Ocscar worthy

Rating: Null/10 (5 December 2004)

Oliver Stone's attempt to give a realistic rendering of Alexander the Great's life necessitated a realistic rendering of his times as well, and the fact is, things were different then. Both death and sex were considered merely parts of everyday existence, unencumbered by modern Christian-dominated civilization's moral considerations. (This was brought home to me personally when I saw the paintings on the walls of homes in Pompeii. By modern standards, the images were pornographic, containing scenes both bisexual and heterosexual, yet they adorned the main living areas of the finest houses. Clearly those people had no more consideratins about sexuality than farming or hunting. It was just another aspect of being alive.) The Greeks of the 4th century BC apparently felt the same way, and Alexander was simply a product of his times in this regard, no more or less. That he was bisexual is incidental. Who he connected with, and why, is far more signifigant in the telling of his tale, and to my mind Stone did an excellent job of separating the important from the unimportant here. Of course, the on-screen violence was graphic, as befitted the violent nature of those times, and there was simply too much of it in Alexander's life to show it all, but I think Stone put a human face on a larger than life persona in an admirable way and successfully avoided many of the excesses a film of this magnitude would easily be prone to. "Alexander" is the height of artistic direction in my view.