By CYNTHIA BIDDLECOMB
Los Alamos

“Napoleon” – Director Ridley Scott’s latest film – is worth viewing if only for period details and epic battle scenes. The film attempts to be a biopic about Napoleon Bonaparte. Indeed, in case we missed the point, his dying words are quoted at the end: “France… Army… Josephine,” three loves, perhaps in that order, which appear to have motivated this complex character.

Joaquin Phoenix (2020 Best Actor Oscar for Joker) plays Bonaparte as a quintessential outsider from the French island of Corsica, an officer with a flair for military strategy, a clumsy and often petulant lover, a loyal Frenchman fed up with the fools trying to govern after a messy revolution. He wins the loyalty of his troops, if not, initially, of his wife Josephine. When his popularity forces him into leadership of the nation, he puts the crown on his own head.

We are given an overview of this period of European history (1793-1815) in the film, it’s shifting trade and military alliances. War was the order of the day, one multilateral alliance battling another. Napoleon was a man of his era, a soldier to his very core. As he leads his country against competing trade alliances, he leads them into wars on many fronts. For Ridley Scott to choose which of Napoleon’s 61 battles to reenact must have been difficult; showing consistent clues as to Bonaparte’s personality was obviously challenging, too.

Opposite Joaquin Phoenix is Vanessa Kirby (Princess Margaret in The Crown 2016-18). She plays Josephine de Beauharnais, a widowed duchess when Bonaparte meets her. He is taken with her beauty and after many faux pas, convinces her to marry him. She seems captivated by his strength and focus; there is evidence of an inner kindness in him which she glimpses early on. Though it was a marriage of devotion, it was a troubled and emotionally co-dependent one.

Napoleon the film is 158 minutes in length, taking us quickly through those 22 eventful years. The passage of time is not clearly marked in the visuals. Captions help by giving the year or the name of the event being portrayed. Just when we start to learn more about what makes Napoleon the man tick—like when his mother comes to the palace to guide him—the film shifts to an apparently more interesting battle.

On a positive note, one must admit that this movie is beautifully shot. Epic battle scenes are staged with thousands of extras, horses, and cannons. In the palaces and chateaux sumptuous gowns, suits, and uniforms are worn by the surviving aristocracy. The film is a visual feast.

However, Napoleon is “Rated R for strong violence, some grisly images, sexual content and brief language.” Indeed, the historical stage is set, as the film opens, with the beheading of Marie Antoinette. (It’s just a prop, folks, that bleeding, detached head.)

Whatever one thinks of this film, it must be said that the viewer will likely leave the theater with more questions about Bonaparte and European history than they had going in.