"Alexander"'s dirty little secret

Rating: 7/10 (3 August 2005)

I watched the theatrical version of this film on DVD last night as I was very curious about all the kerfuffle. As it turns out, even though I am heavily prejudiced against Oliver Stone for the sheer mass of lies contained in his delirious ode to irresponsible homophobia called "JFK", and for hanging out with and glorifying small-time and big-time real-life homophobic tyrants like Jim Garrison and Fidel Castro, I must say his film of "Alexander" got most everything right. What nobody will tell you, of course, is that this "Alexander" is an almost scene-for-scene transposition of Mary Renault's novel "The Persian Boy" (Alexander's conquests as seen from the eyes of his favourite eunuch, Bagoas). The only thing that's changed is having Ptolemy act as the narrator instead of Bagoas (both dictating in Alexandria many years later). This, shall we say, "borrowing" of course explains why the film is so gay-positive, which, I suppose, is Mr. Stone's way of atoning for past sins. As luck would have it, Middle America was not ready for such frankness and Mr. Stone now knows what it is to be bad-mouthed for having "gay sympathies", by which he will probably learn a lesson. Or then again, maybe not, judging from the self-censorship job he pulled on his own "director's cut" from which every naughty bit was excised. But this does not distract from the fact that "Alexander" (the theatrical version) is a rather competent film that was obviously misunderstood by a whole bunch of Yahoos and Joe Six-Packs (Stone's regular public) who were lured into theatres to stare at Ms. Jolie's gazongas. And that is very sad for the future of film-making in America.