Flak Magazine: Review of Alexander, 12.10.04

At one point in Oliver Stone's Alexander, Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) is recalling the heady heyday of the eponymous Great One as three Egyptian scribes take dictation. The old boy drifts away from straight journalism and ventures an opinion about the dangers and exasperations of following such a charismatic Führer. It all sounds world-weary and wise, if a bit too postmodern, but then Ptolemy changes his mind and tells the dismayed scribes, essentially, "Scratch all that. Just say, y'know, stuff happens." This seems to have been Stone's modus operandi for bringing Alexander to the screen. It's big: big stars, big cast, big budget for locations and zillions of extras, big elephants, big special effects. But all this apparatus switches directions every few minutes, snuffling like the proverbial hippo after the pea of a new idea, and so never really gets anywhere.

Since he broke in with Midnight Express, Oliver Stone has written and/or directed any of the most flamboyant, outrageous projects to come out of mainstream Hollywood, including Platoon, JFK, The Doors, Conan the Barbarian, Wall Street, Scarface and Natural Born Killers. Stone's films are not usually subtle, but they're rarely vague or boring. Not so Alexander. Stone seems to have decided to go legit; the narrative tone is that of a dotty classics professor with psychoanalytical and allegorical predilections. Thus, we get Ptolemy to explain it all. This strategy might have been useful to provide a little psychological nuance between epic battles and travels, but Hopkins' character (looking like a refugee from "Star Trek") ends up doing almost all the storytelling. It's as if Stone just concocted big scenes and glued them together with straight exposition. Unfortunately, the big scenes are no more beguiling than the historical synopsis, partly because we're just dropped into them. We switch from Ptolemy's alfresco office to a battle scene or the Himalayas or exotic Babylon without real transition, there's no narrative profluence. What this failure mainly demonstrates is that plot and misé-en-scene have to support one another. If the film's world is sufficiently rich in authenticating detail, we're diverted from defects in the story and character development. Likewise, if we're invested in the story we might not even notice the boom mike in the frame. But if characterization and plot are both woeful, we reflexively examine the spectacle more critically.

Among the things one might notice, for lack of a story in Alexander, is the way Stone mistakes make-up for character. We get at least three cycloptic characters with puckered latex over one eye — and in one scene an "eye" playfully painted over a "missing" one. King Darius of Asia Minor looks like a wise man in a high school Christmas play. And Alexander's love interest resembles "Gilligan Island's" Mary Ann, which wouldn't be bad if said paramour weren't a man and a stalwart warrior. And then there's Colin Farrell, as Alexander, in a wig of road-stripe-yellow Dynel. Clearly Farrell's attachment helped get the picture into production, but beyond that it's hard to see why he was cast. His charms are more of the coiled-tight, small, dark and handsome type. His Black Irish charisma is entirely smothered in Alexander (which is as sensible as casting Gwyneth Paltrow as Pocahontas). Farrell labors mightily to make Alexander human, but he comes off more whiny and bumbling than Great. Brad Pitt was vastly more plausible (and hot) in his turn as Troy's Achilles.

Alexander's greatness might have been conveyed better if we had some sense of what he accomplished. Ptolemy tells us he trekked "10,000 miles" and Alexander gives lip service to having "founded cities, built roads, freed people and joined nations." But this just comes off as "Mission Accomplished" blather because we mostly see him slaughtering folks and sleazing about various bivouacs. This might have been enough, but the battles are just dusty, noisy murkfests wherein it's difficult to discern what's being done or said. While that may be deliberate, it only reinforces the feeling that the filmmakers put no thought or research into Alexander's strategic brilliance, as if mere bigness should be enough. The tactical innovation which wins his most glorious battle here consists entirely of one left turn.

The sleaziness is no more interesting. There are suggestions of an unhealthy attachment between Alexander and his mother Olympia (Angelina Jolie), but this mostly consists of them fondling some very Freudian snakes together. I might not have noticed that most of the deadly serpents were in fact American corn snakes, the koi of the reptile world, if Jolie hadn't seemed just as cold. Later, having left Mom behind, Alexander takes up with Hephaiston, his old wrestling partner, as Greekish warriors were inclined to do. Here Stone toys with a bisexual Alexander, but he too seems to want it both ways: The conqueror looks longingly at his man-toy and caresses him like a Victorian husband, but Stone doesn't really dare show any man-on-man action (except the flash-cut punking of a boy-servant on the periphery of a royal banquet). And this is about the heterosexual temperature too. At one point Alexander and his generals enter the harem of the once-great Darius. There's some major babeage in this scene, but all we get is some amateurish belly dancing and conspicuous chivalry on the part of the conquerors — the neighborhood Hooters provides more titillation. When Alexander finally decides to take a bride and sire an heir with the dusky Roxanne, about 1.5 sparks fly during the rape/seduction, and they come entirely from the fleeting view of Rosario Dawson's body.

Why make a three-hour movie about a young conqueror in steamier times and climes and not exploit the epic exploits or the steam? The answer seems to be some sort of misguided high-mindedness. Stone reportedly drew heavily on the work of an Oxford classicist, Robin Lane Fox's "The Search for Alexander." Fox also appeared on the set as historical advisor. Perhaps that's why the film's epigraph and tag line, "Fortune favors the bold," is from the "Aeneid". Like Virgil's epic, Alexander is a political allegory, only it's not meant to validate the reign of our Caesar. The story could be synopsized thus: Potentate's dipsomaniac son with a Freudian cross to bear and a famously bitchy mother rejects the secular humanism of his elite mentors (Aristotle) and embraces old-time religion. Finding his destiny in the Great Book (the "Iliad"), he takes up his father's mission and charges into Mesopotamia bent on regime change and blathering about "freeing people." Having accomplished that mission, he simply throws himself into an essentially perpetual war on something or other, brutally punishing those who question the wisdom of this ….

The allegory would be more apt if Alexander had served in the contemporary Champagne Squadron, and the film would be better if Alexander's story wasn't bent to this odd purpose. Let us hope that Stone directly addresses contemporary conflicts and paranoia in the future. History may be the worse for it, but his audience will certainly have more fun.

— David Essex (djessex@earthlink.net)