Stone should have been content to leave Alexander as a Lawrence-style mirage. The film stumbles when it tries to be more like Stone’s own “Nixon,” which painted a complete picture of a man. We linger when we should have cut, transforming things which would have been wondrously vague and mysterious into murk. Things are further complicated by too much talking. To wit, there’s a great shot of the Persian king in the first battle. He watches the slaughter, turns towards his ocean of troops, makes a handsign, then goes back to watching the battle. It’s a perfect shot that show everything but explains nothing. “Alexander” could probably have achieved greatness if it had been more impressionistic or nearly silent. Instead, conversations go longer than they ought, and Hopkins’s narration—while providing much-needed historical context—includes what sounds like a movie review inside the movie, explaining and contextualizing and reading what we’ve seen for us.
As for Colin Farrell, I can’t decide if he’s great or merely adequate. Does he deliver the speeches badly or do they just last too long? Morons will complain about the Irish accents he and the other Macedonians use. It’s a clever play on our expectations that everybody in the “ancient” world spoke with an English accent. The Irish brogue makes them hicks, yokels, dirty peasants trying to rise above their stations, which, I guess, is what the Macedonians were. Farrell looks the part though, combining the Greek idea of prettiness with raw, animal ferocity. Angelina Jolie, as his manipulative and snake-loving mother, is equally questionable; again, she looks the part, but past that I can’t say. But there’s no question that Val Kilmer, as Alexander’s father, gets into the swing of things; drunken, one-eyed, and scenery-chewing, yet vulnerable and disgusted by battle.
As uncertain as Stone sometimes is about how he’s going to treat Alexander, he’s equally uncertain about how to treat Mediterranean homosexuality. At that time and place, it was no big deal, and that’s how I expected Stone would portray it. We’re used to seeing the soldiers riding into the conquered villages and groping the sultry ladies who are eyeing them; so this time around they’d grope sultry boys. Instead Stone seems to linger—voyeuristically, uncomfortably, questioningly, what?—in long shot. Could it be that the modern master of not-explaining-anything—watch “Nixon” and tell me if that movie throws you any bones—is actually taking extra time to show how “then” was different than “now?” It can’t be that simple, and it doesn’t help that Alexander’s lifelong relationship with Hephastian (Jared Leto) is not especially moving.
Stone surrounds his leads with battalions of reliable performers in smaller parts. As Aristotle, Christopher Plummer is so fit and spry at 80-something that he puts me to shame. To name a few, the ever-girly Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (“Titus”) is one of Alexander’s generals and the bellowing Brian Blessed is the A-the-G’s boyhood combat trainer, because no one else can fill that role like Brian Blessed can. When the Great sits down with his counsel, we’ve seen all these faces before, even if we can’t place them.
It’s hard to say whether “Alexander” will be nominated for more Oscars or more Razzies. It’s a technically flawless and lavish production, overflowing with silk, satin, armor, robes, swords, palaces, vegetation, sweeping vistas, horses, elephants, and mascara. But it’s also the kind of audience-challenging audacity that people love to see fail, and Stone is precisely the kind of ambitious filmmaker-slash-field marshal that people love to see falter, just like we relished the fall of Martha Stewart. As I write this, lips are smacking with delight in the corners that never tried to understand Stone’s Shakespearean fact fudging in “JFK” and “Nixon.”
I saw “Alexander” at an afternoon matinee. I planned to go out that night for a friend’s birthday, but those plans changed. My wife suggested we watch one of our Netflix. I resisted. For all its shortcomings, I couldn’t get “Alexander” out of my blood. I felt like I had really seen a movie, an all-consuming sensory slap in the brain. That counts for something. Quoth the film’s narrator: “Alexander’s failures are greater than many men’s successes.” That about sums it up. I would rather be wrong with Oliver Stone than right with Jerry Bruckheimer.
Finished December 6th, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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