[COLUMN] Ridley Scott's Napoleon is a Chaotic Study of a Chaotic Man | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

For decades, Napoleon Bonaparte has fascinated Hollywood filmmakers. It feels oddly appropriate that director Ridley Scott should be the first modern director to bring an adaptation to screen.

According to computer scientists Charles Ward and Steven Skiena, Napoleon is the second most important person in history, behind only Jesus Christ. Critic Michael Dirda recalled reading that “there are more biographical works about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other man in history.” More modest observers might simply suggest Napoleon was “the best general ever.” As Darrin McMahon argued, the Great Man Theory of History was “incarnated in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Of course, there have been plenty of cinematic takes on the notorious French leader. In 1927, director Abel Gance did justice to the legendary figure with his silent epic Napoleon. Befitting its subject, Napoleon was an incredibly vast piece of work in every sense of that word. The original cut ran to six hours and was shot in Polyvision, creating a frame that was effectively the width of three widescreen panes. Much like its subject matter, Gance’s Napoleon was larger than life.

There were subsequent historical epics focusing on the French Emperor. Indeed, Napoleon seemed to generate a feverish devotion in those filmmakers who tried to bring his life to screen. Gance would revisit the icon for Austerlitz in 1960, focusing on the eponymous battle. Soviet filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk directed the War and Peace tetralogy in 1966-1967 and revisited the Napoleonic Wars with Waterloo in 1970. However, most of these projects originated outside of Hollywood.

Within Hollywood, legendary director Stanley Kubrick famously spent decades trying to bring his version of Napoleon to the screen. Although it never came to fruition, that dream casts a long shadow over the second half of Kubrick’s filmography. When Napoleon stalled, Kubrick saw Barry Lyndon as an opportunity to use a lot of the research he had already completed. He had planned on casting Jack Nicholson in the title role, and would go on to work with Nicholson on The Shining.

In its own weird way, Kubrick’s Napoleon outlived the director. Recently, Kubrick’s close friend Steven Spielberg announced plans to adapt the planned film into a television miniseries at HBO. There is something fitting in this. Looking back over the history of cinema, Napoleon almost seems too big to be contained within a simple cinematic narrative. Certainly, he seems a subject too vast and too complex to ever have been digestible to Kubrick’s obsessively detail-oriented approach.

Ridley Scott has never been daunted by the logistical challenges of the task at hand. While his output varies in quality, he gets the job done. He shot Napoleon in just 62 days. He has pointed out that he has made four films in the time it took Martin Scorsese to make Killers of the Flower Moon. The most impressive thing about All the Money in the World has nothing to do with the film’s quality, it’s the fact that Scott was able to replace Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer without breaking a sweat.

A large part of Scott’s charm comes from the sense that he’s a director who likes to get things done and isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers along the way. It’s not a surprise that Scott’s Napoleon is a bumpy ride. Even if Scott hadn’t confirmed the existence of a four-hour director’s cut, the theatrical version would feel like a two-and-three-quarter hour epic that had been cut to the bone. Napoleon is constantly rushing, breezing over key dramatic beats because there’s so much ground to cover.

Ridley Scott is a very different filmmaker than Stanley Kubrick. When the question comes up, Scott has dismissed direct comparisons between the film that he made and the film that Kubrick would have made. “Mine has nothing to do with Stanley,” he told Deadline. Certainly, the film looks and feels like a Ridley Scott movie, down to its use of heavy color-grading over digital cinematography. Yet, watching the finished film, one gets a sense of what drew Kubrick and Scott to their subject.

Over the course of their careers, Kubrick and Scott repeatedly returned to the idea proposed by philosopher Thomas Hobbes that the natural state of humankind is a perpetual “war of all against all”, with civilization serving as something of a bulwark against that brutality. Both directors return repeatedly to the ideas of violence and warfare. Kubrick made multiple films against the backdrop of war, including Paths to Glory, Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket.

Scott has also made his share of war movies, including Black Hawk Down. Scott’s Gladiator is a film about violence as public spectacle, beginning with an epic battle and then delving into more socially acceptable expressions of brutality. Napoleon marks something of a return to Scott’s roots. His first feature film was The Duelists, depicting a duel during the Napoleonic Wars. The subject seems to be on his mind in these later years. His second-to-last film was The Last Duel. These are stories about socially acceptable frameworks for violence.

Beginning in 1792, Napoleon finds France in the throes of Revolution. In its opening sequence, Marie Antoinette (Catherine Walker) is escorted to the guillotine. The crowd roars for blood. It is anarchy. The laws of civilized society have been suspended. The weapons of executed officials are stored in huge vaults with no system to keep track of it all. There is no sense of established order, there is just a swirling vortex of chaos. In these surroundings, violence isn’t just accepted – it’s encouraged.

