Release Date: November 24, 2004
Starring: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Rosario Dawson, Jared Leto
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Written by: Oliver Stone, Christopher Kyle, Laeta Kalogridis
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: R (violence, sexuality, nudity)
It’s easy to tell that Alexander is Oliver Stone’s passion project: the film’s elaborate style and its themes of family, pride, and conquest (each of which the director has covered extensively throughout his career) betray it as such. An expansive picture about a young leader with a lust for glory whose parents are just as corrupt with pride and whose subjects either love him for his bold, unprecedented dream or despise him for his stubborn obsessions, it’s as much a topical political statement as it is an embodiment of Stone’s work (there are shades of Nixon, JFK, Platoon, and The Doors throughout). There is no question these are the hallmarks of a quintessential Oliver Stone film. But it is questionable whether it achieves the greatness of his past works, and if it effectively tells the epic tale of its famous hero, Alexander the Great.
In the fourth century B.C., and by the age of 32, Alexander (Colin Farrell), the son of King Philip of Macedonia, had conquered 90 percent of the known world. It would be no simple feat to cinematically recreate this man’s life, from standpoints both technical -- any such film involves, as this one does, a cast of thousands and locations across the globe -- and narrative. Stone’s Alexander goes the distance, if only because the director wills it to do so, with a strength that is truly Alexandrian. Past epics like Gladiator and Braveheart almost effortlessly unfolded, thanks mainly to a strong and enticing plot or an actor’s superior performance, while Alexander pushes forward in a less efficient manner.
The film begins with the narration of Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), a wizened old Macedonian who is recounting the life of Alexander based on his own experience under Alexander’s command as a younger man. Like many historians, he has chosen to glorify the ruler’s life (“Alexander’s failures tower over most men’s successes,” he says at one point). Through his eyes, we see Alexander as a boy, when his exotic mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie), taught him to overcome fear and his brutish father, King Philip (Val Kilmer), taught him to always exude strength. Then, after he is crowned king at the remarkably young age of 20, he sets out to conquer the Middle Eastern land of Persia, a feat never before attempted and one that his father, Philip, famously balked at. But Alexander does indeed conquer Persia, and his success there inspires him to take his army on an even more ambitious -- and ultimately foolhardy -- seven-year conquest of South Asia.
His dream is to unite the world under one rule, to promote peace and freedom, and the film takes pains to show this compassionate side (when he enters the Persian capital of Babylon, he shows extraordinary mercy to the royal family there). To Stone’s credit, it succeeds in capturing the dual essence of Alexander’s legend, showing us in three hours an ambitious character whose pride and strength blinds him from seeing his own flaws. It’s filled with awesome scenery, sprawling battles, and powerful characters, yet, like its hero, it falls short of its grand ambition. The scenery sometimes gets more attention than the story, and the battles are sometimes too disjointed and confusing.
Luckily, those shortcomings are in the minority. The Battle of Gaugamela, which happens within the opening third of the film, shows how obviously anxious Stone was to flex his war-movie muscles (he hasn’t done so since 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July). In one impressive series of shots, his camera goes from Alexander giving a rousing speech to his men, to an eagle soaring above in a wisp of clouds, and finally to a sweeping overheard shot that includes both the bird and the two tremendous armies approaching each other on the desert floor below.
This spectacular view gives the audience some much needed bearing, because the fight that ensues is so franticly shot and abruptly edited that it’s difficult to know what’s going on. There are few recognizable characters to follow and too little is known of what the battle’s larger significance is in the Alexandrian legacy. All of the movie’s war scenes are similarly disorienting and anticlimactic, which is surprising, considering that the broader course of Alexander’s life surely hinged on them. Then again, it may have also been Stone’s intention to illustrate the lack of order and planning to Alexander’s aggressive and unprecedented conquest.
And anyway, it’s Alexander that is the focus of the film, not these confusing battles. Colin Farrell plays him with the arrogance and emotion that’s required of the character, and at times he’s brilliant while at others he’s simply adequate. Unlike more traditionally heroic performances like as Russell Crowe’s Roman general in Gladiator or Mel Gibson’s rebel Scotsman in Braveheart, this is a part that requires the actor to keep his character somewhat distant from the audience. In one scene he’ll be delivering an incredible monologue, and in the next he’ll be a sniveling young ruler who refuses to listen to his closest advisors. And if this aspect of the character does alienate many mainstream audiences, the fact that Alexander’s strongest relationship was his homosexual love affair with his best friend, Hephaistion (Jared Leto), and not his bond with his Babylonian wife, Roxane (Rosario Dawson), may do the trick (though it must be said that the version of Alexander that makes it to theaters is supposed to be much tamer than Stone’s original cut).
Some of Alexander’s filmic weaknesses, however, are made up for by its strong political implications. These are interesting to note, given Stone’s knack for subliminal attempts at swaying the views of his audience. For instance: Alexander’s monumental pride and the resulting divisions among his followers (at several points there are attempts on his life, while at other times men shower him with affection); his desire to conquer Persia, a Middle Eastern kingdom that his father often wanted to invade but never did; and the subsequent pursuit of its corrupt dictator (who may have had something to do with the assassination of Alexander’s father) are all eerily similar to the real-life affairs of both Presidents Bush. This could just as easily be coincidence, but the connection would not be surprising given that Stone has always had a flame for political activism.
Alexander is no Platoon or JFK, however. It’s an epic that takes aim at a lofty goal -- capturing the essence of Alexander the Great -- but it tends to forget its audience at times. Stone is still a master filmmaker, to be sure, because even though he loses us in the fury of battle, some excessive personal drama, and with Alexander’s antiheroic tendencies, he still captures our attention and lets us know this is a story he really wants to tell. The great directors, like the great rulers of history, will always be the ones whose passion trumps everything else.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)