Sunday, June 22, 2008

Alexander the Great Meets Oliver the Audacious


I can appreciate the big as well as the small. I love both stripped down demos and fully realized productions. I love grand opera and epic film as well as that which was made on less scale. I figure anyone worth trying to do something epic on film, to take on the tradition of Wyler, DeMille, and Lean is worth checking out.

Alexander, Oliver Stone's 2004 film always struck me as something I wanted to see, but I missed the window in Fall 2004 to see it in a theater. Its reception was tarnished by the release and poor reception of Wolfgang Petersen and Brad Pitt's Troy a few months earier. So recently I got hold of Alexander, Revisited, the final 217 minute version. For the first time in my life, probably, I felt an epic film too darned long. I literally shouted out loud when I realized there was still over half an hour to go after his amazing battle with an elephant.

Oliver Stone is not a subtle filmmaker. And he can be a most startling one. I appreciate his audacious, confident, in your faceness style. Every twenty minutes or so features an image or sequence that can't be denied as being unique or big or over the top. My favorite in Alexander occurs at one of the battles where the camera raises above the spears into the sky and then over the wing of an obvious CGI (but who cares) eagle soaring for miles over soldiers to the opposite camp. It may not be worth watching the entire film for, but it comes pretty darned close.

Colin Farrel is a driven, troubled and plagued emperor of the world. His best scenes are with his snake loving and obsessed mother, Olympias played to the max by Angelina Jolie or the striking Rosario Dawson as Alexander's wife Roxanne. Roxanne and Alexander's show down on their wedding night after she busts him being affectionate with childhood friend Hephaistion portrayed by Jared Leto is almost equal to the eagle flight.

But I have to admit the three hours plus of Alexander, Revisited has cured me of epic movies for a little while. I was thinking of going to Mongol, but I think I will wait a while.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:56 PM
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