They tried really hard... SPOILERS

Rating: 4/10 (12 December 2004)

I'm a fan of Alexander, and I wanted to be a fan of this movie, but I just can't be. Though decently cast it's got some serious problems in other areas: horrible editing and pacing, questionable direction, and (frankly) bad writing. They all tried hard, but it just didn't come together.
For starters, the film is harried by the monster that so many biopics fall prey too, lack of focus. There's so much to consider. What gets skipped over and what gets included? How are these incidents most effectively portrayed to show the character of the subject? Oliver Stone did not answer these questions well.
We spend some time with Alexander as a boy. Then, all of a sudden, he's grown up and been disowned. The movie blinks again, and he's waging war on Persia. We're given a few scenes with his parents, but Ptolemy tells us it was with his friends that he found a home. The film gives awfully little to back this up, yet the drama of the mutinies that come later depend on it. When Alexander is going up against his nemesis, Darius, I don't feel like I know him or his men. I certainly don't know why he's great. I've no clue of his military genius and little of his incredible ambition.
Where are the incidents that shaped Alexander as a young man and proclaimed his character to the world? The Gordian knot? The destruction of Thebes? The pardoning of the Athenians? They talk about Alexandrias, but we never see one founded. And as for Gaugamela. I'm sure Stone thinks we know what's going on, but we don't. I never even heard the words 'hammer and anvil.'
From Gaugamela on it seems like Stone is doing his haphazard best to cram in every story he can about Alexander's last 8 years. The film degenerated into chaos. The center could not hold, and mere anarchy was loosed upon the movie theater. At the point when a film OUGHT to be building toward a climax, I was starting to feel like one of Alexander's troops. 'Please, sir, can't we just go home? Can't this movie to end so I can see my wife and children again before I die!'
Worse, as the film plods on and Stone struggles to fit in all that is Alexander, he keeps returning to old Ptolemy in Egypt. Ptolemy seems fond, not only of wasting time telling us what we JUST SAW but also of injecting flashbacks which would have played much better if they had just happened in chronological order. I was lucky enough to have studied Alexander's life in college, so I had some grasp of what happened when. The person I attended the movie with, however, got totally lost.
Here are a few tips, Oliver. 1) you can tell a story chronologically OR start in medias res. Pick one. You can't do both. 2) you're not allowed to turn everything on the screen red for 10 (VERY LONG) minutes and have your hero's life flash before his eyes unless you're going to kill him RIGHT THEN! 3) show, don't tell, and certainly don't do both.
Then there are the host of errors that might have been forgivable if they'd been alone or at least ignorable if they hadn't been so persistent, like some of the bad dialogue. What was with the accents? How on god's earth could they spend all that money on armor and weapons and military training (I saw the special on TV; I know they did) and not get Colin Farrel a voice coach!? Half the soldiers seemed to be Irish or Scottish, and Olympias and Roxane were apparently both raised by Slavs. And his HAIR! Why does Alexander have dark roots and eyebrows? Why does Hephaistion wear so much eye-makeup in battle?
On a more thematic note, I'm not sure even Stone knows what his Alexander's motives are. I appreciate ambiguity when it's well done, and Alexander's drives may have been difficult even for him to understand, but his goal was to liberate everyone and blend the races? Come on, man. Seriously.
Everyone's talking about the gay stuff. I didn't have any problem with it except how it was done. Physical or non (and, from what I understand, most historians think it was) Alexander's relationship with Hephaistion was certainly one of the most important of his life, though they didn't do anything in the movie except exchange very manly hugs. Yet Stone has Alexander in bed with some Persian guy.
Straight, gay, and bi are modern concepts about sexuality that don't really fit into the world of Alexander. Some preferred one gender to another, but experiencing physical and/or emotional love with either or both was normal. The Spartans, some of the most feared soldiers ever, practically institutionalized homosexuality. The Sacred Band of Thebes, the army Alexander helped his father defeat and then mourned over when he was 18 (which was NOT in the movie) was made entirely of pairs of male lovers and was unbeaten for a generation. That said, I know portraying Alexander as what is thought of now as bisexual in modern America is a risky thing for a filmmaker to do. I say to you, Stone, if you're going to take risks, then take them, dammit. Don't just give Alexander a brief fling. Give him a love story.
In fact, as a lover of ancient history, let me add that, if you are going to film epics concerning the ancient world, please do a decent job. In part, that means limiting yourself. In the end, the movie just tried to do too much. As a result, it didn't do anything well. Focus was lost, and so were important elements of Alexander. The effort (especially by the good cast) is appreciated, but this is the sort of cruddy job that convinces directors and producers not to tackle film projects concerning ancient subjects, and that is not cool, man. Not cool.