Oliver Stone & His Alexander is a Failure

Rating: 2/10 (3 March 2006)

Oliver Stone's Alexander is a travesty of misinformation. Multiple historical errors compounded by critically omitted facts and understanding of the political and cultural climate of Ancient Greek culture and society...makes the depictions of Alexander as a person seem ridiculous in our present day world. Alexander the Movie by Oliver Stone depicts Alexander and his story out of context to the degree that the movie completely missed the point of Alexander's Greatness through his achievements and the essence of his mission.
Oliver Stone's Homosexual Fantasy with Alexander the Great (A Fictional Account of Alexander with Oliver himself as Hephaestion and Bagoas) Is not only humorous and inaccurate but shameful for Stone to depict such lies. Bagaos the dancing boy in the movie for example in reality was a Persian Cavalry Commander that operated in Alexander's army in the drive towards India after the Persian defeats. There is no historical record of Bagoas the Commander and Alexander being lovers. Hephaestion depiction is so out of context it is ludicrous.
The movie opens with the 3rd major battle vs the Persians. The battle scene is fairly accurate...but why not show more of Alexander's military genius-he was a soldier first...prior to the movies opening battle Alexander: 1. Fought at the Granicus River with his 40,000 troops and routed a Persian army of 200,000 2. Fought at the Issus River and routed a second Persian Army of approximately 400,000 3. Besieged in one of the most brilliant shows of heroism and military engineering the cities of Tyre and Gaza before moving on to Egypt.
....where is any reference to those feats in Oliver's homosexual fantasy???
4. The movie opens at the fourth major battle where at Gaugamela Alexander routed an army of 1,000,000 men...but there is no build up to that, no suspense, no drama...none of the above is hardly mentioned in the movie...suddenly we are at Gaugamela and ho hum there is Alexander's army routing the Persians....and from there.
5. the movie spirals out of context to a few interpersonal issues with the men and a blatantly out of context bi-sexual orgy of sex and drinking on Alexander's part...the facts are so completely distorted and out of context that it is not even funny...however to anyone not familiar with the real history and character of Alexander one is left with this impression thanks to Oliver Stone.
6. The battle in India vs King Porus...wrong...Alexander was not injured in that battle...he took an arrow through a lung in a siege of a mountain city some 2 or 3 years prior to that battle-in which the display of his personal heroism in that siege can be a movie in itself-....another piece of misinformation.
For the record. In Antiquity prior to Christian ethics and due to the harshness of hand to hand combat in battles men became very close to each other as friends and comrades in arms...similar in today's terms as team sport athletes are close today...Men developed primarily platonic relationships that created bonds between them that within the political, social and cultural climate where acceptable relations with the intensity and severity of the need to be close brothers in arms due to the savagery of the periods warfare. These men were blood brothers, brothers in arms and their lives depended on one another in the field of combat even more so than soldiers of today, as a result the affection for ones friend(s) in antiquity under this social context was very sincere and intense. At a younger age of these developing friendships (most likely teenage years, since marriage and girls in antiquity were protected for marriage and it was unheard of for dating due to strict social codes where the girls must be married to have relations with their husbands) there were sparse and periodic experimentation that could border or cross over to the sexual...however this was a sort of right of passage of the time and was not a lifelong situation...as the boys became men they married and had normal relations with women/wives etc. If this is taken out of context of the period and transported to our period it seems like something it was not. Oliver Stone does not address this but shows us something out of context between Alexander and Hephaestion and out of a periodic time line as he does with Alexander and Bagoas and other references to the point where the whole movie becomes Alexander the Gay and completely misses the point of his mission. A more accurate analogy- 2000 years from now-there are no sports and a movie comes out about football players of today who are naked with each other in the locker room and somebody as a prank is spanking some players butt with his towel after a game...to make it worse the director makes inferences that the players have a thing between them....this is what Oliver Stone has done...ridiculous. The result being instead of the audience focusing and seeing what an intense game football was and admiring the feats of physical and mental heroism of players on the field en route to winning a championship...the audience focuses solely on ...wow those really big strong tough guys who played that sport where just a bunch of pansies with each other in those locker rooms huh? Who would have thought...this is the degree that Oliver Stone has misrepresented and shown us Alexander.
I will give credit to Collin Farell for playing the role to the best of his ability but he was stuck in Oliver Stone's fantasy.
Finally...the ridiculous acting of Mrs. Smith, Ms Brad Pitt or whatever you want to call Angelina Jolie was ludicrous...which is also a good way to summarize Oliver Stone and his movie.
Hopefully a true director will come along with depth and understanding of Alexander's true significance for the period and history and make a movie that is as powerful in it's mark as is Alexander's real legacy.