Marie Josèphe de La Pagerie (Vanessa Kirby), who will take the name Josèphine, is introduced among a mass of prisoners left to rot unattended in a Paris dungeon. Under Robespierre (Sam Troughton), the citizen government frequently lapses into brawls. When challenged about his methods, Robespierre draws a pistol on his adversaries. Overwhelmed, he presses it to his own neck in a botched suicide attempt. This is what passes for leadership in the midst of the Revolution.

Napoleon presents its protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix) as a man perfectly suited to that particular moment. He seems far more at home in this carnage than he does among civilized society. “I am not built like other men,” he muses at one point. At times, he seems to simply play at being one. Napoleon first meets Josèphine at a fancy-dress party, wearing his military uniform. His future wife seems to see right through him, “What is this costume you have on?”

Throughout Napoleon, the character behaves like an animal or a petulant child. When the British demur his attempts at an alliance, he rages, “You think you’re so great, just because you have boats!” At dinner, he throws food across the table to demonstrate his frustration. He smashes glasses in fits of pique. During his wedding to Josèphine, he cannot even sign the official documents without pawing at her. They don’t make love, he ruts like an animal.

Napoleon is the ultimate disrupter. He moves fast and breaks things. Napoleon does not exist in a state of grace. During his coup with Jean de Cambacérès (Julian Wadham), he is chased down the stairs so fast that he trips and falls over himself. On his trip to Egypt, he manhandles the mummy that the locals display to him. His adversaries describe him as “a Corsican Thug.” Even the act of naming himself Emperor confers little respect or credibility.

There is something timely in this depiction of Napoleon as a ruler whose vulgarity is no block – and may even be an asset – on his ascent to power. This version of Napoleon is a man with good instincts and an understanding of warfare, but without any social savvy. It often seems like that offends his opponents more than anything. “This vermin has held the world hostage with his egotism and his lack of simple good manners,” laments Arthur Wellesley (Rupert Everett), the Duke of Wellington.

Intentionally or not, Napoleon repeatedly evokes Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, another 18th century period piece. Court politician Talleyrand (Paul Rhys) makes backroom deals in the sorts of gambling dens frequented by Barry (Ryan O’Neal) and the Chevalier (Patrick Magee). Several scenes are lit by candlelight. Barry Lyndon is largely a study of how the rigid manners and meticulous rules of this seemingly restrained and disciplined society belie an inherent brutality. Even if both men end their lives in exile, Napoleon navigates this society better than Barry because he understands that barely-concealed violence.

For the dictator, the norms of civil society are as thin as the layer of ice over the lake at Austerlitz, and as easily fractured. Napoleon isn’t constrained by structures. Instead, he exploits them. Repeatedly in Napoleon, the character succeeds by turning institutions against themselves. He gains notoriety by seizing the British fort at Toulon, turning its cannons on the British ships in the harbor. Later, he quells a Royalist revolt by turning France’s weapons against its citizens. He secures power by marching soldiers into the halls of governance.

Working with screenwriter David Scarpa, Scott deconstructs the mythology of “the Great Man Theory of History.” The film suggests that Napoleon emerged at the perfect moment. There’s an optimism in how Europe rallies to protect itself. When Napoleon marches on Russia, Tsar Alexander I (Édouard Philipponnat) opts to abandon and burn Moscow rather than allow Napoleon to occupy it and use it as a staging ground. He leaves Napoleon an empty palace and a throne covered in bird droppings.

At the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington’s patience trumps Napoleon’s impulsiveness. Wellington refuses to let a sharpshooter execute Napoleon from across the battlefield because “generals on the battlefield have better things to do than to shoot each other.” Instead, the British infantry hold firm in square formations, letting Napoleon’s cavalry break against them. This, coupled with Napoleon’s decision to delay battle to let the ground dry, buys Wellington time for the Prussian support to arrive.

Scott’s Napoleon is somewhat (and perhaps surprisingly) optimistic. Napoleon was a challenge to the established order of Europe. He was a rejection of social norms, demonstrating that raw power and brute force could bend almost anything to their will. At a time when democratic norms are similarly threatened around the world, often by would-be dictators with the same thuggish temperament as this Napoleon, there’s something reassuring in the belief that institutions can withstand such siege.

Scott’s Napoleon is not a grand and sweeping narrative of history. In its current state, it’s an often fractured and fragmented film. This is likely a result of trying to condense its subject’s life into a single cohesive narrative, but it ties back to the movie’s central themes. Like Oppenheimer earlier this year, Napoleon is a film that seems to argue that history is not shaped by great men, but that exceptional ones can find themselves swept up in (and eventually abandoned by) it.

Napoleon is not an exercise in mythmaking. It’s not a Stanley Kubrick film, the product of decades of meticulous planning and careful consideration. Instead, it’s a Ridley Scott film, the messy result of a sharp mind in the right place at the right time to get the job done.