Alexander (2004)
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Alexander the Great, the Macedonian King who conquered most of the known world, is a potentially fascinating subject for a biopic. There is one obvious problem with making such a movie - how to squeeze the life and achievements of someone who achieved more in his short life than most people can even dream of. Oliver Stone isn’t a director likely to be daunted by any challenge so he bravely tries to compress Alexander into an (admittedly long) running time. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work.
We first see Alexander (Colin Farrell) growing up in Macedonia. It is an unusual childhood, marred by his dysfunctional parents, King Phillip (Val Kilmer), portrayed here as a foolish drunkard, and the eccentric and Queen Olympias (Angelina Jolie). They hate each other, and Phillip isn’t too fond of his son either, whilst Alexander quarrels with his father and seems to resent his mother’s attempts at ordering his life. After Phillip is assassinated Alexander ascends to the throne, overcoming his rivals for control of Greece and setting off to battle against the might of the Persian Empire, despite being just in his early twenties. This part of Alexander’s story should really be the best bit of the film, since this is where most of Alexander’s greatest achievements lie. Unfortunately, Oliver Stone seems to disagree with this and we don’t get to see any of this, this whole period of Alexander’s life meriting only a rather dull narration from King Ptolomy (Anthony Hopkins), who does a passable impression of a third-rate school history teacher.
We pick up Alexander’s story at the battle of Gaugeamela, a titanic struggle against the might of the Persian army. It is an impressive battle scene, but we have come to expect Hollywood epics to do impressive battle scenes. Alexander wins, and take possession of the luxurious city of Babylon as his prize. However, conquering the world’s mightiest empire wasn’t enough for him and he continues to push his armies further east towards India, driven by some compulsion to always go further. Personally I suspect he was on a quest to find the land where his accent came from, sadly he was going in the wrong direction. His Macedonian soldiers start to grow weary of the endless war and start to plot against them, which leads to some dull arguments and some not-very-intriguing intrigue. Eventually he meets his match as his tired army clash with Indian forces in the jungle in another impressive battle scene which features a magnificent shot of Alexander’s horse rearing up in front of a similarly rearing Indian war elephant. Alexander retreats to Babylon and the film creeps towards its relatively undramatic ending.
Admirably, Stone attempts to keep reasonably true to the actual historical events. Unfortunately he sabotages his film as a piece of entertainment due to two fundamental problems; true history doesn’t always fit well into a dramatic context and Stone perversely avoids some of the most interesting parts of Alexander’s story. Alexander may have conquered nations, but Stone is more interested in Alexander’s relatively uninteresting relationships with his best friend Hephaistion (portrayed by an embarrassingly camp Jared Leto) and his sullen wife Roxanne (Rosario Dawson).
In summary, there are quite a few good scenes in the film, both major battles, their discovery of the Monkey tribe and a handful of others. Unfortunately, the film manages to feel both too long to be entertaining and too short to properly tell the story.
Rating : 6 / 10
All content ©2007 William Marnoch.
Comments? Agree/Disagree with the Reviews? Suggestions? Random Ramblings? Whatever you might want to say, feel free to e-mail me at william@wmarnoch.freeserve.co.uk .