ALEXANDER
Directed by Oliver Stone; written by Oliver Stone, Christopher Kyle, and Laeta Kalogridis; cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto; editing by Yann Hervé, Gladys Joujou, Alex Marquez, and Thomas J. Nordberg; original Music by Vangelis; production design by Jan Roelfs; art direction by Kevin Phipps (senior art director), Desmond Crowe, James Lewis, and Stuart Rose; set decoration by Jim Erickson; costume design by Jenny Beavan
With: Colin Farrell, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Brian Blessed, John Kavanagh, Gary Stretch, Raz Degan, and Annelise Hesme. Rated R for violence and some sexuality/nudity. Running time: 173 Minutes



Reviewed by Joel Johnson

Just a few short months ago, I noted how the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) effects had allowed filmmakers to realistically recreate the epic splendor demanded by the classic myths and stories from antiquity. Then I was writing a review of Wolfgang Petersen’s Trojan War film Troy and noted that the return of big budget “sword and sandal” epics began with Ridley Scott’s CGI-enhanced Oscar-winning Gladiator. In that same review, I referred to the disastrous 1963 film Cleopatra that helped to end the “sword and sandal” filmmaking era of the 1950s and early 1960s. Alexander may be the “Cleopatra” for Hollywood’s most recent flirtation with making films about classical antiquity. Oliver Stone’s nearly three-hour film opened for the long Thanksgiving weekend. It finished in sixth place for box office receipts that weekend and then had that decline 65percent the next weekend. After its first two weekends (almost always the most lucrative for a widely released film), it has made back from the American movie-going public only about 1/5 of its estimated $150 million price tag. Without the film faring much, much better internationally, this will be forever known as Alexander, the great flop. No doubt, there will be a certain amount of reflection on the intricacies of the marketing campaign, such as the timing of the release (which changed from November 5 to November 24), to determine if it could have helped the film do better. However, the real responsibility for this impending disaster lies in what went wrong in the making of the film. Let me provide my two cents to help.

This film is impressive for its scope. It is obvious that the shoot placed great physical demands on both cast and crew. There has been an enormous amount of work in making the sets, editing, costuming, postproduction digital effects, et cetera…et cetera…et cetera. Despite all this work both in front of and behind the camera, the film’s storytelling manages to feel both ponderous and rushed at the same time. It jumps around in time. It opens in Egypt with old Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), some forty years after Alexander’s death, dictating his memoirs to a scribe. We then see Alexander on his deathbed. A ring falls from his outstretched hand. We are introduced to the child Alexander and his estranged parents Philip (Val Kilmer) and Olympias (Angelina Jolie). From there we soon find ourselves on a battlefield years later. We see large formations (the appropriate term is phalanx) of soldiers moving across fields from high overhead, from the midst of the battlefield, through clouds of dust, and from the perspective of the Persian leader Darius. We don’t understand the battle strategy and get no true sense of Alexander’s generalship. We see only a brave warrior who leads from the front. Brave warriors defeat a handful of individual opponents in a battle. A great general engineers the defeat of entire armies. Despite these energetic combat sequences, we fail to see the mix of love, loyalty, fear, and awe that the great military leaders inspire in their troops. The film has a large cast with several characters having younger and older selves. It is quite difficult to keep the multitude of characters straight. Very few of the actors have an opportunity to give their character a personality. Some have speeches, but they emerge as memorized recitations instead of as the product of a person’s experiences and thoughts. Ancient history scholars, no doubt, will know the rest of the story of Alexander’s warrior companions just from their names. The audience for this film (and any film that costs $150 million dollars to make) has to be a mainstream audience that, for the most part, has only a rudimentary knowledge of the life of Alexander the Great. The filmmaker’s solution to the profound lack of information generally known about the world that Alexander the Great inhabited was the voice-over reminiscence by Ptolemy, a contemporary of Alexander’s, now in his dotage. While this is a reasonable approach, voice-over runs the risk of having the audience feel that it has been told what’s happening as opposed to feeling that they have been shown what’s happening. Unfortunately, the film undercuts the effectiveness of its narrator by overwhelming his voice-over with Vangelis’s potent score and the very intense visually assaultive (e.g., herky-jerky) imagery on the screen. One senses Hopkins mumbling in the background but isn’t sure whether the commentary contains the insight needed to fully decipher Stone’s Alexander. It is clear that only intermittently being able to focus on the voice-over fails to give the viewer a full appreciation of the history the film is seeking to impart.

A major problem for the film is the casting of Alexander. Colin Farrell is a terrific actor who has risen quickly to be a hot young star. No doubt plans had been in the works for a vigorous campaign for Farrell’s first Academy Award for his role as Alexander. Farrell may someday get an Academy Award, but not for his role here. Much has been said about how Colin Farrell’s skin tone doesn’t match his blond dye-job, but the blond hair is the least of Farrell’s problems. He simply doesn’t project the intense self-assurance that a decisive military leader must have. He seems more Ethelred the Unready than Alexander the Great. The screenwriters have given him populist stump speeches to exhort his men, but they seem anachronistic to the time and many of his troops are clearly less than enthralled by what he’s saying. One wonders how they conquered anything.

