Oliver Stone's Alexander
Nov. 25th, 2004 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmThis film was dishearteningly bad, and for the first time in my life my eyes welled up with tears at a movie because it was just so painfully inadequate and ultimately so clearly disinterested in the audience on any level.
Now, before you go, "Yeah, but Rach, you have issues, especially about Alexander," let me say a few things. For as much as I've grown up and loved this story my whole life, I've never believed in one single historical or fictional version of it as my truth, and I've never walked around with images of people and places from it in my head. It's been a feeling, and a voice. So this was not the disappointment of something I'd seen in my minds eye not coming to be.
That said, there are things I feel are key if not to Alexander's actual character, then to making a movie about Alexander that asks interesting questions or at least reminds us of why we gave a shit in the first place. But none of that is probably anything I need to get into right now.
Reasons why this movie is awful:
- no discernable plot arc -- more of a highlights reel in random order
- never once are we shown a spark of intelligence or instinct from Alexander, we have no sense at all of what makes him a leader of men, interesting or remotely functional.
- the interpersonal relationships are disastrously and offensively handled in a way that distracts massively from anything else that should be going on in the film and in a way that ultimately feels dishournable.
For one thing, you know how everyone is on about how gay this movie is? They're not exactly right. Yes, homosexual stuff gets mentioned all the time, and yes there's a great deal of really bad dialogue about how much Alexander and Hephaestion love each other, and one of these moments is actually one of only three decent moments in the film and is quite wrenching (granted, it hit a personal nerve, hard), but they never kiss. I don't need a love scene, I don't even need the kiss to be anything particularly sexual, but it's indecent and unfair to have this thing occupying a huge chunk of screen time and then decide that you can't actually go there, and meanwhile we get this utterly weird pointless sex scene involving Rosario Dawson. Stone's chosen to focus a lot on the Alexander Hephaestion story, and then squirm about madly and avoid it, until it becomes an unseemly preoccupation. And when the Times is going on and on about our first gay action hero and we get this? It's really icky. And Hephaestion is just this sad little puppy dog of a character, and that's so not right or relevant to why that part of the story is worth including. I was offended with so many different parts of my personal identity I was astounded.
- If you need subtitles to tell us where we are from moment to moment in a battle, you've got a problem. Fix your goddamn script.
- I have no problem with Farrell using his regular accent, but did Val Kilmer really have to put on teh worst and heaviest Irish accent ever to keep up with him? I'm thinking no.
- Jonathan Rhys Meyers always always always sounds like he's delivering Shakespeare badly at a community theater, which works very well for a him a lot of the time. Very not okay in this.
- Anthony Hopkins, I don't know whether to offer my condolences or yell.
- Angelina Jolie, still crazy.
- Racial and cultural issues are an inportant part of the story, but somehow Stone was attempting some sort of allegory I couldn't quite figure out about the current state of things in the world.
- The depths of paranoia, fear and parental issues this film decided to dwell on are BIZARRE, uncomfortable and irrational. It's ugly. And while Alexander's story is ugly at the end, it's ugly here after giving us nothing to mourn for.
- The score is completely annoying and every moment is a crescendo, and nothing builds to anything.
- Wretched dialog.
- This crappy device involving a bird.
- Oooooh, looky, photoshop filters. Will death be hot pink?
- And yes, hair _can_ ruin a movie. It only doesn't ruin this one, because so much other stuff went wrong.
Things that are not awful:
- The guy playing Cleitus and the guy playing the young Ptolemey are both fine.
- Bagoas was well cast in a Jaye Davidson sort of way
- "but he too is Alexander" -- not ever how I've envisioned that moment, but it felt genuine amongst nearly nothing else, and I was grateful for it.
Things that are good:
- the horse
- the monkey
- the young Alexander
- when Hephaestion gives Alexander the ring
- Alexander putting a mortally wounded soldier out of his misery.
I probably have a lot more to say, but it will take a while. The whole thing was bad and joyless and nonsensical, and I feel wounded for having watched it.
Now, before you go, "Yeah, but Rach, you have issues, especially about Alexander," let me say a few things. For as much as I've grown up and loved this story my whole life, I've never believed in one single historical or fictional version of it as my truth, and I've never walked around with images of people and places from it in my head. It's been a feeling, and a voice. So this was not the disappointment of something I'd seen in my minds eye not coming to be.
That said, there are things I feel are key if not to Alexander's actual character, then to making a movie about Alexander that asks interesting questions or at least reminds us of why we gave a shit in the first place. But none of that is probably anything I need to get into right now.
Reasons why this movie is awful:
- no discernable plot arc -- more of a highlights reel in random order
- never once are we shown a spark of intelligence or instinct from Alexander, we have no sense at all of what makes him a leader of men, interesting or remotely functional.
- the interpersonal relationships are disastrously and offensively handled in a way that distracts massively from anything else that should be going on in the film and in a way that ultimately feels dishournable.
For one thing, you know how everyone is on about how gay this movie is? They're not exactly right. Yes, homosexual stuff gets mentioned all the time, and yes there's a great deal of really bad dialogue about how much Alexander and Hephaestion love each other, and one of these moments is actually one of only three decent moments in the film and is quite wrenching (granted, it hit a personal nerve, hard), but they never kiss. I don't need a love scene, I don't even need the kiss to be anything particularly sexual, but it's indecent and unfair to have this thing occupying a huge chunk of screen time and then decide that you can't actually go there, and meanwhile we get this utterly weird pointless sex scene involving Rosario Dawson. Stone's chosen to focus a lot on the Alexander Hephaestion story, and then squirm about madly and avoid it, until it becomes an unseemly preoccupation. And when the Times is going on and on about our first gay action hero and we get this? It's really icky. And Hephaestion is just this sad little puppy dog of a character, and that's so not right or relevant to why that part of the story is worth including. I was offended with so many different parts of my personal identity I was astounded.
- If you need subtitles to tell us where we are from moment to moment in a battle, you've got a problem. Fix your goddamn script.
- I have no problem with Farrell using his regular accent, but did Val Kilmer really have to put on teh worst and heaviest Irish accent ever to keep up with him? I'm thinking no.
- Jonathan Rhys Meyers always always always sounds like he's delivering Shakespeare badly at a community theater, which works very well for a him a lot of the time. Very not okay in this.
- Anthony Hopkins, I don't know whether to offer my condolences or yell.
- Angelina Jolie, still crazy.
- Racial and cultural issues are an inportant part of the story, but somehow Stone was attempting some sort of allegory I couldn't quite figure out about the current state of things in the world.
- The depths of paranoia, fear and parental issues this film decided to dwell on are BIZARRE, uncomfortable and irrational. It's ugly. And while Alexander's story is ugly at the end, it's ugly here after giving us nothing to mourn for.
- The score is completely annoying and every moment is a crescendo, and nothing builds to anything.
- Wretched dialog.
- This crappy device involving a bird.
- Oooooh, looky, photoshop filters. Will death be hot pink?
- And yes, hair _can_ ruin a movie. It only doesn't ruin this one, because so much other stuff went wrong.
Things that are not awful:
- The guy playing Cleitus and the guy playing the young Ptolemey are both fine.
- Bagoas was well cast in a Jaye Davidson sort of way
- "but he too is Alexander" -- not ever how I've envisioned that moment, but it felt genuine amongst nearly nothing else, and I was grateful for it.
Things that are good:
- the horse
- the monkey
- the young Alexander
- when Hephaestion gives Alexander the ring
- Alexander putting a mortally wounded soldier out of his misery.
I probably have a lot more to say, but it will take a while. The whole thing was bad and joyless and nonsensical, and I feel wounded for having watched it.
