When I first heard that Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix were teaming up about one of the most famous military leaders of all time I had two thoughts: This is going to be awesome and this is going to be really expensive. Unfortunately I think because of the 2nd thing this is the reason why this movie fell kind of flat with a lot of people. It currently has a 6.5 / 10 rating on IMDB and honestly, I think this is all that the film deserves.
If it weren't for the presence of Phoenix and Scott I believe that this film would be rated 1 or 2 points lower than it is, for a wide variety of reasons.
Like most people, I was forced to learn a bit about this famous French General turned emperor in my early education. All I really remembered was that he was meant to be one of the greatest military minds of all time and that he conquered much of the world and at least as I remembered it (which might not even be true) it was his own arrogance and over-extension of his "empire" that lead to his and his troops' demise.
The film kind of represents this in the battle scenes, some of which are thankfully condensed for the sake of avoiding monotony and probably to save a ton of money as well.
Herein lies one of the problems that I have with the film and it is a problem that doesn't really have any reasonable resolution. The battles that we are treated to in the film were absolutely massive undertakings in real life so how in the hell can you create a battle that involves hundreds of thousands of men on a screen without some of it, no matter how well it is shot, looking "a bit fake." This is something that frequently happens in the battle scenes and at times it can be difficult to even tell who is getting shot and killed and this may have been intentional.
The cavalry scenes in particular look less than real and again, I am not claiming that there is any way that this could have been done any better regardless of who was in charge of the cameras or how much money you threw at this project. We aren't allowed to genuinely hurt or kill horses in films, not to mention the fact that not just everyone knows how to ride a horse these days. Much like was the problem when filming Lord of the Rings, if you want 300 people riding horses, you are going to just have to take whoever is available. Many of the battle tactics of the cavalry involve the horses and their riders simply encircling an enemy that is a square-like position, round and round in circles until the men in the square formation eventually pick off the circling men on horses. In real battle the horses almost certainly would have simply charged straight through them but how can you represent this on film without spending a billion dollars on CGI or injuring some horses?
I didn't have a problem with this but a lot of other viewers did about the fact that a major focus of the overall film isn't just Napoleon's prowess as a battle tactician but it focuses very heavily on his apparently undying love for his wife Josephine. People who are expecting wall to wall action might get a bit annoyed about how much of the overall screen time is spent on this but for me this was a side of the story that I never knew. Perhaps if you grew up in a different part of the world than I did you would have been privy to this information but for me, I found this all very interesting because it was totally new information to me. I found it extremely touching and nice and according to several sources that I have found online, the way it is presented in the film is extremely accurate to real life.
Another thing that I found amusing but might annoy certain wannabe or actual critics is the fact that unless I missed it somehow, nary a word of French is spoken by anyone throughout the entire film. Austrian and Russian is spoken and I think I heard some Italian in there as well but everyone in France sounds like the are from midwest USA. For many, such as myself, this movie would have been better with a French cast but I can completely understand why they would be hesitant to throw $200 million at a film that has to be watched with subtitles. Americans are famously lazy as far as this is concerned and very few films in a foreign language have succeeded in making money in US cinemas. The only exceptions that I can think of off the top of my head is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Parasite.
If you want Joaquin Phoenix in a film it's going to have to be in English. Without his and Ridley Scott's name on the adverts, I don't think very many people would have gone to go and see it. Even in English this movie failed to break even once we consider advertising and marketing, so I hope they end up making a ton of money off of selling it to streaming services.
Just a personal note, but I feel as though there are still elements of The Joker in Phoenix's acting as he portrays Napoleon Bonaparte. Maybe he put so much of himself into that role that it has simply become a part of him now.
Should I watch it?
Even though I enjoyed the film because I was sober, started it at the perfect hour of 8:30PM and was ready for anything, I could still understand why a lot of people would find this film less than captivating. There are a lot of things to dislike about the movie and the absence of it being at all French is part of it. I was able to look past that and realize that it was necessary in order to justify the massive investment a movie of this scale would require. That being said, people need to prepare themselves for the fact that this movie is 50% love story and many might not expect that or enjoy it. For me it was great but as far as appealing to wider audience is concerned I think a lot of people are going to get bored and end up switching it off before it finishes. Combine this with the fact that if you paid attention in history class at all you already know the ending, and we have a film that isn't going to appeal to everyone.
currently the only legal way to watch this film is in cinemas. It will certainly be digitally released on AppleTV+ since it is an Apple production. The release date has not been made official as of the time of me writing