As Oliver Stone begins his softening campaign to prepare the world for his 9/11 movie, WORLD TRADE CENTER, I thought it timely to re-evaluate his last production. Stone re-cut the movie for his DVD, and included his own very revealing commentary. The result tells us more about Stone than about the subject of his film.
A director’s cut usually adds scenes that had been cut for commercial reasons. This one is the opposite. The movie was such a failure with audiences and critics that Stone felt compelled to re-cut it, shorten it, re-order scenes, in order to make it coherent. It is still a mess, but the real problem is that, like Greek tragedy, it was doomed from its conception.
The first problem is the subject matter. A historical biography of this nature must contain two parallel arcs: the Macro and the Micro. The needs of Drama defy coherent telling of both lines in Alexander’s case. The famous general events of his life must be touched. They contain hints of “story,” but the truth is complex, lengthy, and doesn’t provide a natural arc and climax. He conquered and then he conquered more, and then he died. His death was anti-climactic; his life was unfinished, his legacy muddled.
The Micro story is even more problematic as a drama for contemporary taste. As with all great leaders, people have been trying to figure him out and Stone gives it a shot, trying to wedge him into his pre-conceptions. Alexander was a Greek, which meant being raised in Greek mythology, religion, sexual values. His motivations, demons, actions, are strange to our sensibilities.
Stone tries to psycho-analyze the great man, so that modern audiences can nod in some kind of recognition. His family was dysfunctional. Father Phillip the king of Macedon, played by Val Kilmer, was a drunken brute who feared his son’s challenge to his power.
Mother Olympias, played by Angelina Jolie, was even stranger. She raised her son to believe he was descended (even sired) by The Gods. She kept pet snakes in her bedroom for company - and metaphoric references. Snakes are like men, Stone has her telling Alex in her Natasha-like accent.
No wonder the kid was screwed up, driven, neurotic, insecure, ended up liking boys more than girls.
Stone, as revealed by his commentary, knows he is walking in the sandals of giants. For him they are De Mille, Lean, and other “epic” filmmakers. He also knows his own filmography, and refers frequently to his other war film, PLATOON.
Stone cannot evade his own political nature, and can’t help finding parallels between Bush and Alexander, referencing military escapades of Westerners into "The East" - Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Western leaders go East with “good” intentions, but Alexander, in Stone’s view, was wiser and nobler than ours. He wanted to unite East and West and his policies toward enemies were benign, respecting their religions and even their leaders after he defeated them. His generalship was better. Alexander never let go of one enemy to pursue another.
Stone opines that Alexander would never have let Bin Laden slip away. It seems like an argumentative stretch.
A second insurmountable problem for Stone is that his Alexander, Colin Farrell, is too small for the role of world conqueror. He is fine in the micro moments, when his sad little eyes seem frightened of his parents, of his lovers, of his obsessions. But when he must be Heroic, inspiring his troops with speeches, he lacks the presence of George C. Scott (PATTON), the brute macho power of Mel Gibson (BRAVEHEART), the tortured ambiguity of Peter O'Toole (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA), or the poetry of Olivier (HENRY V).
Stone decided to use Irish and Scottish accents -except for Angelina’s silly sounding Albanian (?) accent - for his Greeks, arguing in his commentary that the Macedonians had Celtic origins, were a crude bunch, and Greece was a “diverse” population. He likes the lilt of Irish and shied from the usual classic English - as in the 1954 Richard Burton ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
Okay, but it still sounds out of place to our ears, diminishes the larger-than-life element that legendary heroes require.
A third problem he fails to solve is how to make the complicated battles coherent. Stone tried to faithfully suggest the tactics of the famous Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander defeated the enormous Persian hordes of Darius by martial genius and near maniacal courage. But, despite aerial shots, explanatory dialogue and other devices, it remains a jumble in the desert. Compare these scenes with comparable battles in LAWRENCE.
Stone had a terrible time with the syntax of the narrative. He responded to the audience’s reaction to the theatrical release. Apparently the previews hadn’t warned him. In the DVD, he changed the order of scenes to a less linear telling, saving key events of Alexander’s childhood and rise to power until after battle scenes, moving some to the second and even the third act. His arguments for the change are convincing, but don’t solve the inherent problems.
Finally, Stone has to prove that this story has “relevance” and an important theme for us. As usual, he hammers his ideas. Alexander wanted to be civilized, but he still possessed the brutality of his nature, symbolized by the primitive lust for power and death embodied by the mythological Titans.
Anthony Hopkins, as Alexander’s general Ptolemy in old age, narrates throughout the film as Stone’s voice. In the epilogue, he “reveals” to us that Alexander was poisoned by his friends, that he knew the wine was poisoned, but wanted to die after his lifelong “companion,” Ephistaion, died - probably also poisoned, according to Stone.
Alexander was a dreamer, and therefore had to be killed by his generals — including - Stone, ever the conspiracy seeker asserts — by Ptolemy himself.
Stone’s commentary admits that all of this is speculation which some historians have permitted, but Stone likes it because it suits his theme. The dreamers must be killed because they exhaust us with their dreams. They are dangerous to peace and tranquility. He’s still arguing for JFK’s hero status and his assassination rationale.
The commentary is full of praise for his subject, distinguishing him from tyrants who led armies for conquest, like Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler. The argument is self-serving and superficial. Yes, Alexander carried the benefits of Greek cutlure, had some enlightened policies. But all conquerors can say that, and all of their propagandists have made that argument.
I think it is revealing that Stone admits that he first became enamored of Alexander through his boyhood reading.
Stone, whose reputation is as opponent to war (BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY) and governmental power (NIXON, JFK), reveals himself to be a film director who loves power more than any ideas. Part of the thrill of directing on this scale is the exercise of generalship, moving toy soldiers around a story board.
Stone wins the battles he has scripted but loses the war of ideas and drama. No wonder he is nervous about the reception to his 9/11 movie.
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