Film Reviews: Napoleon & Fallen Leaves

It’s All About Love—it’s the Movies.

Napoleon & Fallen Leaves

By Marc Glassman

Napoleon

Ridley Scott, director

David Scarpa, script

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix (Napoleon Bonaparte), Vanessa Kirby (Empress Josephine), Rupert Everett (Duke of Wellington), Ian McNeice (King Louis XVIII), Tahar Rahim (Paul Barras), Ben Miles (Caulaincourt), Ludivine Sagnier (Madame Tallen), Paul Rhys (Talleyrand)

If you have any doubts as to whether Ridley Scott, the director of Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and quite a few less memorable films, still has the strength and ability to make an epic portrait of Napoleon, you should ask the 85-year-old yourself. Who better than the raging octogenarian to judge his efforts? In recently published interviews, Scott is feisty and foul-mouthed in his vociferous objections to any criticisms of his new film and its historic accuracy. When confronted with the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte wasn’t at the execution of Marie-Antoinette, the startling opening scene of the film, Scott is reported to reply, “Were you bloody there?” 

Scott is making a point, of course. His Napoleon represents an interpretation he’s made, with the aid of script-writer David Scarpa, actor Joaquin Phoenix and the requisite cast and crew of hundreds of dedicated professionals. But to what end? Scott’s Napoleon, played moodily and with a lumberingly deep American accent by Phoenix, is only convincing as the leader of France and conqueror of the majority of Europe, when he is seen in battle. As a military man, Napoleon has always been acknowledged as a genius, and Scott agrees. But as a politician and a skilled manipulator of women and men, he’s seen as awkward, inarticulate and rude. Is this truly the Emperor Napoleon who transformed the wayward power of the French Revolution into a force that could take over Spain, Italy, and the Austrian Empire in less than a decade? 

Scott’s Napoleon is practically an idiot savant, a coarse figure from Corsica, who commands a room by being sincerely out of place. Phoenix is the perfect actor for this version of Bonaparte: a man who is never happy in his own skin. And yet, much of the film is set in the boudoir, with Napoleon shown to be an unskilled lover, powerful like a bull, but way too fast and excitable. His love for Josephine appears to be a mismatch at first, with the beautiful, sophisticated aristocrat seemingly more amused by Bonaparte than in love with him.

Despite the film’s great running time—2 hours, 38 minutes—Napoleon is shown to have only one major relationship, with Josephine. We don’t find out much about his military friends—Lannes, Duroc, Junot, Ney—or his family, whom he made aristocrats—Louis, Joseph, Pauline—or Talleyrand, his most skillful diplomat. It’s all about his overwhelming love for a woman, who is charming and attractive but hardly—pardon the contemporary term—a goddess. As played by Vanessa Kirby, she’s likeable but we never get a sense of her inner life. Scott’s narrative insists that, at some point, Josephine fell in love with Napoleon but it’s never clear when that took place. 

The tragedy in Napoleon seems to be less about Waterloo and more about the sad fact that Josephine couldn’t bear him any babies. This led to their divorce in 1810 and his marriage to Marie Louise, who did produce a boy, Napoleon II (who died in his early 20s). Despite the second marriage, Scott’s story follows the legend that Napoleon continued to love Josephine—and that this ill-fated romance is the defining relationship in the Emperor’s life. It may be true, but despite the best efforts of Phoenix and Kirby, there are few sparks between the two, and it’s hard to care about their marriage.

There’s more to Napoleon than love and diplomacy, of course, and that’s in the battles. The film has exceptional scenes of combat that emphasize the brutality of war while still being mesmerizingly attractive to watch. The greatest of the war scenes may be the one at Austerlitz, where Napoleon’s army destroyed the combined forces of Austria and Russia in a fierce wintry battle, with the French cannons forcing many of the enemy foot soldiers to plunge to their deaths in broken ice. Though this account is not historically accurate—sorry, Ridley, there are many diaries and reports from that day—the image of red blood pouring out of broken bodies upward to the top of freezing waters is disturbingly beautiful.  

Scott is right on his game in the other major scenes of mortal combat. From Napoleon’s first victory at Toulon through his abysmal failure in Moscow to the extraordinary combat at Waterloo, the sequences involving warfare are impeccably staged and shot. It’s hard to be stirred by old-fashioned battles after viewing the extraordinary special effects regularly deployed in super-hero and science-fiction films, but Ridley Scott’s team has pulled it off—these are eye-catching set pieces. 

