surprisingly interesting

Rating: 8/10 (28 October 2005)

Like others, I had heard poor opinions of this movie. Watching it tonight, for the first time, I found many things of interest. Here are a few, in no particular order.
1) It is clearly an anti-war movie: most of the characters have no option but to fight; none seems to enjoy doing so.
2) It seems to me well tuned into pre-Aristotelian tradition. In the age of Aeschylus, it became possible to imitate dark things and -- through fear and pity -- partially to tame them. Stone seemed to understand this, particularly when Phillip shows Alexander the wall paintings.
3) At first I found it strange that Alexander remained so trapped in his teenage. At the age of 33 (the age of Jesus of Nazareth, reputedly, taking on Pilate and the Sanhedrin) he seemed to have grown little from the bright-eyed pupil at the Academy. Stone clearly intended this metastasis: the backtracking by 10 and then by 9 years was signposted in school-masterly fashion.
4) Hopkins' Ptolemy is intended to be a boring old f*rt. He gives us as much as a rational man can of A's genesis and nemesis. Stone wants us to explore what remains.
5) The charges made by some of homo-eroticism are ludicrous. There is only one sex scene, between A and Roxanne, which was presumably intended to deepen the platonic relationship between A and Hephaistion. (I imagine that Stone was being deliberately unhistorical in portraying A and H as chaste; such is the burden of writing for US audiences.)
6) Yet, ultimately, for me, the movie failed to convince. I wanted to see Alexander transformed by his ontogeny. Instead, he seemed to be trapped by it. But that was a failing of some import; perhaps Stone intended it.
7) This movie will get better and better ratings as more folk watch it, out of the hothouse of commercial ratings. Already I feel that I need to watch it a second time.
David Broadhurst