The Ending Of Napoleon Explained

No one makes historical epic films quite like Ridley Scott, and he's delivered a new one unto Hollywood in 2023 with "Napoleon." He's had highs in the genre, like "Gladiator" and "Kingdom of Heaven," and he's had some duds, like "Exodus: Gods and Kings" and "Robin Hood." "Napoleon" falls somewhere in the middle of that pack — too stunning in its visual grandeur to be seen as a disappointment, but too tonally and narratively disjointed to feel complete.

Joaquin Phoenix is great as Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, but he doesn't get as much room to stretch as fans of the actor may have hoped for. Vanessa Kirby arguably steals the show right out from under him as the other protagonist, Napoleon's first wife and lifetime love, Joséphine. As you'd expect from an epic of this scale, the rest of the cast is massive and littered with talented actors, from the always-excellent Ben Miles to Édouard Philipponnat's subtle performance as Russia's Tsar Alexander I.

"Napoleon" is a gargantuan film with a somehow-even-longer director's cut on the way. And since the end of the eponymous conqueror's career is the part he's most infamous for, the movie also delivers a lengthy final act. Here's everything you need to understand about the ending of "Napoleon," what it means, and how it compares to the true story.

After commandeering a ship and sailing back to France, Napoleon is confronted by soldiers he once led into battle. Clearly, they remember their time under him fondly, as he quickly gathers a sizable army. With that — and the combined forces of England, Prussia, the Netherlands, and Germany united against him — the stage is set for the Battle of Waterloo.

In the film, the battle plays out in almost excruciating slowness, but that's by design. It's obvious from the start that the French army is in a difficult spot: downhill from a fortified English position, with muddy ground between the two armies, and the Prussians much closer than Napoleon had expected. When the French infantry begin to march their way across the battlefield, the distance seems nearly insurmountable.

The film also does an interesting job of juxtaposing Napoleon with his English foil, General Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (Rupert Everett). Throughout the film, Napoleon is shown in no uncertain terms as a battlefield commander. At Toulon, he's visibly anxious before the fighting starts, but he shows no such doubts in Egypt or at Austerlitz. At Waterloo, however, his body language tells us everything. The upright poise and certainty that define him in the earlier battles belong entirely to Wellington. Though he makes a valiant charge himself, Napoleon knows that the battle is lost.

"Napoleon" spends precious little time on its subject's exile on Saint Helena, reducing over five years down to just a pair of brief scenes. By this point in the film, though, that kind of condensation is familiar. There's no explanation of the cause of Napoleon's death. The movie seems entirely uninterested in those details. The point Ridley Scott seems to want to make is that Napoleon dies in a wholly uninteresting way, passing away like any unspectacular man, far away from any semblance of the legend he hoped to leave on the world.

Of course, Napoleon did become a legend. His name is known across the world, even today. But his legacy is that of a failed conqueror — the last breath of a certain subspecies of man confined to the annals of history. The two girls who mimic a great duel before him on Saint Helena could be meant to mirror the deposed emperor himself, who was only ever playing at being a true warrior. But that interpretation seems at odds with the film's battle scenes — the only moments when Napoleon appears truly as impressive as he sees himself.

Another reading is that the children merely represent the passage of time beyond him. His death is not the end of tyrants or pointless wars, after all. What the film does state quite clearly is the bloody price of Napoleon's personal crusades. When your "greatness" comes at the cost of at least three million lives, how great can you possibly be?

Napoleon's obsession with greatness isn't born in a vacuum. He's constantly comparing himself to legendary figures like Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. Like them, he believes himself destined to conquer the world, but he struggles to accept the changing times he exists in. The very revolution that first brings Napoleon to power is a response to the untenable excess of the aristocratic elite — a class that by its nature gives life to the myth of great men.

For all of Napoleon's talk of grand conquests and legacies, he only ever looks backward when envisioning what greatness looks like. And though he dominates most of Europe for a short span of years, the new Roman Empire he dreams of never comes about.

This whole conundrum is perfectly visualized in one of Napoleon's scenes in Egypt, where he has men open an ancient sarcophagus to see the mummy inside. He goes up on his toes and eventually brings over a box to stand on, all to meet the eyes of the old pharaoh or royal entombed within. He even puts his beloved hat atop the sarcophagus, as if he is imagining himself becoming a pharaoh of the new age. But then the mummy slips, jostling dust and falling against the side of the box. It is, after all, just a dead thing. Napoleon will soon be the same, and in the moment, he is merely a defiler.

In a recent profile for The New Yorker leading up to the release of "Napoleon," director Ridley Scott discussed the production of the film and what initially interested him in the project. Stanley Kubrick, an early idol for Scott, attempted and failed to produce a gargantuan Napoleon biopic in his day. But Scott became particularly interested after reading about Napoleon's exile on Saint Helena and disputed death (Was he poisoned? Was it cancer?).

According to Scott, the movie's final scene was inspired by the true story of Napoleon befriending a young girl on the island who liked to play with fake swords. "He would sit there and watch her hacking away at a tree," Scott said. "She had no idea who he was, other than a prisoner of war." It's possible that a longer version of this relationship will be seen in Scott's intended four-and-a-half-hour director's cut of the film. Still, the theatrical version conveys the same core feeling — melancholy at being forgotten so quickly by time, and remorse at not having lived a more human life.

Scott also revealed that he considered including a scene on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo that would have suggested a growing illness in Napoleon. The shot would have shown him noticing blood in his stool while on the toilet — a nod to one theory that he died from stomach cancer. "As I got close to the release, I thought, I haven't got the courage," Scott admitted.

Given how short Napoleon's scenes on Saint Helena are, you might be surprised to learn that the real man lived there for more than five years before passing away. While sequestered on the island, Napoleon dictated his memoirs and even wrote a book about Julius Caesar — a final sign of just how much he wished to emulate the emperors of old.

For many years, Napoleon's cause of death was disputed by historians. Studies of hair samples revealed high levels of arsenic, leading some to suspect that he had been poisoned. However, others argued that the simple use of arsenic in everyday items back in Napoleon's time could have been the cause. However, the most recent judgment is the same as that of the original autopsy — that Napoleon died from stomach cancer. As conveyed visually in the film, it's also hard to dispute that Napoleon's isolation led to a collapse in mental health that could have added to his overall decline.

Napoleon had no real contact with his second wife or his son while in exile. Their lives continued in his absence. He spent a good amount of his time on Saint Helena reading, being read to, and playing cards. Upon his death, several of his organs were removed and sealed separately from his body. Today, Napoleon's remains are buried at Les Invalides in Paris.