A Director's Cut Reformation of Alexander

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2005)

Few films have garnered the criticism as the theatrical release of the much maligned Alexander and that fact always stirs the curiosity cauldron - in this case, so much so that Oliver Stone decided to re-edit and re-compose the original version into this Director's Cut DVD. Now the film can be viewed in the relatively inexpensive milieu of the home and perhaps more folks will give another (or, as in my case, a first) look at what the grumbling is all about.
Alexander is a big film about a big person who did big things. How a story so altered by time, history, myth, and folklore could be translated to the screen strains the imagination - but not Oliver Stone's - a man who loves big events and big issues. And I think he succeeds in drawing us into the atmosphere of the 'civilized world' of Alexander's time. Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) relates the history of a man who wished to tie the known world together into one empire and would have us believe that dream was altruistic as well as destined. Through a series of flash forwards and flashbacks the birth to death of Alexander is pieced together: each time a great moment or crisis occurs in Alexander's life, the story backtracks to explain the etiological influences of that particular step in Alexander's march around the globe.
The settings of Alexander's youth in Macedonia are breathtakingly beautiful in the cave painting details of the various gods and heroes and heroines that so deeply influenced the life of Alexander - Medea, Oedipus, Herakles, Zeus, etc. If the entire film had been able to maintain this mystic quality of ambiance, this would have been a powerful work. But once the scenes begin to disperse to Persia, India, Greece, etc the film becomes Hollywoodized and hearkens back to the Cecil B. DeMille view of ancient history, garnished with expensive sets and costumes and endless dancing maidens and overwrought battle sequences.
Where this film (at least this version) is best is when it approaches the passion of Alexander for Hephaistion. Few writers or film makers have dared to enter the arena of homosexual love of heroes of history and this is where Stone takes the chance - and then unfortunately heavily edits the romance from this 'director's cut'. A missed opportunity to examine an important aspect of neglected history is sad.
As for the cast, Colin Farrell does his best with the script he has in making us believe in Alexander, and he is able to connect the chemistry with Jared Leto's Hephaistion well. Angelina Jolie is aptly smarmy as the snake-loving Olympias, Val Kilmer's Philip, grotesquely hidden behind scars of makeup, is suitably evil, but given the tritely written roles of Aristotle (Christopher Plummer) and Roxane (Rosario Dawson) the rest of the cast is forgettable.
But now that the film is available in two forms for less money than a pair of theater tickets perhaps more people will watch, plug in to Oliver Stone's concept, and the air will clear. I, for one, think it is a film worth watching! Grady Harp