Alexander The Great

The Oliver Stone Film

reviewed by members of "Alexander The Great" and "The Evolution And Legacy Of Classical Greece".

The following reviews have been written by Ancient Worlds members. At the end of each review there is a link provided for you to add your own comments. Reader comments are posted on the discussion board of the Macedon neighborhood page. If you've seen the movie, tell us what you thought of it.

Author: * Publius Fabius Scipio
Date: Jan 15, 2005 - 15:09

I eventually saw Alexander yesterday and my overall impression was that it was good but not great. It was no Gladiator, one of my favourite movies of all time, who cares if it isn't historically accurate? It never claimed to be!

However, despite it being a good watch I did have some problems with Alexander. Firstly was the direction. Oliver Stone just tried too hard to leave his impression on it. As Herk has already intimated, Stone was not helped by what was a mediocre script at best. Its not so much that it was too long because I never had to look at my watch to see the time but it was too full of dialogue and therefore Stone had little to follow apart from speeches.

As it is I think the script plays too much to the things that would've made Alexander not so great. The CGI battles and cities are fantastic. The overhead 'eagles eye' view of Gaugamela is my favourite scene from the entire movie. Babylon just looked awesome. Not being a Persian expert I don't know how close to reality it was but it put across the splendor of the Persian Empire. If the script had played to the strengths of Stone's production team then we would've had a for more engaging look at Alexander the Great. Where were the battles of Granicus and Issus? The siege of Tyre? The burning of Persepolis? To me these events lent themselves to the excellent CGI on display for Gaugamela and Babylon.

I found no problems with the historical accuracy. Of course things like Cleitus saving Alexander at Gaugamela instead of Granicus had to be moved due to script but that didn't bother me. The battle of Gaugamela was close enough to the historical accounts and the phalanx squares looked great. The only thing I thought might be wrong was the location of the battle against King Porus. I thought that the battle took place along the banks of the river Hydapses instead of in the forest, but I'm sure someone will correct me. The supposed poisoning of Alexander has never been proved or disproved so it cannot be seen as inaccurate.

My biggest problem with the script apart from the length of the dialogue was the timeline of the film. There was nothing wrong with the telling of the story by Ptolemy but if you are trying to tell people who know who Alexander was but do not know his story, you have to show the story in the order that the events happened. A friend I went with was confused and felt left hanging as what happened to Philip and had to wait until later on to find out. I would rather have had it as a straight narative instead of jumping back and forward.

Now the acting, which taken a bit of criticism from all angles especially Colin Farrell. Personally, I thought he did a good job of conveying the passion of Alexander and his Irish accent didn't annoy me at all (although that may have something to do with my homeland being Ireland... but not too many people complained about a Kiwi Roman general or an Amercian Roman emperor, did they?) Farrell's best scene for me was the reaction to Cleitus's outburst before he killed him. For me he showed that Alexander knew what Cleitus was saying was true but as King was still angry and horiified that someone would challenege his decision making.

None of the other actors disappointed me but none really stood out due to the script, apart from Angelina Jolie would I think did a good job in portraying the obviously weird, slightly demented but still alluring and attractive Queen Olympias. I was a bit worried about the selection of Val Kilmer as Philip because I've always seen Kilmer as somewhat small and thought that the character of Philip warranted a much bigger man but he managed to balance the barbarian/civilised man that was Philip II of Macedon.

The only thing I am going to say about the whole bisexual thing is that my friend, who didn't know of his love for Hephastion, asked me if that was accurate and when I said yes his reply was "Oh right". I then asked him if it bothered him, his reply was "Why would it? The most powerful man in the world could do whatever he wanted"

With that moment of clarity, I shall finish my little enlightenment. I'll repeat my "good but not great" statement from earlier but I think anyone who hasn't seen it by now to go see it and make up their own minds

Publius Fabius Scipio

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Author: * Heraklia Aelius
Date: Nov 27, 2004

I KNOW we've a thread for discussing movies on ancient history themes, but darned if I can find it today, so this seems as appropriate a place as any to share my own thoughts about Oliver Stone's Alexander, which I saw last night.

First point - I went well armed. By the time I hit the 3/4ths-empty theatre, I knew that my favorite movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes, was showing an absolutely disaster of critical proportions. Somehow the reviews were so universally hostile that I decided, contrariwise, to wait until I saw the film myself. And I found myself disagreeing, but for an interesting reason. If Alexander fails, it won't be so much for the flaws of the film - and there ARE flaws - as because none of us can make an easy connection with either Alexander, his legend, or his pagan world. It's simply too titanic to involve the average filmgoer, who'd rather be seeing a modern thriller.

I went with a friend who knows nothing of classical history, but is smart and perceptive. She was bored to tears, and said "there was no one in that movie I could understand or care about, no connection made between the audience and what was going on on-screen." And I think that will be at the heart of this movie's reception - a 3-hour epic about people dead 2300 years ago, in a world none of us can imagine, a pre-Christian world even those of us who hang about here can only touch in occasional perceptions - is just going to leave the great American mainstream dead cold. If it takes in as little money at the box office as my theatre showed last night, it will be a DISASTER. And my own opinion is - not at all deservingly!

