Review

Review Date: 28-November-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

Alexander (2004)

Not too long ago, every person with even a modest education was familiar with Achilles, Caesar, and Virgil, but now that the classics have declined Hollywood is free to manipulate ancient glories for an ignorant public attracted to carnage. As a fan of history, theatrical bloodshed, and men in skirts, I really, really want to applaud the resurgence of Greek and Roman tales that began with "Gladiator" in 2000 and continued this year with "Troy" and "Alexander." But the sad fact is, these movies pretty much suck. Far from inspiring people to acquaint themselves with the classics, they threaten to drive the final nail into the coffin of dead civilizations which moderns would be happy to marginalize or forget. In this respect nothing could be worse than Oliver Stone's "Alexander," a three-hour debacle that gives its audience little impression of the Macedonian conquerer but a vivid sense of how Prometheus must have felt when chained to a rock while a bird ate his liver.

Like all men who changed the course of history, the true nature of Alexander the Great will always be shrouded in mystery. What is known is that he assumed the throne of Macedonia in 336 BC at the age of 20, and by the time of his death 13 years later had conquered all lands south to Egypt and west to India, becoming leader of one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. His actions suggest a character driven to explore and dominate whatever lay beyond the horizon, and certain of his right to claim it.

In Stone's version, Alexander (Colin Farrell) is a Prince of Political Correctness, a man before his time trying to unite east and west, gay and straight, in a futile attempt at global tolerance that eludes us today. The driving forces in his life are his parents, one a drunken lout who treats him like a cur (Val Kilmer), the other a devious, snake-loving termagant obsessed with his advancement (Angelina Jolie, adopting the same accent used by Kate Beckinsale in "Van Helsing," the competition for the year's worst movie). Even at the height of his triumph, poor Alexander struggles with the shadow of his father and the ambition of his mother (and the burden of hideous hair), so that he constantly seems like a dumb little child swept up by circumstances much bigger than he.

The acting in "Alexander" narrowly passes muster (it will be interesting to see if Farrell's career survives this), but the cast is hampered by terrible writing and a barrage of bad judgments by Stone. The clichés fly thick and fast (Alex weeps "you saved me from myself" to his lifelong love Hephaistion, played by Jared Leto) and the story lurches along without a sense of direction other than west, with ill-advised jumps in chronology. The action scenes start out dull and degenerate to nigh unwatchable, and the little touches meant to give the story an "authentic" feel fail miserably. For example, Alexander's horse Bucephalus is given both historical and mythical treatment, which means that he's being ridden into battle at age twenty. Worse, Stone goes to the trouble of telling us that Virgil wrote "Fortune favors the bold" and then has Alexander quote the line 300 years earlier. And what is the deal with the cave paintings in Macedonia? If Stone is alluding to the famous images at Lascaux, he's off by eight millennia at least.

I enjoyed nothing about "Alexander" save how its homosexuality made several macho guys sitting near me audibly uncomfortable. (Narrowness deserves the torment it invents.) Oliver Stone has taken someone who blazed an astonishing trail through Europe, Africa, and Asia and turned him into a wide-eyed boy who left home to become a god and grew into not much of a man.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.