Too camp for comfort

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2005)

When I first saw this movie advertised, I was quite excited. It has a terrific cast, a great director and who could ask for a better story?
Emerging from the cinema, I must confess this movie has some fantastic moments but I am I left a little disappointed.
I was utterly convinced by Kilmer and Jolie's performances as Alexander's parents. I've come to expect this quality from Kilmer, but Jolie was a real unexpected treat. I see from other posts that she's getting some abuse over the dodgy accent, but I felt that it was quite appropriate given the historic origins of Olympias. These two were really great and its a real pity we don't get to see more of them. The role of King Philip in particular is quite understated in the movie.
Another positive aspect is the attention to historical detail in this movie. This goes as far as using historical quotes in the dialogue. An example of this is when Alexander and Philip fight at Phlip's wedding to Cleopatra. I'm no expert on the history of Alexander, but there didn't seem to be any real historical howlers that spoilt my enjoyment.
My favourite part of the movie was the scene where Alexander charges an Elephant in battle. This is beautifully crafted and also serves as the perfect metaphor of Alexander's life. A lone man on a horse from the west, charging down the giant of Asia with only his ambition and courage to support him. Like many such scenes in the movie, it feels real and not ruined by stodgy CG effects.
So why was I disappointed when there were all these great things going on? There were actually a few causes for my discontent.
Lets begin by getting on to the controversial subject of Alexander's sexuality. I was a little baffled by how this was handled in the film and the cynical side of me might even argue that it was done to generate publicity.
Of course historically, Alexander's preferences have a lot of ambiguity, which was not at all uncommon for his period of history. Farrell actually does a pretty good at maintaining this ambiguity, but his efforts are spoilt by the final cut of the movie.
In the movie we are treated to a constant bombardment of homo-erotic undertones. The worst of which comes in the form of a super-camp Hephaistion. Hephaistion appears as a weepy-eyed softy that seems to spend his life mooning over his love for Alexander. For me, this doesn't correspond to Hephaistion, dearest friend and general who commanded Alexander's fleet and was actually physically larger than Alexander. In fact many of the male characters were inflicted with very distracting eye makeup that made them look like they were in drag; not good when we are expected to believe that they are capable of dismembering people on the battlefield.
Whilst the real Alexander had three wives we are given the distinct impression that he has absolutely no interest in women whatsoever. The only scenes where Alexander is intimate with a female come across as brutal and forced. I was left with the overwhelming impression that Alexander was very much gay (in the modern sense).
This whole theme seemed contrived, anachronistic and extremely overstated. It would have been equally inappropriate if Alexander had been repeatedly presented as strictly heterosexual. These labels had no real meaning in his world.
Regardless of his real preferences, historically it seems that Alexander was a man who believed in purity and self-restraint. From all accounts it seems he was not a very sexual person at all. Given the great events of his life, it would have been more appropriate to have only given a cursory nod to his sexual life and then spent more time on the things that made him Alexander.
There just seemed to be big important chunks of Alexander's life missing from the movie. In its place there were a lot of scenes that seemed to drag on, but didn't add much to the story. For example, the prolonged battle scene in the desert was like watching a dust storm for 10 minutes and told us little of the military genius of our man.
Lastly I felt that there was some bad casting. The worst was Farrell himself. Although he still puts in an excellent performance, he just didn't seem like a natural fit.
In conclusion, I think I would have enjoyed this movie a lot more if it hadn't been for all the eye makeup.