The financial success of Gladiator made movies like Troy and Alexander possible, and "Alexander" may well stop that particular niche market dead in its tracks. Gladiatorhad us all hooting, historically, but it did present a series of plot and character features with which the Average Joe or Jane could identify - poor general, caught in politics, family dies, fighting his way back for Truth, Justice and the Roman Way. He's wearing funny clothes, but he's a recognizeable regular guy. Alexander has a much bigger problem - how to make us connect with the greatest conqueror in the world, a bisexual ancient Greek, whose whole conceptions of honor and glory are, in our diminished age, food for chortles and embarrassment. And, of course, trying to make a major film about a bisexual character is simply going to kill this film if the difficulty in reaching back to the mindset of a Macedonian prince 2300 years ago wasn't tough enough. So what is amazing, IMHO, is not where Alexander fails, but where it succeeds, which makes its probable fate as a film rather sad.

It's over-the-top, crammed with riches cinematographically, full of intrigue, passion, anger, loss, disillusionment, and the simply SCARINESS, to most of us, of the values of a nearly-invisible pre-Christian past. There are so many scenes that just leap out and grab you - Philip of Macedon (oddly played by Val Kilmer, but with a certain brute pathos) taking the young boy Alexander through a cave filled with the blood and tragedy of the old Greek legends like Medea and the disasters of Troy - the battle at Gaugemela where the King of Kings stoically watches his Persian army fall apart - the moment where the boy Alexander rides Bucephalus for the first time - the entry into Babylon (talk about CGI wonders!) and the look on Colin Farrell's face where he has found "the sweet fruition of an earthly crown") - then the disintegration of the years-long army traveling ever further west, into more and more alien country (just like Stone tries to take US into alien time and country), the ambitions of the generals, their hostility to granting vanquished Persians rights in what they - but not Alexander - foresee as simply a Macedonian plunder fest, the slow desintegration of Alexander himself . . . the story is waaaaay too big, and way too long, but historically I think it covers every possible aspect of the development and death of this extraordinary man. At the final battle scene, where in India the foe is using war-elephants - was this the first time anyone from the West had ever been so attacked? - and his troops flee from these monsters, only to have Alexander and Bucephalus, in a kind of horrified courage, charge straight at the beasts with tragic consequences . . . is incredible visual filmmaking at its best. The death of Alexander after a despairing and angry drinking bout had people sniffing in the aisles. It wasn't his death, but his disillusionment - with being a hero? with conquest? with life itself? who knows, but Farrell made it very plain we were watching a tragic hero - that struck me most. The desintegration of his empire was obviously next.

Colin Farrell gives a highly-underrated performance; I thought he was brilliant, and all the reviewers seem to find is to complain about his hair styles. I found the whole scenes flashing foward to an aging Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) mildly clunky, but I do understand how much historical information Stone had to get across. The script is weak and frequently misses that balance between our sensibilities and theirs - "May Zeus protect us!" is more likely to elicit embarrassed snickers than thoughtful understanding. But historically, it's a treasure trove of riches, from the historically-accurate ancient clothing and warfare, to over-the-top descriptions of Alexander's mother and her bedrooms full of snakes, extreme, exciting, occasionally tottering into ludicrousness, but (for anyone interested in ancient history) an amazing three-dimensional, flawed, fascinating spectacle. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it - it's passion is so much greater than that of this year's Troy, just as its weaknesses are more evident.

I suspect in the box office, it will fail for the wrong reasons - that it's just easier for millions to look at ancient history as something they can't possibly understand - and don't WANT to understand - than to try to follow the lead Stone wants so much to give us, the past as prologue. You might say we few, here, who care about understanding the past, can judge it far more fairly.

The bottom line, for me, is whether popular entertainment is good enough to make us want to learn the true history behind the story. I've never been able to see Alexander the Great as more than an icon, a white statue of a head of someone I couldn't grasp. After Alexander, I want to learn everything I can, because now, for me, he's become real. My highest compliment ;)

Heraklia Aelius

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Author: * Reylari Socrates
Date: Nov 30, 2004

Now mind you, I am deaf. I could not really hear the dialogue, so perhaps, if I knew what they actually said, and how they said it, my opinion might change.

No matter what the critics say, this was a masterpiece of cinematography. I had much the same reaction after seeing Eisenstien's Potempkin. This was a visual masterpiece. It is a great film, but it is grand theater and is not for a small screen. Nor is it meant to entertaine children. This is no "Star Wars".

Would not fault the acting either, though I could barely hear them. I would have made Angelina's hair more white as she aged and Alexander's less blond,[as in bleached], and more sun streaked. There are blond Greeks. They are the golden ones.

Reylari Socrates

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Author: * Skyros Lysias
Date: Nov 7, 2004

Enjoyed the re-creations of the battles, but unless you are a military strategist they spent more time than they should on the re-creations of the battles of Gaugemelia, Issus, and the taking of Tyre. Very little time spent on his life once through India, nothing about the Gedrosian Desert. Spotty at best.

* Skyros Lysias

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In summary, the reviews from all over the world indicate that the historians loved it and the entertainment people hated it. Emminent Alexander scholars have praised it and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences shunned it. What did you think of it?

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