Thanksgiving is a time of family, friends, and togetherness. What better time to release "Alexander," Oliver Stone's epic tale of a megalomaniac poised to take over the world?
The movie purports to take the audience deep into the mind of the ruler of one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. The movie begins 40 years after the death of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell) through the words of one of Alexander's former generals who recounts the story of his commander's short and turbulent life. Beginning with Alexander's childhood and ending with his untimely death, the tale that follows is one of personal strife, epic battle, and one man's vision for the known world.
If only the movie itself possessed an ounce of greatness, it would not be such a disaster to watch. From early in his life, Alexander is the center of a power struggle between his father Philip (Val Kilmer) and his mother Olymipas (Angelina Jolie). The pair repeatedly get into violent confrontations and Alexander's status as heir to the empire wavers with each attack. However, the impact of these scenes would be much greater if not for the distracting menagerie of accents used by the actors. Kilmer mixes an English accent into his character's drunken victory speeches and vicious tirades against Olympias and Alexander. Far worse than this is the bewildering performance by Angelina Jolie. She plays the character of treacherous wife to the hilt, but with an accent that can only be described as ... vaguely Romanian.
Ultimately, Alexander is driven away from his parents, turning to his schoolmate and wrestling partner Hephaistion (Jared Leto) for companionship. In the words of our narrator Ptolemy, "Alexander never lost a battle ... except to Hephaistion's thighs."
With this double entendre, it becomes evident that one of the movie's main objectives is to force upon the audience the fact that Alexander the Great was romantically involved with men. At this point, the movie begins to cycle through a sequence of battles and sexually ambiguous events.
First, on the eve of a great battle, Alexander beckons to Hephaistion to stay the night with him. Then, after his victory over some anonymous civilization, the conquered people put on a feast for Alexander and his generals. During this celebration, Alexander spies a strapping young lad and a homoerotic encounter ensues. The army then picks up and moves further east, where the entire process is repeated.
This cycle first occurs in the neighboring Persian Empire, but continues to repeat across the Middle East and Asia, ultimately ending in India two hours of screen time later. But wherever he is in the world, whichever battle he happens to be engaged in, the movie's one constant is its heavy reliance on gore and noise. The lack of good camera work just can't cover up the fact that almost everything in the shot is a computer model.
And then, if the formulaic script, horrible battles and love scenes that don't seem to shed any light on Alexander's relationships or clarify his sexuality weren't bad enough -- Colin Farrell takes us through this physically and mentally taxing colossus of a movie without bothering to disguise his native Irish accent.
It was only after the movie's end that we discovered that all five of us who had gone to see "Alexander" together had desperately wanted to walk out of the theater about an hour into it. We clung onto hope that the movie would turn itself around, but as the second hour passed, it became clear that no one had any intention of saving this film. As the third hour flailed on, Alexander's armies longed to return home, but their general kept pushing them further and further east. In a particularly bloody battle involving a horde of elephants, Alexander is severely wounded and is carried unconscious off the field by his troops as the shot turns red and fades out.
Yet to our astonishment, in the very next scene Alexander hobbles around his army's encampment. "He's not dead yet?" someone exclaimed loudly, eliciting laughter from the rest of the audience.
No, he was not dead yet, although our spirits had been for some time. At several points in the film, Alexander expounds on the ideal of unifying the entire known world under one empire. Showing Alexander's pursuit of this ideal would be a pretty good idea for a movie. It is a shame this particular one explores it only as an aside to confusing battle sequences and meaningless sexual escapades. If you are looking for a serious account of the life of Alexander the Great, try the History Channel. If you are looking for a good time at the movies, try "Spongebob Squarepants". Or "Gigli". They must to be better than "Alexander".<$>
