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Alexander (film)

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Alexander is a 2004 biopic/epic film, directed by Oliver Stone about the life of Alexander the Great. According to Stone, the theatrical release is as true to history as possible. It is a heavily character driven film. The continuity is nonlinear.

Together with its controversy, Alexander failed in the United States film market, with only $34 million USD of total box office revenue, while succeeding internationally with $139 million USD outside United States, and has been ranked as the number one grossing film in 39 countries.#redirect

Contents

Plot summary

The film is based primarily on the biography Alexander the Great (ISBN 0140088784) by Robin Lane Fox, who also served as historical consultant to the film but accepted an appearance as an extra in the cavalry charges in lieu of payment (R. Lane Fox, 1973; in the following, "R. Lane Fox" denotes cross-reference to its individual chapters). It gives a glimpse into some of the key moments of Alexander's youth, and his victory over the Persian Empire until his death. Omitted are Alexander's experience during the campaign by his father Philip II of Macedon and his own campaigning against Greek city-states, as well as his western Persian campaign up to 331 BC. The route from India back to Babylon and his final years are highly abbreviated. The military emphasis are the Battle of Gaugamela and Battle of Hydaspes.

Besides R. Lane Fox, Stone's interpretation of Alexander's life is also strongly influenced by works of William Woodthorpe Tarn and his academically controversial "unity of mankind" interpretation of Plutarch (Alexander the Great vol. 1, Cambridge Univ. Press). Stone also introduced his own Oedipal interpretation of Alexander's life (e.g. G. Crowdus, Cineaste 30:2, 12).

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Theatrical version

The film opens with the words "Fortune favours the bold" ("audentes Fortuna iuvat", Virgil, [The Aeneid, 10.284]) and blends into the death scene of Alexander (Colin Farrell, early childhood: Jessie Kamm, teenage years: Connor Paolo) in June of 323 BC.

Young Alexander

The storyline then jumps to Ptolemy I Soter in his late years (Anthony Hopkins, childhood: Robert Earley, Alexander-contemporary: Elliot Cowan), who will narrate throughout the remaining film. In lavish sets and images Oliver Stone shows the daily life in court of his father King Philip (Val Kilmer) in the ancient Macedon, while starkly portrays the crippling relationship between his parents, King Philip and the snake-loving Queen Olympias (Angelina Jolie). With a family that maintains their ancestry back to Heracles and Achilles, it is in this environment that Alexander grows up under a strongly Homeric influence.

Then we see the young Alexander growing up together with Philip's royal pages in Mieza, with Aristotle among their tutors – some of these pages, like Cassander (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, childhood: Morgan Christopher Ferris), Hephaistion (Jared Leto, childhood: Patrick Carroll), or Perdiccas (Neil Jackson, childhood: Aleczander Gordon), will later become officers in Alexander's army (Nearchus and Ptolemy are also shown as pages, which is historically inaccurate). We see Alexander, at that time already known for his interest in music and poetry, taming Bucephalus (mispronounced as "Byousefalus" all the way through the film) (cf. R. Lane Fox, Ch. 3)  – here, the eagle as symbol of Zeus first appears –, followed by an intimate scene in which King Philip explains to Alexander the roots of Greek civilization in its ancient mythology.

With another jump, we witness how the strong bond of father and son is destroyed. Goaded by his mother, Alexander objects strenuously to his father's new marriage of Attlus' niece, Cleopatra the Macedon, particularly to Attlus' remark at the wedding feast that "now we will have a legitimate heir to the throne", referring to the Epirote/Molossian ancestry of Olympias. When Phillip bans the 20-year-old Alexander from his palace (cf. R. Lane Fox, Ch. 1).

Ptolemy then narrates that soon thereafter Philip is assassinated and Alexander becomes king of Macedon (336 BC), and after a brief mentioning of his punitive razing of Thebes (335 BC) and burning of Persepolis (330 BC), Ptolemy gives an overview of Alexander's west Persian campaign until 331 BC, including his declaration to be the son of Zeus by the Oracle of Amun at Siwa Oasis. Then Ptolemy introduces the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC), where Alexander faces Darius III of Persia (Raz Degan).

Battle of Gaugamela and Babylon

Alexander discusses the strategy with his officers, with Parmenion sceptical of Alexander's strategy, and where he rejects Cassander's suggestion of a surprise attack. In the night before the battle (with the lunar eclipse of 20 September 331 BC), Alexander also depicted as occasionally speaking to his Macedonian soldiers in Makedonisti instead of koine (cf. [Plutarch, Alexander, 51.4]), with Colin Farrell and the soldiers talking in Irish accent on screen.

