Napoleon’s dialogue isn’t ‘laughably bad’ – it’s supposed to be that way

Ridley Scott’s new epic has divided critics and audiences, with some detractors taking aim at the film’s screenplay. If you’re laughing in mockery at some of the goofier moments in ‘Napoleon’, you may be missing the joke, writes Louis Chilton

An emperor sanguine: Phoenix as the titular military commander in ‘Napoleon’ (Apple TV+)

Napoleon has conquered and Napoleon has divided. The historical epic, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the war-waging leader of France, has proved a somewhat unexpected hit at the box office since its release last week, surging past Disney’s Wish to take the No 1 spot globally. Reactions, though, have been decidedly mixed. The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey described it as “full of verve, spectacle and machismo” in a four-star review, while The Washington Post awarded it one-and-a-half stars, writing that it feels in stretches “like a mash-up of Leo Tolstoy, Edward Albee and Wikipedia”. These responses are pretty much of a piece with much of Scott’s late-career output, which has inspired adulation and derision in roughly equal measure. House of Gucci was largely ridiculed; The Last Duel was mostly vaunted. Alien: Covenant and All the Money in the World split critics down the middle.

Dissenters have generally focused on a few choice aspects of Napoleon. For one, there’s the dubious matter of historical accuracy; wholly invented scenes such as Napoleon’s army firing ballistics into the Egyptian pyramids have faced particular scrutiny. Scott’s own response to this furore has been unperturbed. (“When I have issues with historians, I ask: ‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the f*** up then.’”) For others, the problems with the film aren’t so much ethical as aesthetic: a quick scroll through social media will uncover no end of cinemagoers carping about Napoleon’s “unintentionally hilarious” dialogue. All opinions are valid, of course – but the idea that the screenplay’s comedy is unintentional couldn’t be wider of the mark.

Ultimately, Phoenix’s Napoleon is a figure in whose flaws we are invited to revel. To observe, to condemn – and to laugh at