DCGreeks.com
@ The Movies Presents
Alexander
(The Grating)
December 10, 2004
It would have been easy to miss Alexander altogether with it opening on a
busy Thanksgiving weekend to less than stellar reviews. Blame a lazy Saturday
afternoon with no Greek events this weekend for the pain you will endure in
reading this review. We officially took one for the team by dropping two matinee
tickets on this Macedonut.
In Alexander, Oliver Stone fails on the most basic level to do what every
other Hollywood movie on a Greek or Greek-American theme in the past three years
since we've started this site has done. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Troy, and
even that Big Fat Greek Piece of Giadouroskato managed to make us feel some
pride or at least identify enough with one character, one aspect of out heritage
or history, something, that would make you want to go out and buy it on DVD or
at least stop to watch it for five minutes on cable. Not only were we begging
for Alexander to end, we and everyone else in the sparse theater were cheering
when the Indians and their elephants started stomping on Macedonians. The Greek
Government should purchase a copy of this movie when it comes out on DVD and
send it to the government of FYROM and force them to watch it. Based on Oliver
Stone’s portrayal, the government of FYROM would probably quickly change its
name to the Republic of Are We Sure We Really Want to Be Associated with These
Idiots than adopt the name of Macedonia.
Never in one movie has a man been bafflingly portrayed as having both an
Oedipus and an Elektra complex. Angelina Jolie's stab at playing Alexander's
mother, Olympias, incidentally the only character in this flick with anything
resembling an Eastern European accent puts the grate in Alexander. Never have we
wished a Greek female character to be on the business end of an anapodi sflaria,
as much as this manipulative, possessed, Transylvanian power monger. In fact
there were no likeable or believable female characters in this film. (Not sure
if Stone did this on purpose to justify Alexander's "leanings.")
Many feared that too much would be made of Alexander's
"preferences" which if true would have made him different even in the
seemingly anything-goes ancient Greek world. (You could tell that this wasn't
normal in other cultures by the uncomfortable looks on everyone else's faces.)
While there wasn't anything graphically controversial in this movie, the
innuendo defined Alexander the Great in the movie, reducing him to the ancient
world's Troy McClure from The Simpsons. (Anyone who remembers the episode of The
Simpsons where Troy McClure marries one of Marge's sisters, Selma, and tries to
have a baby with her for the sake of bettering his image and dispelling rumors
about him. knows what we're taking about. In fact, the Troy-Selma love scene was
less awkward than Alexander's encounter with Roxanna.)
Two battle scenes aren’t enough to distract you from the mindless drama of
Alexander's life that Stone likes to focus on in this film. We're cheated out of
any grand strategy, any geo-political intrigue, or even a glimpse into
Alexander's true ambition. Stone makes the Macedonian conquest of the then known
world seem like the half-baked machinations of a group of Westerners who conquer
the Middle East and Central Asia in the hopes of freeing these “barbarians”
from their oppressors and replacing it with the benevolent rule of Western
thought and culture. Alexander seems to have no plan on winning the peace and
also an obsessed desire to hunt down and destroy all insurgents by chasing them
into the mountains of Central Asia. This portrayal exhibits the problems
inherent in trying to piece together a historically based film from accounts
from the Ancient World – it gives filmmakers license to fill in the gaps with
the politics of the 21st Century.
What’s scarier is that within the next two years we will be subjected to
yet another Alexander the Great movie by a director best known for his remake of
Moulin Rouge with Nicole Kidman and Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio,
which he’ll be teaming on this movie. Colin Farrell may have a good compromise
between the strength and thoughtfulness it took to be Alexander and he wasn’t
all that great in the role, so we’re more than understandably nervous by
DiCaprio’s upcoming shot at it. But then again maybe Baz Luhrmann will
surprise us with his film. It can’t be any worse that what Oliver Stone did.
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