A Disappointment of Epic Proportions

Rating: Null/10 (12 December 2004)

(Minor spoilers.) A young Macedonian king manages to put an abusive father and conniving mother behind him and conquer the known world in the high-budget/low-quality epic. This was probably my most anticipated film of the year. I really wanted to like this film. I really did. I have had problems with Oliver Stone and his various agendas in the past, but his previous work made me think he was well suited for this subject matter. I was wrong. I hated this film. To paraphrase Ebert, I hated hated hated hated this movie. The film was not only bad, it was also wrong headed. The main wrong headedness concerns the gay material. The historical record seems to indicate that Alexander was at the very least bi-sexual. It'd be hard to call him homosexual since he married women and had children. (Let me say I have no problem with homosexuality in films. I particularly liked the scene in 'Spartacus' between Lawrence Oliver and Tony Curtis concerning the tastes for oysters and snails. That scene resonated, not only because of the sharp writing and first rate acting, but because it played into the theme of the film.) However, regardless of the best intentions of Oliver Stone, the studio must've been crazy to deal with that subject in a film with this budget. Prior to the film's release, it seemed like all the press about the film concerned the issue of homosexuality. Is that the main point and purpose of Alexander's celebrated life? I don't think so, but now, instead of it being a film about a man who conquered the world, it became a film about a guy who was gay. This reduction does a disservice to Alexander's life, as it would to any life by simply reducing a person to their sexual preference. Worse yet, the gay stuff simply didn't play. I saw the film on a weekend in a major Eastern city in the United States. When the gay-themed material started, snickering began in the audience. By the end of the film, most of the audience was laughing whenever anything 'gay' happened. No film costing over $150,000,000 can hope to make a profit when a large portion of the audience is laughing uproariously at the serious drama. That's wrongheadedness. And, speaking of drama, where was the story? This is the fatal flaw. Where was the freaking story? The film toyed with many areas of conflict, but didn't ultimately deliver on any of them. Was it a love story? Boy finds boy, boy marries girl, boy finds boy again? There was no compelling love story, whether homosexual or heterosexual. Was it a tale of adventure? That might've worked if they had included more action in the film. There was shockingly little battle footage in the film considering its excessive length. Was it a film about a clash of cultures, and the growth of human freedom? The film hints at that theme, but supplies little evidence. (Would it have been wrong to see more of Darius and make him a villainous counterweight to Alexander?) Ultimately, I suppose the film was ultimately about the relationship between Alexander and his parents, but that material is scattered hopelessly and ineffectively throughout the unending narrative. This film would have worked much better if Stone had honed his film down to fewer themes and incidents. Right now it is a mess. It was an out of control narrative. The script was badly flawed, relying on voice-over narration to reveal what they should have shown instead. The supporting characters in Alexander's army were also poorly drawn. Other than Ptolemy, who is gracious enough to introduce his younger self through voice-over, none of his generals and commanders stands out. They are completely interchangeable, and, as a result, one of the major conflicts in the film, the reticence of Alexander's men to continue the conquests, is substantially weakened. On the bright side, I thought the battle scenes were impressive. The sets, photography and art direction were also first-rate. These, however, were small joys. I wish this film were better, because I would like to see more historical dramas. As it dies its quick death, the executives in Hollywood will probably take it as a sign that people don't want to see historical films. Not true. We just want to see good ones.