Around 30 minutes into Ridley Scott's new historical epic, "Napoleon," I realized the sly old genius had completely tricked the studios, audiences and producers about what kind of movie he was making, with possibly only his writer, David Scarpa, and his two lead actors, Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby, in on the joke. See, "Napoleon," for all its graphically staged battle scenes and dramatically rendered monologues, is actually a comedy. A dark and violent comedy with thematic depth deep enough to drown in.
Since 1965, Ridley Scott has directed 28 features, one short film, dozens of commercials and one episode of television while producing countless shows and movies. He never stops working, and I would be shocked if he didn't eventually pass away (hopefully decades from now) on a film set. He's made a few of the greatest movies of all time, several downright awful ones and a few that rest comfortably in mediocrity. But even the biggest failures of his career are MASSIVE failures; ones that still deserve to be studied for the things that he does beautifully, even in the midst of a complete dumpster fire.
If you asked me my top five and bottom five of his films, it would probably go like this:
Top Five: "Alien," the Final Cut of "Blade Runner," the Director's Cut of "Kingdom of Heaven," the Extended Cut of "The Counselor" and a fat three-way tie between "The Martian" "Gladiator" and "Black Hawk Down."
Bottom Five: "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Exodus: Gods and Kings," "Robin Hood," "House of Gucci" and the theatrical version of "The Counselor."
But here's the thing about filmmakers of Scott's talent and prodigious output: most other people will have different top fives and bottom fives. I know people who love his "House of Gucci," which contains very solid performances from Lady Gaga and Adam Driver and a tone-deaf script with a lopsided structure and a career-worst performance from Jared Leto. Simultaneously, Scott's "The Last Duel," one of his late career masterpieces, came out only a month earlier and absolutely no one saw it.
For a director of Scott's talent, it's a telling indictment of Hollywood that it appears he doesn't always get final cut on his films. The different cuts of "Blade Runner" add an ambiguity and mystery to the film that was missing (mostly connected to whether Deckard is a replicant) and it's so much more memorable for it. The director's cut of "Kingdom of Heaven" adds 45 minutes of character motivations and intrigue, thus making the forgettable historical epic focused on the Crusades into a brilliant and heartrending mosaic of the failures of religious war. When "The Counselor" came out in 2013 it was borderline incomprehensible, with a ton of the criticism lobbed at the script by the great Cormac McCarthy, but the Extended Cut adds a priceless 20 minutes of excised McCarthy dialogue, creating one of the unlikeliest and most fascinating crime thrillers of the 21st Century so far.
Now, with" Napoleon," we're getting more of the same, except this theatrical version is a damn delight. Clocking in at 157 minutes, it's certainly not a short film, but none of it feels wasted. With most of the runtime focused on Napoleon's relationship with his wife Josephine (the amazing Vanessa Kirby), the film plays as a weirdly horny romance about two mostly broken people trying to love each other on their own terms, while also balancing their intimacy with the needs of the French aristocracy. Pheonix channels slapstick silent film stars like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, while Kirby crafts a timeless mystique reminiscent of the best of Elizabeth Taylor.
But that's not all: coming soon to AppleTV+ is the Director's Cut of "Napoleon," which apparently will run around 250 minutes. That's a massive film, but based on the strength of Scott's previous Director's Cuts, I think he's earned the benefit of the doubt. A lot of people aren't going to like "Napoleon" because it doesn't really do any of the things advertised. Scott's film cares way more about being a subversively funny historical romance along the lines of Paul Thomas Anderson's "Phantom Thread" or Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" than it does being a historically accurate epic adventure about conquest and leadership.
Sir Ridley Scott has definitely made some bad movies, but after just "Alien" and "Blade Runner," I think he gets a lifetime pass. He proves with "Napoleon" that he doesn't care about making another stolid historical adventure like the turgid "Robin Hood" or the career-worst misfire of "Exodus: Gods and Kings." "Napoleon" is a strange wonder that deserves to be seen on its own terms, instead of what Apple's marketing machine wants audiences to think it is. Maybe with expectations in check, people will get on the bonkers wavelength of "Napoleon," but more likely it will have the same strange half-life as "Blade Runner:" completely ignored upon release and then finally reappraised a few decades later.
