More about Alexander...

[fajrdrako]

I just came back from seeing Alexander again, this time with lmondegreen, who hadn't seen it yet. I was glad she wanted to.

Seeing it a second time did a lot to clarify my thoughts about it, both good and bad. One thing that was fun: when I saw it last week, it had been decades since I'd read the history of Alexander's time, and since I'd read Mary Renault's novels about him. Yes, I've been reading about Greece and Greeks, but Homer and Herodotus are considerably earlier - it didn't help!

In the last week I've been reading The Persian Boy again and it has done much to clarify my memory of names, events and places - at least the Mary Renault version. Over suppertime, I was reading the scene where Alexander has had Philotas and Parmenios put to death, and then turns to Bagoas afterwards. It struck me how close the Oliver Stone scene is to the Mary Renault scene there: I'd read in reviews that Stone had borrowed concepts and scenes from the Renault novels, but I hadn't specifically noticed what they were. This was delightfully parallel: Alexander distressed, pacing, writing letters, feverishly going over his papers, and then getting comfort from Bagoas. The biggest difference is that in the novel, Bagoas comforts Alexander with words as well as sex, talking to him about kingly duties and his own fidelity. The movie Bagoas never says a word in our hearing. I rather liked that.

This time round I played a game: 'spot Hephaistion' and 'spot Bagoas'. It's remarkable how much they are present - Bagoas especially, in beautiful clothes, standing gracefully in the background, except for the times he's in the foreground. At the end of the movie I wondered where Bagoas went: one minute he's mopping the dying Alexander's brow, the next minute the Greek lords are fighting over the corpse and he is nowhere to be seen. In the book, didn't he throw himself over Alexander's body to protect it?

When I saw the movie the first time, I was surprised that we first encountered Bagoas in Darius' harem. Then I thought: well, of course, where else would a king's eunuch be? On rereading The Persian Boy I realized why I found it strange: Mary Renault makes it clear that in her version Bagoas was never in the harem, and in fact feared and dreaded a future in which he might have to go into the harem, if the King didn't want him any more - like a sort of royal pension plan. I find this puzzling. Since Bagoas' only function at court is to sleep with the King, isn't that precisely the role of people in the harem? So why wasn't he there? Why is he different? Why does he have his own room, his own horse, his own inexplicable status, and a fair degree of freedom? Perhaps just so Mary Renault can describe things that Bagoas would never see from the harem. Or perhaps to emphasize his pride. In terms of story, I suppose one could postulate that Darius honoured Bagoas as the former heir of a Persian lord, since his father had died honourably in service to the crown. I'm enjoying trying to guess Mary Renault's reasons for writing various things the way she did, and the reasons for her historical interpretations.

If anything, I loved the movie a second time even more than the first. At the same time its flaws are glaring - it's a magnificent failure, lavish in its scope, but with a storyline that is confusing, muddled and unevenly paced. Stone gives us so many Alexander themes that the man gets lost under the weight of it all - is he Oedipus, Achilles, Herakles, or Jason? Is he the first modern man, or a unique genius, or the victim of his times? Is he the quintessential Greek, the Macedonian hero, or a crosscultural hero who transcends ethnicity? Is he a loner at the top, or the man who has many loves? These are all very distinct ideas and if the movie had stuck to any one of them, I might have understood what it was trying to say. But Alexander can't be all of these things at once - not if the movie is to be coherent at all - and I was left more confused than ever about what he was, what moved him, and why he was so successful. He comes across as mostly confused. (Or maybe that was me.) Certainly the sense of military genius disappeared: as far as I could tell, all the battles were pretty much free-for-alls. It took me till the second viewing to be able to recognize all the generals by face and name. Well, almost all - was the gent wth the nice smile, the beard, and the Persian clothes supposed to be Roxana's brother, or did I just imagine that? What was his name?

I liked Hephaistion a lot better this time, but I wish he'd had more of a voice in the scenes with the Generals and I wish he'd kissed Alexander at least once.

I talked about things I liked last time, here are a few things I really didn't like:

• The recurring image of the eagle. It just didn't work for me at all. Hokey.


• The Oedipal incest theme. If the whole movie had been about Alexander's relationship with his parents (or with either one of them) it would have been fine, but there was too much going on emotionally and I found it intrusive.


• The pronunciation of Boukephalos as "Busephalos".


• The non-chronogological parts. I can see why the death of Phillip was explained to match the death of Cleitus, but I thought it made the theme muddier rather than clearer, and it certainly made the timeline more confusing.


• The battle in India, with the exaggerated wounding scene and the misplaced death of Boukephalos. The special effects were great, but they made the whole incident seem anticlimactic.

And I still have mixed feelings on a few items: the wedding-night sex scene, some of the Alexander/Hephaistion dialogue (when it sounds as if they're making speeches to each other), the choreography of the death of Philip. Most of all I have mixed feelings about Colin Farrell's portrayal of Alexander - looks, acting, style - did he manage to become the historical Alexander in my eyes? Not quite. Almost. Maybe. Was he a great charismatic leader? No. Was he attractive? ...Often.

Loved, absolutely loved, the costumes, sets, and landscapes.

My biggest problem with the movie: it seemed as if Oliver Stone was making the movie to explain and make apologies for Alexander's failure. But when I look at Alexander's life, it doesn't look like a failure to me, it looks like a success. The movie did not convince me otherwise.

I came home in a heavy snowstorm. The bus had some trouble with every slope, and my walk from the bus stop had me walking against the wind with my hood wrapped so tight around my face that I could hardly see a thing. Couldn't see anything anyway, actually. Got home safe and sound: I wonder how much snow will be on the ground tomorrow.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

This is one of the biggest problems with the film.

I thought so. It was largely responsible for the sense of mixed message: expecting triumph, we got decay, and, because Alexander's campaigns were so successful in the military and political sense, I was left wondering why the tone was such. And then having to figure it out - without a clear path to do it with. There were easy but false explanations, like "Alexander's problem was that his love/hate relationship with his parents screwed him up" - that just made the issues more difficult to understand.

Stone tried to do this with his entry into Babylon

That message just didn't come across to me with any illuminating clarity.

those shades of Tarn's "Brotherhood of Mankind" which is historical hogwash

I could certainly have done without that - just another factor to muddy the waters and it *felt* anachronistic.

Even my own academic father wrote a scathing review and mentioned that Stone had bought into that.

Where is that published? I'd like to read it. How lucky you are, to have a scholarly father!

The problem is probably whether or not it should even have been mentioned.

I thought not - or at least, my conention is that the movie should have picked a strong theme and stuck to it. Each added theme that was raised and dropped made the flow of the story more difficult to follow or relate to on an emotional basis.

I think he knew audiences would walk in looking for a romantic Alexander -- and he wanted to turn that around.

That is probably right. And what I wanted was a romantic Alexander, and I am happy with just about any kind of Alexander at all - no, wait, I draw the line at Leonardo diCaprio. That aside... I am at least prepared to be tolerant and take the movie on its own merits; I just think Stone failed to succeed in establishing either a romantic Alexander or a counter-romantic one. He created an Alexander who was as much a mystery to me after the movie as before.

Keep in mind that none of this spoiled my enjoyment of the movie; part of my enjoyment is dissecting the movie-making and the history-presentation involved.