

The flags... oh dear. Clearly not under control of the wardrobe department !

I think Ridley Scott had an artistic vision, with lots of flags waving to symbolise the period. The problem is that there were just too many of them, and the vast majority were wrong.

The basic large tricolour that we associate with France was used by the navy and in civilian life. But the flags of the French army are a complex field of study all of their own, rarely including actual tricolours until 1812 ! Suffice to say that during the revolution the majority of flags included some or all of red, white and blue, often based on their regiment's Royalist design with a central white cross but with tricolour as just one element of the flag. From 1804-1812, the height of the Empire, flags were a heavily gold-embroidered red, white and blue lozenge design - we see a few of these in the film, but not many.

The Austrian flags we see are reasonably accurate, but were spoiled for me when they gave infantry flags to the cavalry (who would have had smaller, easier to handle guidons).

Strangely, among the mish-mash of incorrect flags, they got one very obscure one surprisingly right; the flag Napoleon adopted for Elba when he went into exile there.

Casting

Casting is one of the biggest problems with this film. Put simply, Joaquin Phoenix is completely wrong as Napoleon. The historical Napoleon was highly charismatic, passionate, energetic and never at a loss for words. Phoenix manages to eliminate every one of these attributes. He plays Napoleon as a taciturn, low-energy sociopath. I think he knows it, and it feels like he has just phoned in his lines. Sorry, but he's utterly unconvincing. If you want to see a far better impression, watch the 1970 film "Waterloo", where Rod Steiger portrays a far more convincing and engaging Napoleon.

Vanessa Kirby is better as Josephine. To the point where it might have been better just calling the film "Josephine" and making it all about her; too often Napoleon seems like a supporting character anyway.

One of the oddest casting choices has to be Paul Rhys, a tall skinny fellow, as Talleyrand, who was not especially tall and by the middle of the Napoleonic period distinctly rotund.

Honourable mentions go to the actors playing Tsar Alexander, Queen Hortense, and Barras, who all looked like their historical originals and did as much as they could with the few lines they were given.

A side note is that including General Dumas was a very clever way to tick the diversity box while remaining historically accurate. He was one of only three coloured French generals during the period (technically he was half-coloured; his father was white, and his mother was a black slave). He was commander of the cavalry during the Egyptian campaign, so it is correct to see him at Napoleon's side there. But they fell out during the campaign, so it's incorrect to see him popping up within the general staff for the rest of the film.

Storyline and Historical Accuracy

It was always going to be a tall order to sensibly summarise 25 of the most eventful years in human history in a 3-hour film. The reality is that it feels rushed, with important incidents given a few seconds on screen. Other less important events get more screen time.

The big issue is that in true Ridley Scott fashion, he plays fast and loose with historical accuracy. I've listed below a few key ones, just to give you an idea.

I'd have to re-watch it to be sure, but I think during the wedding scene they mis-quote Josephine's year of birth, making her 5 years younger in the film than she actually was.

At one point, Scott appears to have totally invented a key episode, where Napoleon's mother introduces him to a girl to get her pregnant and prove that he isn't the reason Josephine can't give him an heir. In reality, he already had an illegitimate son by Maria Walewska (who is completely omitted from the film), so this episode is pointless.

Napoleon is shown "winning" the Battle of the Pyramids with a single volley fired at the pyramids themselves. It never happened, and it feels like a deliberate attempt to smear his reputation. The reality is that it was a tough battle and the Mamluks fought hard before accepting defeat. Napoleon was an admirer of oriental culture, raised a squadron of Mamluks for his Guard after the battle, and would never have damaged an ancient monument. Indeed, he took a large contingent of scientists with him to Egypt, including Pierre-Francois Bouchard who discovered the Rosetta Stone that was later deciphered by Champollion.

When Napoleon left Elba, it wasn't because Josephine fell ill. She died while he was there, and he left because France stopped paying the promised pension, had become a mess, and the Allies were already talking about sending him somewhere further away or imprisoning him.

There were a couple of very unnecessary errors; HMS Bellerophon was shown as a 3-deck first rate ship, but was actually a 2-deck "74" third rate ship of the line, and at the beginning Marie Antoinette was shown being led to the guillotine in a fancy gown and long hair, when in reality her hair was cut short beforehand and she wore a very simple white dress (as was shown in the pen and ink drawing by David on the day). On the upside, they used the fabulous Edith Piaf rendition of Ca Ira as the music for that part.

Overall, the storyline feels like a super-extended trailer, showing a series of cameos of important events, and then focusing on Josephine's relationship with Napoleon. It misses out any real explanation of why he was so popular with his troops, or any mention of his legal and social reforms.

The Battles

The battles in the film look spectacular. Sadly they are Hollywood fiction, and the only thing they share with the historical originals are the names and which armies were involved.

None of them show the structure of a Napoleonic battle, with disciplined formations of troops manoeuvring in a co-ordinated fashion. Every battle seems to involve massed infantry brawls; despite the myth of "cold steel" every army promoted, bayonet charges were actually delivered only once volleys of musket fire had broken an enemy. In all of the histories I have read, I can only think of one case where infantry launched a bayonet charge against an unbroken enemy in an open battle.

Austerlitz is missing it's famous sun, or any reference to the Pratzen Plateau, and the incident with the ice was famous but a minor part at the end of the historical battle. Borodino is totally missing the Raevski redoubt of the other fortifications for which is was famous, but the depiction of Waterloo included lots of field fortifications which weren't present but excluded both the farmhouses which were such key parts of the English line.

But the thing which confirms the battle scenes as fantasy is Napoleon leading the French cavalry in a wild charge. He did no such thing, spending a lot of the day at Waterloo with stomach problems, due (depending on who you believe) either to a stomach ulcer, or because he was already being given the poison which led to his death on St Helena.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a film which is visually brilliant. But Phoenix is just wrong as Napoleon. It feels very rushed but often drags at the same time. The costume and military uniforms are accurate and beautifully done, but the script is poor and the historical accuracy is woeful.

My guess is that this has been pushed out in a hurry in the hope of picking up some Oscars. I expect that in due course we'll get a 4-hour plus "Director's Cut", which might be worth watching on a satellite channel on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

I don't feel it's value for money at the prices cinemas now charge. You're better off watching the 1970 "Waterloo", or "War and Peace (either the 1956 Vidor one, or Sergey Bondarchuk's epic 7-hour 1965 version), or the French 2002 mini-series with Christian Clavier as Napoleon.

I feel sad having to write such a poor review, because this film feels like a missed opportunity. It should have been so good, but just wasn't, and I feel like Ridley Scott has lost his touch when you compare it with his 1977 film "The Duellists", set in the same era which is one of the best films ever made.

Image by 139904 from Pixabay - Napoleon's Tomb at Les Invalides