CS Daily Archive > Weekend Read > 11/24/04

Alexander Not So Great

BY yon motskin

As dry as a chalkboard, Alexander is more history lesson than dramatic spectacle. Like the homoerotic hero, who battled brutally to conquer the known world, this script died an early death long ago.

Alexander

Oliver Stone (also directed) and Christopher Kyle and Laeta Kalogridis

Alexander is based on a true story, though Oliver Stone's attachment guarantees that the truth will be seen through a bent and hallucinatory prism. Around 300 B.C., Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell), still in his early twenties but already Oedipally ogling his medusa-like mother Olympias (Angelina Jolie), became king of the Macedonians after the death of his vicious one-eyed father Philip (Val Kilmer). Along with his childhood pal Hephaistion (Jared Leto), for whom he maintained a lifelong homosexual love, Alexander led the Greek armies east to conquer Babylon, Persia, and India. Logging 20,000 miles and remaining undefeated through 70 battles, the charismatic and stubborn leader also wed an unknown woman, Roxane (Rosario Dawson), who didn't bear him a child, all of which alienated him from his loyal followers.

Alexander's real-life story is a great one, but Alexander's script is not. In fact, except for the final battle scene -- which is saved by Stone's dazzling cinematography and a stunning standoff between horses and elephants -- the film is downright boring. Between the exhaustive narration by Anthony Hopkins' Ptolemy (do we really need to open with a 20-minute lecture?) and the repeated shots of explanatory maps and drawings, the film carries more unnecessary historical baggage than a door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen convention.

Those expecting Stone's rousing, razzle-dazzle storytelling be forewarned: it's as present as the second gunman on the grassy knoll.

Dialogue in historical foreign epics is always a problem. They obviously didn't speak English -- do the writers use older English or contemporary English with accents? And what kind of accents -- Greek? It appears as if there's an Irish lilt going on here, which is fine, except for some of the embarrassing lines, which sound as if someone today is simply guessing at what Macedonians sounded like 2,300 years ago.

All that could be forgiven if the script resonated with an emotional payoff. Whole chunks of narrative that were painstakingly setup go unresolved, such as Alexander's relationship with his mother. Does he heed her advice? Does he resent her? Does he love her but know he can't have her? His friends and lovers, like Hephaistion and young Ptolemy (Robert Earley), are never fleshed out. His relationship with his father at times appears to be terribly tempestuous and at others tender and teaching -- which is wonderful, except that we never see how this complex man affects him. Not that the answer is easy, but the film never even attempts to suggest why Alexander was so power-hungry or stubborn.

And what is up with Stone's protagonists' seeing trippy visions of eagles? Not everyone can be Jim Morrison.

Unfocused and sprawling, Stone's epic is a feast of sight and sound and that's it. Take out the history exam and fill in the blanks with emotional resonance and narrative clarity -- that would have been Alexander the great.

Alexander
Warner Bros.
Rated R; 173 min.

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Writer-director Yon Motskin is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Film Program. He is currently preparing to shoot his first feature film, Cutman, based on his award-winning short that premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and screened worldwide.

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