After Alexander rallied the troops, accusing Darius to be responsible for the assassination of his father Philip, the Macedonian marches forward (shouting "enyalios") while the Companion Cavalry rides to their right flank, and Darius order the Persian army to attack. Stone's depiction of the Battle of Gaugamela follows mostly the accounts in the well-known sources, e.g. the 16 × 16 Macedonian phalanx, with the 4.3 m (14 ft) sarisa and the button shaped shield, employing their trapping technique against the Persian scythed chariots, or Alexander turning the wedge formation of the Companion Cavalry and charging into the thinned Persian flank.

Main differences to the historical accounts are:

Afterwards, he victoriously marches into Babylon, the heart of the Persian empire. As the years decline and Alexander's power grows without a halt, his empire quickly expands eastwards, stretching from Egypt to as far as India.

Eastern campaign, India, and the final years

The movie then follows the eight-year campaign in Asia until reaching the lush jungles of India. The plot also illustrates Alexander's relationship with his childhood friend (and possible lover) Hephaistion, and later his wife Roxane (Rosario Dawson).

Significant amount of the film's duration is devoted to Alexander's marriage to the noble Roxane, daughter of a Bactrian nobleman. The final act of the film depicts Alexander's campaign in India. These scenes are partitioned into an overwhelming presentation of the battle against the Indian forces, and the constant presence of death in Alexander's final years. The visually compelling depiction of the Battle of the Hydaspes (326 BC) in India is inaccurate in many ways, but rightly represents the megalomaniacal moods of Alexander. This battle sequence is elided together with Alexander's later near-fatal injury at Mallia, where he took an arrow in the lung (325 BC).

To return to Babylon, Alexander's army marches across the Makran/Gedrosian desert (325 BC) – which the film simplifies to the extent that it seemed completely unreasonable, e.g. without mentioning Nearchus' fleet, or that it was a partial army (cf. R. Lane Fox, Ch. 28). Returning to Babylon, the story again jumps to the Death of Hephaestion (324 BC, cf. R. Lane Fox, Ch. 30), in the film relocated from Hamadan to Babylon.

Spread throughout the film, there are three scenes of conspiracy and attempts to end his life. The last of which contains two merged to one, before the final confrontation in India. This time he succeeds again in banging the soldiers' heads together, but the army is divided. Not long after he will pay with his own life.

"You dream, Krateros. Your simplicity long ended when you took Persian mistresses and children, and you thickened your holdings with plunder and jewels. Because you have fallen in love with the things that destroy men. Do you not see? And you, as well as I, know that as the years decline and the memories stale, and all your great victories fade, it will always be remembered: You left your King in Asia!"
The film closes with Ptolemy confessing that Alexander's own generals murdered him because of his ambition to continue into Arabia. The idea of such a plot is unlikely in view of the fact that (as depicted accurately throughout the film) Alexander had no male heirs of an age to take over the empire, and that the empire would fall apart, as is indeed exactly what happened.

Ptolemy concludes by narrating the end of Alexander's bloodline (the Argead dynasty), and the division of his empire into four parts. The film concludes with Ptolemy uttering "Megas Alexandros, the greatest Alexander of them all."

Director's cut

The difference of the "director's cut" version to the theatrical version are:

Production details

Location

Film Trivia

In the first scenes with Ptolemy, Anthony Hopkins exchanges a look with a person with a similar beard, played by Elliot Cowan. Contrary to belief and implication, this is not a glimpse of Ptolemy's life after the campaign, but his son, Ptolemy II.

There were two character subplots removed in the editing room: A Cassander/Roxane subplot which explained their fall from grace in Alexander's eyes (cut for time), and a Hephaistion vs. Cleitus subplot (apparently thought too intense to include). Both subplots were completely filmed, but are not likely to appear in any releases.

Controversy

General controversy

(For a complementary discussion, see also: Alexander's marriages and sexuality in Alexander the Great)

Even prior to its release, there was controversy about the film's depiction of ancient Greek sexual mores. A group of 25 Greek lawyers threatened to sue both Stone and the Warner Bros. film studio for what they claim is an inaccurate portrayal of history. "We are not saying that we are against gays but we are saying that the production company should make it clear to the audience that this film is pure fiction and not a true depiction of the life of Alexander", said one of the lawyers, Yannis Varnakos.

However, the movie's portrayal of ancient Greek sex customs is completely based on the works of ancient historians. For example, in the film, Alexander's father – King Phillip the II of Macedon – is killed by his paederastic lover (at the wedding party in the film you can see the boy yelling). Pausanias was a young man who was having a sexual relationship with Philip. However, Pausanias's place had been taken by another younger man of the same name that Philip loved more. The elder Pausanias denounced his younger rival as a whore. Unable to endure the insults from the elder Pausanias, the younger Pausanias had a conversation with Attalus and later committed suicide. Attalus then became enraged at the older Pausanias for provoking the suicide of his younger competitor and invited Pausanias to the wedding feast where Attalus made him drunk and had him raped. After the rape Pausanias demanded vengeance from Philip. Philip rebuked Pausanias because Attalus was one of his top generals and the uncle of his latest wife. Pausanias is said to have bided his time until Philip's daughter's wedding. When Philip was walking un-guarded, Pausanias stabbed him to death out of revenge. Aristotle (Politics) and Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus) confirm this.

