Mon Dieu, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? That’s whether you’re destroying the Holy Roman Empire, redrawing the borders of Europe, firing cannons at Egyptian pyramids, razing Moscow or drowning entire armies in frozen lakes.
Or indeed, finding yourself in a very needy thrall to a woman, who, despite being an aristocrat who has lost hubby number one to the guillotine, likes the cut of your low-born Corsican jib.
So, it is with Napoleon. It’s a gallop through the life of the French military genius and role model for later European genocidal maniacs, as well as a quick march through Napoleon’s passionate relationship with Joséphine de Beauharnais.
Essentially, it’s a great-man biopic delivered by old campaigner Ridley Scott, one which arrives as an initial 158-minute cinema release before a four-hour version destined for streamer Apple TV+. Presumably, it will get there long before a Steven Spielberg Napoleon mini-series for HBO based on Stanley Kubrick’s scripts for a production which died in the 1970s.
While Scott’s theatrical version is long, it’s a sharply sabred cut that eliminates any risk of boredom. Entire chapters of the very complicated French Revolution and its aftermath of coups and restorations are delivered as a highlights reel, all flapping tricolours, angry debates and death by cannonball.
Those less than au fait with late-18th and early-19th century French history probably won’t mind, though, but you might also be puzzled why everyone has it in for Monsieur Robespierre, or just where Louis XVIII has been all this time when he turns up two-thirds of the way through.
There are, thankfully, plenty of titles to explain when and where we are and just who Napoleon’s army is fighting in the imminent battle scene, even if you’re not sure why we’ve suddenly arrived in Egypt for a spot of archaeology after finishing artillery practice on the locals. It’s done with full period lavishness but it can feel a little caught between the irreverence for aristocratic period productions made fashionable by The Favourite or television’s The Great and the earnestness of Scott’s previous historical forays such as Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven or The Last Duel. And there are scenes – especially ones between Joaquin Phoenix’s Napoleon and Vanessa Kirby’s Joséphine – that feel like they are trying to break free from the glass case.
That’s evident in one electric scene in which the pair are having their marriage annulled so the now Emperor of France can sire an heir with someone else. The two actors are terrific together, the film postulating then when he lost her, Napoleon lost his mojo. Next stop, Waterloo.
And that battle is quite something, helped by the arrival of Rupert Everett as the Duke of Wellington. He makes a frightfully decent captor to Napoleon before packing him off to St Helena. If they have more time to chat in the extended version, all the better. But this cut is satisfyingly epic enough.
Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott is in cinemas now.
