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Alexander The Conflicted

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Okay, Alexander The Conflicted is not the proper name of the movie, but it sure is more appropriate than the name Alexander that Oliver Stone gave to his film. I was really excited by the opening of the movie; for fifteen minutes or so I thought that ideas, and people and events portrayed large, were what the film was about, but unfortunately it turned out to be a bad Greek soap opera. Aside from a few beautiful visual moments, what a shame.

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I am going to see this tommorrow with a friend. (I didn't want to deal with the weekend lines.) I am curious what Oliver Stone's spin on Alexander is in this film. Stone is such a collectivist ideolog that I can't help but believe that he had some motivation for making this film. Was it to show the folly of empire and to somehow turn that into a slap in the face of America? Was it too spit at achievement? Or did he make it to glorify a power luster? He is after all a big admirer of Fidel Castro.

I have read that the movie has opened to less than steller financial box office receipts. Supposedly, American audiences are put off with the films preoccupation with Alexander's bisexuality. Stone himself said in an interview that he felt that the movie would do better in Europe which shows his contempt for "unsophisticated" Americans. However, it has not done better in Europe. In Greece there is also a dissatisfaction with the preoccupation with Alexander's love life. (As if that defined the man.)

Anyway, I am curious what your views are on this. And by the way, how was Collen Ferrel?

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Yes, I agree Stephen. Instead of showing the exploits of Alexander the Conqueror of Nations and spreader of Greek civilization, we get a troubled man, homosexual because of his vicious mother, sullen because of his shattered idealism, dying alone and broken amidst a room full of vultures fighting for his still-warm corpse.

If you haven't yourself read the original histories of Alexander by the Greeks and Romans, and if this is your first introduction to him, then I'm sorry. He was nothing like he was portrayed in the movie. Looks like Oliver Stone was more interested in portraying Alexander's sexuality than his philosophy and his war exploits. But even there he got it wrong, spending half the movie projecting the image of Alexander as homosexual and that because of his crazed mother. Remember how, when he had sex with the only woman in the film, he took off the metal snake charm off her arm, as if he couldn't go through with it as long as that was there.

In reality, however, none of the major sources speak of any homosexuality between Alexander and Hephaestion. What they do allude to is the intense friendship between the two, but that's all. At most, with some stretch, we can accept that the two were lovers, but this is a stretch. Alexander's heterosexual exploits were all explicit, and many - daughters of kings, Roxana (in the movie), the Queen of the Amazons, etc. He was quite a ladies man, which you wouldn't know from Oliver Stone's "vision". So if he chose to portray some bisexuality in the man, and moved on to actions for which he was truly famous for, it'd make for a far more realistic movie.

But I do have to say that the one redeeming feature in this movie was the performance of Colin Farrell, who I think played the role tremendously. It's as if he demanded the highest performance from himself, but the movie around him didn't demand the same from itself; to me it felt sort of like a professional singer taking part in a high school chorus - he was wholly out of place in a crappy movie like that, he pulled it off and made it believable.

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I saw this Thanksgiving morning, and too was disappointed. I have some specific complaints.

1. Aristotle gets little to no mention. I believe there is one scene with Alexander and the Companions as kids having a lesson from him, and then he is paid lip serivce one other time. The remarkable thing about Alexander was that he was said to be a very brilliant strategist both militarily and politically. He owed this to Aristotle's teachings and the Socratic method Alexander used to discuss options with the Companions. There was little to none of this in the film either.

2. The events the movie chose to showcase were poorly chosen. Though some of the more famous and important moments were done rather well (the taming of Bucephalus comes to mind), Alexander's formative years of childhood and the entire conquest of Persia were glossed over. A brief mention in a 20-second sequence tells how he was crowned Pharaoh at Siwah, and then it's on to Gaugamela. Too much lost in that transition. Without better background, Alexander seems unduly arrogant. As another consequence, we also lose Memnon of Rhodes from the story.

3. The sequencing of scenes was a bit odd. I guess the point of showing Philip's death right after Cleitus' death was to give emotional weight to what Alexander had done, but I think it ended up being confusing more than anything. The fact that the flashback encompasses more than Cleitus' and Alexander's first meeting draws away from I can only speculate the point was - to show how long Alexander had known Cleitus and how much trust he should have had in him. Still, this could have been achieved by placing the longer scene in the correct sequence and then referencing it with very short flashbacks.

4. The sexuality was well out of control, as others mentioned.

5. Bad character set-up. It was very difficult to know who any male characters were except Alexander, Cleitus, Parmenion, Hephaestion and Ptolemy. Admittedly there were many companions and characters so this was probably inevitable.

So much potential lost... better luck next time I guess.

d_s

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What im waiting for is for someone to make a "true war movie" that puts us inside a commanders mind and shows how he trys to outthink the enemy and shows every aspect of war,a movie that is trully about ideas in war and Alexander the great would have been perfect for a movie like that, but oliver stone ruined it.

My guess is that we wont be seeing any more Alexander the great movies in the future....

But if you saw the movie and hated it, i recommend you get this book to get what you want....

http://www.d-n-i.net/dni_reviews/virtues_of_war.htm

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  • 2 weeks later...
In reality, however, none of the major sources speak of any homosexuality between Alexander and Hephaestion. What they do allude to is the intense friendship between the two, but that's all. At most, with some stretch, we can accept that the two were lovers, but this is a stretch.

Friendship between men can never be shown in modern movies without some kind of "winking" towards the audience - as if to say, "They're not really gay...but you just know they are!" If two men show affection for one another, the audience automatically starts to giggle. That's why you always see men immediately begin discussing sports after an "unsettling" moment.

I've always shuddered to think what the makers of ATLAS SHRUGGED the movie would do to Hank and Francisco.

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