DUBAI: For the critics who look at a film as a puzzle to solve, Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” is already proving to be a particularly confounding headscratcher. Biopics, after all, are usually the easiest works of all to evaluate. The traditional formula for the genre is simple: find the most easily Googleable historical figures, hire generational talent to shout histrionic monologues that can easily be cut into highlight reels, and — if they shout loudly enough — collect gold come awards season.  

“Napoleon” makes no concessions to the usual rules. That’s precisely why it’s one of the most interesting films of the year.  

If you want an answer to why the film varies so greatly in tone, why its performances can seem so inscrutable, the film’s lead actress Vanessa Kirby can provide one that she found for herself during her months of obsessive preparation. The Oscar-nominated 35-year-old plays Napoleon’s wife Josephine, and as she attempted to get a grip on one of history’s most fascinating women, she quickly discovered that the researched-based technique she had previously used to great effect in her breakout role as Princess Margaret in Netflix’s “The Crown” and her acclaimed turn in “Pieces of a Woman” simply wasn’t working.  

“This was one of the hardest roles I’ve ever had to work out, and I kept thinking about why that was. In every first-hand account from different people of who Josephine was, I quickly found that each depiction of her represented her in a completely different light,” Kirby tells Arab News. 

“It made me realize she must have been so many things, and been able to change according to circumstance. She clearly had a quiet power — an internal power — rather than outwardly expressive, which made me realize she must have had so much buried inside,” she continues. 

In so many ways, even the pairing of Josephine and Napoleon made little sense. He was arguably the world’s most powerful general, and she was a widow six years his elder with children of her own, already spoken for at the time of their meeting. But Kirby believes she found the answer: He was a Corsican still somewhat alien to French society, and she was an outsider too, who had learned to operate in a world he still found confounding. 

“It made me realize that they must have recognized each other as being outsiders — as being unusual and having a strange, different psyche to the norm. She must have been as strange as him, somehow. And to inhabit strangeness is a real pleasure, as an actor,” says Kirby.  

For both Kirby and Joaquin Phoenix, the Oscar-winning actor who stars in the titular role as her on-screen husband, “strange” might be the best way to understand their approach to the characters, particularly their mercurial nature. 

“We really couldn’t hold on to one specific distinct personality trait,” Kirby explains.  

In perhaps the film’s most memorable scene, Napoleon comes home after rumors of Josephine’s indiscretions spread across the world, and he berates her for humiliating him publicly, throwing her belongings into the rain. At first, Kirby’s Josephine puts herself at his mercy, but then switches completely. Within moments, she’s asserting that he is nothing without her, and orders him to repeat it, which he gladly does.  

“That scene was really significant for us, and it was a real pleasure to play. It was so enlivening to play the switching power dynamics over the course of one night — to play a character who was in one moment begging, devastated, and then trying to get control and possess him again. It was wonderful,” says Kirby. 

“The editor told me recently that we did one take that was nine minutes long. I couldn’t fathom that, but apparently Joaquin and I just kept going. We tried everything. I do remember screaming in that scene at Joaquin, demanding that he ‘Say it!’ at the top of my lungs — which didn’t end up in the film. We got really crazy, and it was so fun to play, but it was so satisfying, as painful as it was,” she continues.  

As demanding as the experience was, it was perhaps the most invigorating of her burgeoning career, as her star rises higher with each role, especially as she manages to impress even in a crowded field like the “Mission: Impossible” series opposite Tom Cruise, in which she stars in both this year’s Abu Dhabi-filmed “Dead Reckoning” and its upcoming sequel.  

Most importantly, it’s not just figuring out these characters using research, it’s getting to know herself better, and as she matures as a person, so too do her roles.  

“It’s the life in between that informs the work that you do,” says Kirby.