MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

Considering what a major figure in world history he was, I don’t remember ever seeing a proper biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte before. Most people know the basics of Napoleon’s life – he was born in Corsica in 1769, and rapidly ascended the ranks of the French army, showcasing his tactical brilliance in various campaigns. In 1799 he seized power in France in a coup, and later in 1804 crowned himself Emperor. Napoleon had a fractious political relationship with England – and indeed with most of the rest of Europe – for most of his life, and he subsequently engaged in many battles during what became known as the Napoleonic Wars. His victory at Austerlitz in 1805 established him as a military genius, but his ambition for European dominance led to a costly and disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, which eventually resulted in his abdication and exile to the island of Elba in 1814. He briefly returned to power later that year, but suffered a final defeat by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and he was ultimately exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. During this time Napoleon also engaged in a torrid love affair with the aristocratic widow Josephine de Beauharnais, who eventually became his wife.

Director Ridley Scott’s latest film Napoleon attempts to tell much of this life story in an almost three-hour movie, although historians have somewhat savagely criticized the film for numerous glaring inaccuracies that Scott and his screenwriter David Scarpa made in the service of ‘better drama’. Whatever the case may be there, it is certainly a handsomely-mounted film, an old-fashioned epic filled with massive battle sequences, lavish period opulence, and a sense of scale that most modern films tend to avoid. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon and Vanessa Kirby as Josephine, and boasts an impressive supporting cast that includes Tahar Rahim, Rupert Everett, Ben Miles, and Ludivine Sagnier.

Ridley Scott has always had a somewhat peculiar relationship with film music. Many of his previous films ended up having their scores changed, being replaced with classical music, or having cues moved around to places in the film that the composer did not intend – often with the composer having no input into these final decisions. It happened to Jerry Goldsmith several times, on Alien in 1979, and on Legend in 1985. It partially happened to Vangelis on Blade Runner in 1982, and then after a fairly successful run involving Hans Zimmer through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, it happened to Marc Streitenfeld on Prometheus in 2012, and then to Alberto Iglesias on Exodus: Gods and Kings in 2014. In recent years Scott has enjoyed decent working relationships with both Harry Gregson-Williams and Daniel Pemberton, jumping between them on alternate films, but for Napoleon Scott turned to a new musical collaborator; Englishman Martin Phipps, who is best known internationally for his work on the hit TV series The Crown.

Phipps’s approach to scoring Napoleon is somewhat anachronistic. He takes the essences of what one would expect from the music for this type of historical epic – large orchestral and choral forces, acknowledgements to the style and character of period classical music, some references to the folk music of Napoleon’s Corsican heritage, romance for the love story, action for the battle sequences – but then takes them to unexpected tonal and dramatic places that follow Scott’s determination to portray Napoleon as a rough, brusque commoner coming in to shake up the French aristocracy. In an interview with Deadline, Phipps revealed that Scott wanted him “to understand that Napoleon was a character and that he was an outsider. He wasn’t a polished aristocrat like many of the officers were in the army, and that’s, in fact, why he escaped the guillotine – because he was a low-ranking aristocrat. And he wanted [him] to represent that in music.”

The main theme for Napoleon, which has a melody remarkably similar to Nino Rota’s The Godfather, is introduced in the opening cue, “Napoleon’s Piano,” and quickly moves on from its initial performance (on a detuned-sounding piano that was actually once owned by Napoleon himself) through subsequent restatements for mandolin, accordion, and vocals. The melody is intended to be indicative of the Corsican folk music that Napoleon would have heard as a child, and the performed lyrics have some element of the Corsican language to them. It’s a lovely, memorable theme – haunting, lyrical – and it seeps through a lot of the rest of the score; it receives an especially excellent second rendition for woodwinds and accordion in “Ladies in Waiting,” for example.

The theme for Napoleon’s long-time love, Josephine, is introduced in the cue bearing her name, and is in many ways the tonal flipside of Napoleon: whereas his music is provincial and based on peasant folk songs, Josephine’s theme is a courtly waltz – elegant, pretty, refined, capturing her aristocratic heritage and her stunning beauty. Her theme sways prettily in formal time, and is usually carried by delicate strings backed by a harp, plucked bass, gentle woodwinds, and occasionally a soft choir. Interestingly, in that opening cue, Josephine’s theme dances around amid instrumental and melodic allusions to Napoleon’s theme, almost like a courtship, deftly suggesting their mutual attraction and their intertwined fates.

Later, in “Look Down,” Phipps moves blends the two themes together as a whimsical duet for pianoforte and accordion. One could say that perhaps this theme for Napoleon and Josephine – which, in the history books, is depicted as a love for the ages – is perhaps a little underwhelming when it comes to conveying the depth and passion of their relationship, but I quite like the unconventional nature of it; it sort of fits in with the depiction of Napoleon as a man who is completely out of his depth everywhere except on the field of battle, and who is especially overwhelmed by Josephine’s independence and sexual forthrightness.