Is Napoleon a success? Not really. But those battle scenes are extraordinary, and Phoenix does his best in a role that doesn’t truly suit him. Maybe the truth of this film’s ultimate failure is too basic to believe. Don’t allow an old Brit to tell the story of a great Frenchman. He’s bound to get it wrong. 

Fallen Leaves

Aki Kaurismaki, director & writer

Starring: Alma Poysti (Ansa), Jussi Vatanen (Holappa), Janne Hyytiainen (Huotari), Nappu Koivu (Liisa), Alina Tomnikov (Tonja), Sherwan Haji (Parakin asukas)

Not everyone who watches an Aki Kaurismaki film will love it. The very tall (nearly 6 ft. 5 in.) director may be the nearest thing to a national cinema treasure in Finland but some people don’t get his poker-faced sensibility at all. That’s the thing about Kaurismaki: you must appreciate deadpan humour to find his films enjoyable. He’s an acquired taste like anchovies, or kimchi or scotch whiskey. Put it another way: he’s the Buster Keaton of contemporary art house cinema—and behind his façade of indifference lurks a very human heart.

Fallen Leaves is Kaurisamki’s first film since before the pandemic when he had announced his retirement. It’s great to see him back and to once again encounter his strange mixture of melodrama, comedy, cinephilia, and appreciation of working-class Finns, who make up a considerable swath of Helsinki’s population. Kaurismaki is a precise filmmaker, whose style is terse and direct; he doesn’t allow frills to clutter up the screen while keeping up such a swift pace that his films—including this one–rarely clock in at even 90 minutes.

Kaurismaki’s film has done very well since it premiered at Cannes, where it picked up the Jury Prize. Since then, Fallen Leaves has garnered the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and is Finland’s nominee for the best foreign-language Oscar. It is a love story set in the factories, hospitals and small retail shops of a Finland that may be socialist but is hardly overwhelmingly prosperous. 

Holappa is a factory worker, so bored that he stashes liquor bottles in his workplace and takes a swig whenever he can. He lives in an industrial area filled with abandoned oversized shipping containers, which he and a couple of friends have made up to be their homes. One evening, he and his buddy Huotari head off for drinks at a karaoke bar where they meet Liisa and Ansa, who have just been fired from jobs at a grocery store for attempting to sneak out stale-dated food, which should be discarded, not eaten. Holappa and Ansa hit it off and agree to meet to see a film, Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die. 

They have a good enough time that Ansa gives Holappa her phone number and full name, but he promptly loses it. Far once, Holappa isn’t indifferent, so he decides to haunt the cinema where they’d seen the Jarmusch film in hopes of finding Ansa. This allows Kaurismaki to indulge in his love of classic cinema, allowing for references to Lean’s sad and romantic Brief Encounter and even some great Robert Bresson films. Eventually, Ansa does come back to the cinema, and they finally have that second date—but this is Kaurismaki, so the course of true love will never be smooth.

What’s interesting is that Kaurismaki actually gives Ansa and Holappa a real problem: his incipient alcoholism. Since hard drinking and actual alcoholism is a huge issue in Finland, where the nights are long, winter is endless and hard liquor is easily available, Kaurismaki has the characters struggle with a situation that likely happens all too frequently in Finland. (As to some extent it does here in Canada.) Here, the director has tipped the scales away from his “am I kidding?” approach into making you care about the characters and their situation. It’s a wise choice.

Kaurismaki has cast two fine actors, Alma Poysti (Ansa) and Jussi Vatanen (Holappa), as his leads. They’re remarkably persuasive, playing their often-fraught situations with a couple of straight faces while including a certain lightness in their performances. Adding to the drama of their life choices is that Ansa and Holappa are middle-aged; a life of loneliness beckons if they can’t figure out a way to make their lives work. 

Aki Kaurismaki’s international reputation was made decades ago with his so-called Proletarian Trilogy, consisting of Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988) and The Match Factory Girl (1990). Fallen Leaves returns Kaurismaki and his audience to those terrific films. While some people may not love this film, there will be people worldwide who will embrace the Finnish auteur’s return to form.