Alexander (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by Oliver Stone
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, Rosario Dawson, Val KilmerDirector: Oliver Stone
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Oliver Stone
Producer: Aslan Nadery
Producer: Fernando Sulichin
Producer: Gianni Nunnari
Producer: Hans De Weers
Writer: Christopher Kyle
Writer: Laeta Kalogridis
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 175 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-02
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Alexander (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: From a Different Point of View.
Summary: 5 Stars
First point - I went well armed. By the time I hit the 3/4ths-empty theatre, I knew that my favorite movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes, was showing an absolutely disaster of critical proportions. Somehow the reviews were so universally hostile that I decided, contrariwise, to wait until I saw the film myself. And I found myself disagreeing, but for an interesting reason. If 'Alexander' fails, it won't be so much for the flaws of the film - and there ARE flaws - as because none of us can make an easy connection with either Alexander, his legend, or his pagan world. It's simply too titanic to involve the average filmgoer, who'd rather be seeing a modern thriller.
I went with a friend who knows nothing of classical history, but is smart and perceptive. She was bored to tears, and said "there was no one in that movie I could understand or care about, no connection made between the audience and what was going on on-screen." And I think that will be at the heart of this movie's reception - a 3-hour epic about people dead 2300 years ago, in a world none of us can imagine, a pre-Christian world even those of us who hang about here can only touch in occasional perceptions - is just going to leave the great American mainstream dead cold. If it takes in as little money at the box office as my theatre showed last night, it will be a DISASTER. And my own opinion is - not at all deservingly!
The financial success of Gladiator made movies like Troy and Alexander possible, and "Alexander" may well stop that particular niche market dead in its tracks. Gladiator had us all hooting, historically, but it did present a series of plot and character features with which the Average Joe or Jane could identify - poor general, caught in politics, family dies, fighting his way back for Truth, Justice and the Roman Way. He's wearing funny clothes, but he's a recognizeable regular guy. Alexander has a much bigger problem - how to make us connect with the greatest conqueror in the world, a bisexual ancient Greek, whose whole conceptions of honor and glory are, in our diminished age, food for chortles and embarrassment. And, of course, trying to make a major film about a bisexual character is simply going to kill this film if the difficulty in reaching back to the mindset of a Macedonian prince 2300 years ago wasn't tough enough. So what is amazing, IMHO, is not where Alexander fails, but where it succeeds, which makes its probable fate as a film rather sad.
It's over-the-top, crammed with riches cinematographically, full of intrigue, passion, anger, loss, disillusionment, and the simply SCARINESS, to most of us, of the values of a nearly-invisible pre-Christian past. There are so many scenes that just leap out and grab you - Philip of Macedon (oddly played by Val Kilmer, but with a certain brute pathos) taking the young boy Alexander through a cave filled with the blood and tragedy of the old Greek legends like Medea and the disasters of Troy - the battle at Gaugemela where the King of Kings stoically watches his Persian army fall apart - the moment where the boy Alexander rides Bucephalus for the first time - the entry into Babylon (talk about CGI wonders!) and the look on Colin Farrell's face where he has found "the sweet fruition of an earthly crown") - then the disintegration of the years-long army traveling ever further west, into more and more alien country (just like Stone tries to take US into alien time and country), the ambitions of the generals, their hostility to granting vanquished Persians rights in what they - but not Alexander - foresee as simply a Macedonian plunder fest, the slow desintegration of Alexander himself . . . the story is waaaaay too big, and way too long, but historically I think it covers every possible aspect of the development and death of this extraordinary man.
At the final battle scene, where in India the foe is using war-elephants - was this the first time anyone from the West had ever been so attacked? - and his troops flee from these monsters, only to have Alexander and Bucephalus, in a kind of horrified courage, charge straight at the beasts with tragic consequences . . . is incredible visual filmmaking at its best. The death of Alexander after a despairing and angry drinking bout had people sniffing in the aisles. It wasn't his death, but his disillusionment - with being a hero? with conquest? with life itself? who knows, but Farrell made it very plain we were watching a tragic hero - that struck me most. The desintegration of his empire was obviously next.