There has been much speculation about Alexander’s sexuality. Rumors about homosexuality have circulated for hundreds of years. He did have a strong life-long friendship with Hephaistion (Jared Leto). The pair compare themselves to the Iliad’s Achilles and Patroclus. Though the recent film Troy desexualized their relationship, some have interpreted it as gay. The filmmakers show Alexander expressing affection for Hephaistion through hugs and kisses, but there is nothing more explicit. Alexander does abruptly marry Roxane (Rosario Dawson), but we get little of their relationship beyond the dangerous passions that nearly ignite on their wedding night. Ptolemy tells us that Alexander eventually spent less and less time with her, but then goes on to tell us that Alexander, toward the end of his life, took two other wives, who do not appear in the film. There is imagery and exchanges that suggests homosexual feelings, but the film coyly avoids showing anything that would indicate these feelings were acted on.

Dangerous passions were at the heart of the relationship between Alexander’s father Philip and his mother Olympias. The film doesn’t make much of this, but there are stories that his father suspected that Alexander had been fathered by Zeus in the form of a snake. Stone does show Olympias with a pet snake. The child Alexander (Jessie Kamm) witnesses his father’s drunken attempted rape of his mother. The difficulty that Alexander has with both his father and his mother, and that they have with each other, is shown out of sequence in a flashback that turns up in the middle of the film. Kilmer and Jolie, however, are on the short-list of actors that are able to develop their characters. Their scenes are among the film’s strongest scenes. Kilmer is solid, and Jolie is spectacular. Jolie is such a sexy, powerful, and intriguing Olympias that one wishes the film told her story.

The film plods along with the warriors on their seven-year march of conquest from Macedonia to Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), Persia, Egypt, and eventually points east. Unfortunately, we usually don’t have a sense of when and where we are on this trek. We do see several splendid scenes, but the context lacks clarity, so it all seems incoherent. The coterie of officers surrounding Alexander has gotten rich and has taken mistresses (at least that’s what Ptolemy tells us), but we see them mostly whining and complaining. There are intrigues afoot and suspected plotters are executed. These events seem to constantly swirl around Alexander, but he appears to either take no action himself or to respond recklessly. Alexander eventually reaches India. There is a climactic battle scene with the horse-mounted Alexander squaring off against the mounted elephants of the Indian army. The cinematographer pulls out his full arsenal of visual tricks and eventually we see this battle scene desaturated of all color except for red. Despite the blatant visual manipulation, this is an intense sequence which stands alone in showing the courage that a leader like Alexander had to be able to inspire.

Following this battle, Alexander begins a long march that should take the Macedonians all the way home. Hephaistion and Alexander never get there. This being an Oliver Stone film, naturally there has to be a few conspiracy theories. Ptolemy then gives us the conventional version of Alexander’s death: dying of a fever preying on his body weakened by wounds. There’s a touch of comic irony that may or may not have been intentional.

Stone’s Alexander isn’t a bad film and watching it is not a complete waste of one’s time. It has good intentions, and tremendous effort went into making a visually impressive production. The filmmakers have respectfully tried—perhaps too hard—to not overreach the known history. The film is, however, seriously flawed and, unfortunately, plays like a bad film. It is incoherent where it needs to be clear. The cinematographic trickery and the clipped editing have effectively ratcheted up the visceral intensity in Stone’s earlier films, but in contemporary stories that are more familiar to the filmgoer. Here they serve primarily to further disorient the already confused. Add to that the actors’ inability to become human characters, and the film’s action unfolds like an impressive, lavishly costumed pageant. There is no connection that an audience senses when it is witnessing a remarkable rendering of human experience. Vangelis’s compositions, so effective in Chariots of Fire for which he won an Oscar, are as bombastic as they can be, and their heavy-handedness serves to distract from rather than embellish the film’s story. We get a taste of palace intrigues and military rivalries Macedonian-style, but the Alexander, played by Colin Farrell, and the empire he established don’t seem credible. One doesn’t feel closer to understanding the secret of his success. While it is entirely likely that repeat viewings may better clarify the story, the film offers few pleasures that would entice one to see it more than once.

There are several interesting things to consider. What happens to splashy “sword and sandal” epics now? Will there be a rethinking of the risk in making an expensive film like this? Such films can earn both artistic recognition and handsome profits, but this one looks hard-pressed to break- even. Will Oliver Stone try or even desire to tackle such a big budget project? It might not be his choice because backers may refuse to let him risk as much money as on Alexander. I certainly hope this doesn’t damage his career or Colin Farrell’s. Those who follow the vagaries of film production may recall a competing Alexander the Great film being developed by Australian director Baz Luhrmann. Reportedly, it was abandoned just a few months ago. Could it be revived? After all, a definitive film of the life of Alexander the Great has not yet been made. On the other hand, does the poor showing of Alexander demonstrate that audiences do not have an appetite for him despite his glorious conquests?
 

 

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