At the UK premiere of the film, Stone blamed "raging fundamentalism in morality" for the film's US box office failure [link]. He argued that American critics and audiences had blown the issue of sexuality out of proportion. He also asserted a film without revenge motif or villain like Alexander is too complex "for the conventional mind" [link].

Other comments from Stone about the controversy:

The criticism prompted Stone to make significant changes to the film for its DVD release. Stone removed 8 minutes, cutting back his portrayal of Alexander's bisexuality, and added new shots, like at the opening scene of Alexander dying. The DVD cover characterizes the changes as making the film "... faster paced, more action-packed!" Hollywood Reporter quoted Stone about the toning down of the scenes of bisexuality: "I can't tell you how many 'real guys' are turned off to this shit" (G. Abel, Hollywood Reporter 390, 11).

Criticism by Historians

With its attention to historical detail, Alexander also attracted critical scrutiny from historians, however often with a quite opposite tendency than that has been voiced by general film critiques. Most such academic criticism are concerning the insufficient or even reluctant adherence to historical details, T. Carver e.g. commented regarding the depiction of the relationship between Alexander and Hephaistion (Film & History 35:2, 83): "In this respect it is barely more than a buddy-film." Some other criticized Stone's Oedipal hypothesis, or a lack of questioning of Alexander's "greatness". [I. Worthington] e.g. asked in his review (The American Historical Review 110:2, 533): "... was he a cynical, paranoid drunkard, who thought he was a god, was guilty of murder and mass slaughter, and who ended up destroying the Macedonian Empire?"

However, as usual in an academic debate, the critique of these authors needs to be regarded in light of their scholarly position, as some of them in fact reflect the ongoing controversy in the current research. Worthington's critique, for example, is a summary of issues he already raised five years before Stone's film (Ancient History Bulletin 13:2, 39), while e.g. his colleague F. L. Holt objected (Ancient History Bulletin 13:3, 111): "Worthington has no trouble adding to his indictment some specific charges of a very doubious nature", and that it "... perhaps led us to a new extreme orthodoxy that, too, runs counter to the interest of historical accuracy."

Criticism by film critics

The principal complaint among critics was that Alexander, perhaps alone among Oliver Stone pictures, was boring.

The kindest criticism came from Daily Variety (11/21/04), where Todd McCarthy wrote that Oliver Stone's "enormous Alexander is at best an honorable failure, an intelligent and ambitious picture that crucially lacks dramatic flair and emotional involvement. Dry and academic where Troy was vulgar and willfully ahistorical." Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times that Alexander "brought out the worst in terms of the puerile writing, confused plotting, shockingly off-note performances and storytelling that lacks either of the two necessary ingredients for films of this type, pop or gravitas." (NYT, 11/24/04). Roger Ebert wrote (11/24/04) "To mention Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, the early-2004 epic about Grecian myth, is to make a comparison necessary. Alexander far outreaches Troy in ambition, its action scenes seem at least conceivably plausible, and it is based on ideas, not formulas. Yet Troy tells a story that has some structure and clarity, and those are precisely the qualities that Alexander lacks. The parts don't fit together in Alexander. Transitions and segues are missing, and we seem to be looking at disconnected parts from a much larger whole: two wholes, perhaps, one involving Alexander's military and political careers, and the other his confused emotional life."

All in all, most criticism of Stone and the picture tended to be gentle, though clearly the critics were unanimous in finding Alexander a confused mess of a film. Though in its publicity, much was made of the bisexuality of Alexander, critics in general found the homosexual aspects of the film tame and too solemn. The acting—alone among Oliver Stone films—was universally and savagely panned. Both Peter Travers and Roger Ebert named Alexander the worst film of 2004.

Responses to Criticism

When released in India over the winter of 2004/2005, 45 minutes of the film was cut out so that movie theatres could fit in more screenings and make more money. The 'Indian' Alexander died in India, killed by the Indian king Porus. While Oliver Stone was made aware of this alteration to his film, and was interviewed in the Indian media, no known legal action has been taken.

External links

References


Films by Oliver Stone
Feature Films
Seizure | The Hand | Salvador | Platoon | Wall Street | Talk Radio | Born on the Fourth of July | The Doors | JFK | Heaven & Earth | Natural Born Killers | Nixon | U-Turn | Any Given Sunday | Alexander | World Trade Center | Son of the Morning Star
Documentaries
Comandante | Looking For Fidel

 

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