Oliver Stone is not the only smammeister in town. State Department has made much bigger sham by recognzing Former Yugolsav Republic of Macedonia under fraudulent name "Macedonia".
Interestigly enough, both shams were synchronized. This is an exaple how media hype can be used as Force multiplier to shape public perception.
Macedonia is historical Hellenic province,rooted in history for more then two millennia. "Macedonia" State Department recogized is communist forgery created after WWII. Yet, State Department inked communist fraud, not historical fact and created row with NATO ally. This is a Danaian Gift departing Trojan Horse left to Bush Administration.
Under tainted logic "Alexander The Great was Macedonian, State Department recognized Macedonia" the sizable majority of Americans will conclude that present day "Macedonia" is the country of Alexander The Great.
The whole mess was started by Communist dictator Tito who afer WWII chopped off part of Serbia to create new state under fraudulent name Macedonia. He stole the land from Serbia, the name from Greece and then forge new "Macedonian" nation. Inhabitants of "Macedonia" were Serbs, Bulgrars, Greeks, Tzintzars, Gypsies and Turks.
Communists first invented Macedonian langage (butchered dialect of Bulgarian). Once the nation without historical root was invented, Communists in charge started with falsifying history. As a result, many "Macedonians" today sincerely believe that they are descendants of Alexander The Great and consider Churches and Monasteries built by Serbian kings are their own. To top the achievement, communists invented Macedonian Orthodox Church (not recogized by any Orthodox Church).
This is one of the larger scale forgeries of the 20th century, delusion of the masses as if Americans started to believe to be descendant of Mayan Empire.
"Alexander" is entertainment one may choose to patron or not. The Box Office will be the judge.
"Macedonia" is State Department endorsed fraud and Americans have no say wether to be a part of it or not. This shameful decision has to be REVOKED.
This movie reviewer hates the movie because it doesn't say the latest things about homosexuality. But the author badly contradicts himself in adjacent paragraphs:
" It offers the standard 1950s melodramatic theory of Alexander's sexual orientation: the scheming, sexualized, domineering mother, and the distant, uncaring father. So much for today's theories of genetic predetermination. ... His bisexuality, after all, is fairly commonplace in the world of this movie,..."
See, the movie is not hip to the "truth" about homos because it doesn't assert that homosexuality is genetically determined. Of course, he says there were a LOT of gays back then. Why? A bad accident at the HellenChem (tm) chemical refinery plant? Or had natural selection simply not had as much time to weed out the homosexual population?
I could never get a handle on the Alexander portrayed on screen. I could never warm up to him. There was something missing, and I believe it was because Oliver Stone doesn't believe in the dignity of his subject.
Oliver Stone's philosophy on Alexander is betrayed in a line delivered by Anthony Hopkins at the end of the movie, forty years after Alexander died. "We didn't believe in his dream, none of us." (This was Ptolemy his general, who later took over Egypt.) So obviously Oliver Stone was knocking the basic mission of Alexander (white Western imperialist).
Hopkins goes on to complain about being one step ahead of the dreamers (Alexander) who was trying to get them killed. Stone's message is obviously anti-war, there's no reason for fighting for war. Scratch fighting for empire and glory. Of course, this attitude would have been inconsistent with the thinking of those times. PC correctness gone amuck.
Nobody cheered at the end...contrast this to "Gladiator" where the audience applauded at the end. In Gladiator, the director never apologized for the violence of the times, and the viewer could identify with Maximus' plight and root for him.
I never found myself rooting for Alexander in this Oliver Stone film.
When he put on the war helmet, it made him look more manly, and the way it framed his face, he looked extremely macho. Once the helmet came off, that was it.
Yes he was very weepy thru this film. Unbe-LIEV-able! This was a violent age, but this Alexander had tears running down his cheeks...countless times. I lost count. And his feelings were always getting hurt because his generals didn't love him enough.
The dialogue was atrocious. The worst line was Alexander riding into battle trying to rally his men, shouting, "Do you want to live forever?" (Yes, we've heard that line before, in Conan the Barbarian. And since it was a signature line in that film, it was very jarring to hear it in a serious historical film.)
For writers and screenwriters, I'd encourage you to view Alexander just to see how NOT to write a screenplay. It was a MESS. If a viewer went in cold knowing nothing about Alexander, they'd be totally lost, because it jumps between time periods, puts the assassination of Alexander's father Phillip as a flashback towards the end of his life -- it's just weird.
You'd have no conception that one reason the Macedonians went to war was that the Persians had become extremely strong and were considered a threat, and the Greek communities under Persian control were considered oppressed. It wasn't just about Alexander's glory. Besides, plunder was a legitimate motive for war back then. It was how the world's economies played off each other. Gee, you'd never know that from this film.
This movie will flop bigtime.
She expresses shock, Hephaistion ducks out embarrassed, Alexander tries to talk his way out of it. She accuses him, You love him! She slashes at him with a knife and holds it to his throat--he tells her to go ahead and let him die in embarrassment -- she drops the knife and he tells her that Hephaistion is Hephaistion, that there are different ways of loving, then they make love. It's just ridiculous.
(continued) All in all, I'm still glad I saw this movie. Since I love the classical world, this film is still worth one viewing. And there are many good supporting actors involved who are a pleasure to watch. It's one of those things, we probably won't get another version of Alexander unless A&E does it. PBS had a two-hour special some twenty-five years ago, with actors reenacting certain scenes from Alexander's life (very low budget of course). It's a shame that this is all we're going to get.