'Napoleon' (dir. Ridley Scott) Review

Written by Jacob | 4 April 2024

“He came from nothing. He conquered everything.” Like many other history buffs around the world, I, too, was elated when the acclaimed director Ridley Scott, with these words announced to the world that he would be releasing what perhaps would be the greatest historical epic of all time and the culmination of his career as a film director; for the next four months, the Internet was flooded with an assortment of memes hyping Napoleon up to be a historically faithful, period-accurate, compelling and action-packed biographical epic about France’s first emperor, remembered as one of the greatest generals in history, being the undisputed greatest military mind of his time, a great reformer and a strong adherent to meritocratic ideals, and the man who reshaped the face of Europe. 

Though the opening of the film may be considered somewhat acceptable, with the Toulon sequence in particular, being quite enjoyable, the rest of the film was not. The chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix and his co-star Vanessa Kirby was near-nonexistent, making every interaction between the two extremely painful and cringeworthy to watch. For a film claiming to be a biopic about one of history’s greatest generals, it is truly remarkable that Ridley Scott failed to properly portray the warfare of the era, with tactics and strategies being distorted and oversimplified throughout the film, with only Napoleon’s defeats being given enough attention so as to be even historically accurate at a bare minimum, and even then they were rewritten in favor of the British. This failure to accurately portray history, believing that an audience only understands history through the spectacle of cinema gunfire and explosions and not a passionate attempt at depiction, is an insult to the intelligence of the audience. While the costumes worn by the actors were extremely accurate to the time period, it would be like calling a turd with make-up a baroque masterpiece made by a renaissance master. Excellent cinematography does not provide one with an excuse for poor writing. Spectacle is no substitute for substance. Napoleon is a historically inauthentic and artistically disingenuous attempt at profiting off enjoyers of history.