A quarter of a century after Gladiator, the laurel wreath still suits Joaquin Phoenix just as well. Ridley Scott transforms the American actor into Napoleon Bonaparte. The Alien director unveiled an epic first trailer for the biopic on Tuesday, due in theaters this fall on November 22, before arriving on Apple TV.
A whirlwind of balls and battle scenes – notably the Egyptian campaign – this montage opens with the year 1793 in the midst of the Terror. A young captain witnesses an execution by guillotine in the midst of an agitated crowd (is it that of Marie Antoinette?). Shortly after, MP Barras – played by Tahar Rahim – put him in charge of the siege of Toulon, in the midst of a royalist uprising. The beginning of a series of victories and flashes of strategic genius that will upset the established order in Europe. “I am destined for great things even if for the moment those in power only see me as a sword”, professed a young general Bonaparte.
A project dear to the heart of Ridley Scott who devoted years of development to it, Napoleon intends to examine the political and military rise of the future Emperor of the French through the volatile and exacerbated passion between the Corsican and his first wife, the aristocrat Joséphine de Beauharnais. This is camped by an imperious and dominating Vanessa Kirby. The choice of the Briton, revealed by The Crown, has been decried. The Mission Impossible star is 35. Eight less than Joaquin Phoenix when in reality it was the opposite. Joséphine de Beauharnais was seven years older than her husband. From the top of his 48 years, Joaquin Phoenix has the face a little too marked to embody a Napoleon of barely 24 years old. Its gravity better suits the character of the 1800s.
The trailer, which reveals images of the coup d’etat of 18 Brumaire and the coronation immortalized by the painter David, is full of clashes filled with seduction and disdain between these two ambitious people. “What is this disguise?” Josephine taunts when they meet. “I am the winner of Toulon and this is my uniform”, retorts Bonaparte. “My life just changed course then,” she concludes. A little further: “I’m the first to admit when I make a mistake, Napoleon points out, But I’m never wrong.” “You want to be a big man but you’re just a little bully. Without me, you are nothing, ”assaults his wife.
In an interview with Deadline in 2021, Ridley Scott confided: “Napoleon is a man who has always fascinated me. He came out of nowhere to rule and conquer everything. At the same time, he was waging an intimate war against his adulterous wife Josephine. He conquered the world to try to win her love. When that proved futile, he conquered the world to destroy it, and in doing so destroyed himself.”