‘You think you’re so great because you have boats!‘
Ridley Scott has become a miserable old fuck in his dotage. The British cinema legend is 86 years old and studios keep throwing money at him to indulge whatever mad whim he happens to have dreamed up that week. 2021 brought both The Last Duel (excellent) and House of Gucci (dogshit) and he returned in 2023 with a biopic of Napoleon (imaginatively titled Napoleon). When quizzed about the various historical inaccuracies in the film, Scott replied that historians should ‘Get a life’. Tremendous…
Despite clocking in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, Napoleon is something of a whistle-stop tour through the life of the famed French emperor as the little fella did do a lot of stuff in his 51 years on earth. Here, Bony is portrayed by a wild-eyed and brilliant Joaquin Phoenix and Scott chooses to view the life of his subject through the prism of his relationship with his long-suffering wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). This leads to some of the least sensual sex scenes in the history of cinema but it all adds to the rich and frankly bizarre tapestry that makes up Scott’s latest opus.
What is clear from Napoleon is that even now, at what is surely the end of Scott’s directing career, he still knows how to create an action sequence. The various battles here are beautifully presented (and beautifully over the top and overwrought) and as well as the performances of Phoenix and Kirby, both of whom are excellent, help ensure that Napoleon is a surprisingly entertaining film. This is no stuffy biopic as Scott’s disdain for historians suggests.
Napoleon is a showcase for the talents of Scott and his cast rather than an attempt to understand the man behind the myth. Indeed, this film is more legend than history book and it’s all the better for it. After three films in three years, Scott can enjoy a well-deserved break… oh, what’s that? He’s now finishing up a sequel to Gladiator that involves sharks swimming around in the colosseum Of course, he is. Never change, Ridley.