The film’s numerous action sequences are typified by more exciting and intense music, representing some of the most satisfying music of this type in Phipps’s career. He is not a composer known for his large-scale orchestral outbursts, but his efforts here have an impressive amount of weight and depth. What I like about the different action sequences is that they all seem to have a different flavor. “Toulon,” which underscores the 1793 Siege of Toulon where a young Napoleon first indicates his genius for military strategy, is a strident piece for low, blatting brass and menacing, churning cellos. The cue gradually picks up some anachronistic but dramatic-sounding electronic textures in its second half, as well as an unusual ‘humming chorus’ meant to emulate the war songs of the soldiers under Napoleon’s command, and who are cleverly singing elements of his theme.

“Soldiers of the 5th Regiment” again sees the male voice choir humming Napoleon’s theme over the top of an insistent and interestingly varied percussion pattern, while in “We Are Discovered” – which underscores the pivotal 1805 Battle of Austerlitz were Napoleon successfully outsmarted the combined Austrian and Russian armies by trapping them on a frozen lake – Phipps slowly builds out of a bed of groaning strings and tapped percussion, into something gritty, brutal, almost animalistically intense. The Hans Zimmer-style brass ‘braaams’ may make some listeners roll their eyes (and, I admit, I would have preferred Phipps to go down a different route), but its effectiveness at creating an atmosphere of powerful dread cannot be denied.

The harpsichord and string writing in “Make the Rain Stop” is almost comically baroque, essentially a parody of period classical music, and then when the staccato choir comes in during the second half of the cue it almost elicits a wry smile from the listener; this music is as uncomfortably flamboyant as Napoleon feels when he is forced to adorn decorative finery as opposed to his favored military uniform. Similarly, the heraldic brass and percussion writing in “First Counsel” accompanies Napoleon’s first appearance as the new Emperor of France with an appropriately regal, but perhaps intentionally overly-pompous, sound.

The first signs of trouble for Napoleon come in “Russia,” where his ill-judged and ultimately devastating attack on the forces of Tsar Alexander I resulted in terrible losses for the French, and sent Napoleon home with his tail between his legs; insistent electronic pulses and eerie sound design tones combine with heavy string textures and staccato vocals in both French and Russian, creating an atmosphere of unease and tension. The subsequent “Return to France” has the tone of a funeral march, and sees the choir in two parts: one half exclaiming mournful syllables, the other singing angelically, while the harpsichord frantically dances underneath. Everything culminates in the “Waterloo Requiem” – Napoleon’s final, ignominious defeat to the Duke of Wellington and the combined forces of the Seventh Coalition –which sees Phipps going into full-on orchestral elegy mode, an array of searching strings that lament the end of Napoleon’s career and reign as Emperor.

Two unusual cues worth noting are “Austerlitz Kyrie” and “Downfall,” both of which are pieces performed by Ensemble Organum, an ‘early music’ vocal group specializing in music from the medieval period. Their dramatic, intense, sometimes overwhelming layered vocals are steeped in sacred Latin church music, and when Phipps combines their sound with subtle electronic tones (as in the former) or more strident orchestral passages (as in the latter), the effect is startlingly good. Finally, the conclusive “Bonaparte’s Lament” features a performance by Spartimu, a vocal ensemble that specializes in Corsican polyphonic singing, alongside the traditional Corsican guitars, suggesting that, in exile on Saint Helena, Napoleon may have found some semblance of peace.

It’s worth noting that, as is often the case with Scott films, music from other projects found its way into the final sound mix, in this case several cues from Dario Marianelli’s score for Pride and Prejudice, specifically the lovely ‘Dawn’ piano cue during one especially notable scene between Napoleon and Josephine. I don’t know why Scott does this; Marianelli’s piece is undoubtedly lovely, but I have no doubt that Phipps could have written something just as lovely in his own right, and in doing so not suffered the ignominy of having his score potentially undermined by this piece of temp-track love. It’s a bit of an insult to Phipps that Scott chose to go down this route and, as I mentioned earlier, this is not the first time that Scott has messed with his films’ music in disappointing ways.

This one issue aside, everything else about Napoleon works. Yes, at times it’s unusual and anachronistic, sometimes it relies a little too heavily on modern action tropes, and sometimes it appears to be poking fun at its own lead character, but despite all this it works. The use of Corsican folk music and voices to portray Napoleon’s heritage is appropriate, the more flowery and delicate waltzes accurately portrays his relationship with Josephine, and the battle music is more powerful and imposing than I have previously heard from Phipps. It’s a weird, creative, unconventional score that accurately captures Ridley Scott’s version of this most notorious man; whether it captures the reality of who Napoleon was… well, that’s another matter.

Buy the Napoleon soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Napoleon’s Piano (2:13)
• Toulon (3:25)
• Josephine (3:08)
• Soldiers of the 5th Regiment (4:22)
• Ladies in Waiting (1:52)
• Austerlitz Kyrie (2:55)
• We Are Discovered (6:04)
• Make the Rain Stop (2:07)
• Look Down (1:58)
• First Counsel (2:47)
• Russia (4:14)
• Return to France (1:47)
• Waterloo Requiem (4:24)
• Downfall (3:32)
• Bonaparte’s Lament (2:43)

Running Time: 47 minutes 31 seconds

Milan Records (2023)

Music composed by Martin Phipps. Conducted by Martin Phipps and Edward Farmer. Orchestrations by Andrew Skeet. Recorded and mixed by Olga Fitzroy. Edited by Tony Lewis. Album produced by Martin Phipps.