Reviewed - Alexander: Oliver Stone's incredibly ambitious epic is a triumph of history and action, writes Michael Dwyer.
AS HAS been gleefully and widely reported, film reviewers in the US have subjected Alexander to persistent vilification, castigating it because so many of the actors speak with strange accents, because the principal character has a bad hair job, and because the movie is so casually accepting of his sexually open nature.
As it happens, all of those charges could have been levelled against Federico Fellini's 1969 Petronius adaptation, Satyricon, but that movie had the advantage of being subtitled, which can help in prompting respect from US reviewers, and directed by a first division European auteur, who received an Oscar nomination as best director for the film.
At a time when there is an international obsession with budgets and box-office, US reviewers repeatedly attacked director Oliver Stone for spending so much money on Alexander, the costliest film of his career, as the New York Times reviewer helpfully noted among her reproofs. That crime dates back to Michael Cimino's 1980 epic western Heaven's Gate, when many reviewers were so consumed by the movie's escalating budget that they failed to acknowledge its major achievements.
Alexander is not a misunderstood masterpiece to match Heaven's Gate or Barry Lyndon, but it is a far more impressive achievement than most of what passes for epic period cinema these days (Troy, King Arthur, The Last Samurai) and arguably more historically accurate than the widely revered, awards-laden Gladiator.
Alexander certainly has its faults, most of them structural, in its time-shifting and in the tired framing device of having the elderly Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) loquaciously introducing and commenting on the story of Alexander the Great and intrusively and glibly explaining his historical significance: "I've known many great men in my life, but only one colossus".
Just as superfluous is the return of the ubiquitous eagle Stone used in The Doors. As for having the Macedonians speaking in Celtic tones and mostly with Irish accents, it makes a refreshing change from listening to historical characters with broad American accents or precise English stage school elocution. It also makes sense with an Irish actor, Colin Farrell, leading the way in the title role, and surrounded by many other Irish actors, most prominently Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and John Kavanagh.
On the vexed subject of Alexander's sexuality - and the bizarre lawsuit taken (and later withdrawn) by 25 Greek lawyers offended by the depiction of Alexander the Great as bisexual - the movie is actually quite coy. Farrell kisses one man (as he did in his last film, A Home at the End of the World), but Alexander saves most of his sexual passion for his wife, Roxane (Rosario Dawson).
Alexander's relationship with the love of his life, Hephaistion (kohl-eyed Jared Leto) is remarkably chaste, and when Roxane sneers at the two men touching tenderly, he responds, "There are many different ways to love". That line subtly captures the spirit of an era when definitions such as bisexuality were meaningless.
While it does take some time to adjust to Farrell with waxed legs and blond streaks, his performance is aptly passionate and driven, building in authority as Alexander grows in confidence and determination while forging a vast global empire before his death a month short of his 33rd birthday.
This is familiar territory for Oliver Stone. Alexander is a flawed hero. The death of his father, Philip (a one-eyed Val Kilmer) is the subject of a conspiracy theory. And it takes place in a man's world where, apart from Roxane, the only significant woman is Alexander's tenacious mother Olympias (Angelina Jolie).
Stone rises to the challenge of the epic, treating this sprawling scenario story with commendable ambition and characteristically raw and visceral visual style. Jan Roelfs's production design is lush and Rodrigo Prieto's restless, swooping camera proves tremendously effective in two of the finest, most stirring battle sequences ever staged in a movie.
One is the early conflict at Guagamela, which is admirably lucid on tactics and strategies as it proceeds at exciting length. The other is the heroism and savagery of the warfare in India, culminating in a startling scene where Alexander on horseback takes on a combatant lording over him on an elephant.