Colin Farrell gives a highly-underrated performance; I thought he was brilliant, and all the reviewers seem to find is to complain about his hair styles. I found the whole scenes flashing foward to an aging Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) mildly clunky, but I do understand how much historical information Stone had to get across. The script is weak and frequently misses that balance between our sensibilities and theirs - "May Zeus protect us!" is more likely to elicit embarrassed snickers than thoughtful understanding. But historically, it's a treasure trove of riches, from the historically-accurate ancient clothing and warfare, to over-the-top descriptions of Alexander's mother and her bedrooms full of snakes, extreme, exciting, occasionally tottering into ludicrousness, but (for anyone interested in ancient history) an amazing three-dimensional, flawed, fascinating spectacle. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it - it's passion is so much greater than that of this year's Troy, just as its weaknesses are more evident.
I suspect in the box office, it will fail for the wrong reasons - that it's just easier for millions to look at ancient history as something they can't possibly understand - and don't WANT to understand - than to try to follow the lead Stone wants so much to give us, the past as prologue. You might say we few, here, who care about understanding the past, can judge it far more fairly.
The bottom line, for me, is whether popular entertainment is good enough to make us want to learn the true history behind the story. I've never been able to see Alexander the Great as more than an icon, a white statue of a head of someone I couldn't grasp. After Alexander, I want to learn everything I can, because now, for me, he's become real. My highest compliment ;)
Summary of Alexander (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Oliver Stone recreates the towering, true story of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell), who in the 4th Century BC conquered Greece, Persia, Afghanistan and India- 90% of the known world. Against massive armies of chariots and elephants, he never lost a battle. Visionary, explorer, dreamer- he was also a tender son, torn by his mother's (Angelina Jolie) burning love and ambition and desperate for his father's (Val Kilmer) approval. His dream shaped the world we live in todayDVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Oliver Stone and historian Robin Lane Fox.
Documentaries:Resurrecting Alexander, explores the filming of Alexander. Perfect is the Enemy of God, provides an in depth look at the details that go into the filming of an epic.
Featurette:Soundtrack featurette: Vangelis Scores Alexander .
For better or worse (and in this case, it's mostly for better), Oliver Stone's Alexander Revisited should stand as the definitive version of Stone's much-maligned epic about the great Asian conqueror. Following the DVD release of his previous Director's Cut, Stone offers a video introduction here, explaining why he felt a third and final attempt at refining his film was necessary. Essentially, he's using this opportunity to re-create the "road show" format of the Biblical epics of the 1950s and '60s, with a three-and-a-half-hour running time (with an intermission at the two-hour mark) including 45 minutes of previously unseen footage. Stone has also significantly restructured the film, resulting in substantial (if not exactly redemptive) improvements in its narrative flow. Alexander (played in a torrent of emotions by Colin Farrell) is dying as the film opens, his final moments serving to bookend the film's epic story, which incorporates flashback sequences to flesh out the Macedonian king's back-story involving the turbulent battle of fate between his father, King Philip (Val Kilmer) and his scheming sorceress mother Olympia (Angelina Jolie, ridiculous accent and all), who insists that Alexander is literally a child of the gods.
In Stone's final cut, epic battles remain chaotic (although Alexander's strategy is somewhat easier to follow, with on-screen titles indicating left, right, and center during his army's greatest maneuvers) and the ultra-violent battles are more graphically gory than ever (hence their "unrated" status). The animalistic lovemaking of Alexander and his barbarian bride Roxana (Rosario Dawson) is slightly extended (with Dawson as ravishing as ever), and Stone's additional footage also improves the overall arc of Alexander's relationship with his closest generals and male companions, although his most intimate homosexual encounters remain mostly discreet. As Alexander Revisited makes clear, the film's weaknesses remain unavoidable, but Stone deserves credit for recognizing how a longer running time, and more disciplined narrative structure, would bring Alexander closer to the respect it never earned from critics and filmgoers alike. This is unquestionably a better film than it used to be, leaving us to wonder why it took three separate efforts to shape Alexander into its best possible presentation. --Jeff Shannon
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