Alexander the not-so-bad
Oliver Stone's latest movie didn't go down too well with the critics in the US. It's funny how they seem to achieve so much unanimity when their all the sort of independent minded free thinkers that become employed as film critics by quality newspapers. (Here's an article that suggests why this may be so.)
Culture is dissiminated around the world a little quicker than it was in Alexander's
day, but I just got to test my own reaction against those of the American elite yesterday.
Among the biggest bones of contention are Colin Farrell's hair, and, disturbingly, his Irish accent. I can't even be arsed, as we say here, finding out if the same critic criticised Brad Pitt for not talking in a Greek accent in Troy, but I'm suspecting that this wasn't the case. It seems this last reviewer missed the whole point that the Macedonians were outsiders within Greek society and that the accents of the mainly Irish cast sybolise this. I notice that they weren't afraid to go to Morocco to make this movie like Pitt & co. were, but then there've been so many bombings on our island that we all have immunity, so why would we be worried about Al-Queda?
Which brings me to my main gripe about the critics response to the movie. It's alarming to me that only one of the reviews I came across interpreted the film as an allegory about modern America, and even then he didn't mean it as a compliment.
Yet this movie is as cogent a warning about the dangers of imperial overstretch and the sort of hubris that's gripping the American Right as is likely to be made in America in the current climate.
I noticed one poll conducted among people in EU nations about their opinions on the US war in Iraq. The country that was most opposed to the war was not France or Germany, who both know a bit about the dangers of imperialism, but Greece, who know from way, way back that trying to conquer Central Asia is a troublesome business. Many have tried, even before they found a use for the slimy black stuff under it's sand, recognising it as the gateway to the riches of India, China, and South-East Asia.
It's fascinating to watch the young Alexander being brought up to believe that his people are inherently better that anyone else, much as American children are today by being forced to recite an oath of allegience every day. The paradoxical thing was that back then, it was the Europeans who saw the Arabs as being licentuous and ill-disicplined, whereas now it's the other way around. It's ironic how Alexander was able to defeat a much larger army with little more than a zealous belief in his own destiny with little more than the sort of swivel-eyed fanaticism that characterised the crusaders a millenium and a half later, and Some Arab terrorists today.
And how did all those critics not notice that Alexander repeatedly insists that he's trying to spread freedom, when it's more than obvious that he wants to plunder the wealth of what the narrator Ptolemy calls "occupied territories" (!) and convert them to his way of life?
A lot of the criticism that the movie has solicited concentrates on the influence of Alexander's family on his life. Perhaps it's apposite that this film was made when America was led by a man who spent $200 billion of the country's money trying to catch the man who killed his wimpish dad. More than once in the film Alexander is told that he was not fulfilling his father's will, just as George W Bush did the opposite of what his father recommended in a 1995 book.
That this movie bombed at the box office is hardly an indication that Americans don't want to be warned about the dangers of imperialism, after all, Fahrenheit 9/11 was a smash. It's surely not that the allegory was too subltle, after all this is Oliver Stone we're talking about here. I'd hate if audiences spurned the movie just because the critics told them to, when one of their main complaints was how long the movie was, after all, if you pay 8 0r 9 bucks, you want to get your money's worth.
The movie isn't without faults, particularly when Ptolemy, played by Anthony Hopkins, skates through a large part of Alexander's early career. It's hard to disagree with the critics who accuse Angelina Jolie of camping it up and not aging until the very end. Stone doesn't do anything original with the battle scenes, keeping to the old Alexander Nevsky template. Actually, the whole movie is a traditional hollywood sword-and-sandal epic in many ways, though there are some neat Oliver Stone touches, like when he juxtaposes scenes from Greek myth with events in Alexander's life. It's a shame that he feels the need to give us a course in Greek Mythology 101 when so many of their archtypes are still our archetypes, but then this film was aimed at the multiplex.
Some critics criticise Stone for skirting around (as it were) the issue of bisexuality. Oh, please, give the guy a break. You know he couldn't risk either alienating the American right or the Greeks who still haven't come to terms with the fact that one of their heroes may have occasionally attacked via the rear passage.
Perhaps it's that I was so mesmerised by Stone's work as a teenager that I'm always going to be loyal to him, so maybe all the critics are right and I'm wrong. That he's been able to make counter-establishment movies for so long is an indication that the freedom which the US boasts about isn't completely non-existant. It's my hope that America will eventually realise the folly of it's current policy in the middle east and that this movie will be seen, like High Noon, as a brilliant historical allegory
Culture is dissiminated around the world a little quicker than it was in Alexander's
day, but I just got to test my own reaction against those of the American elite yesterday.
Among the biggest bones of contention are Colin Farrell's hair, and, disturbingly, his Irish accent. I can't even be arsed, as we say here, finding out if the same critic criticised Brad Pitt for not talking in a Greek accent in Troy, but I'm suspecting that this wasn't the case. It seems this last reviewer missed the whole point that the Macedonians were outsiders within Greek society and that the accents of the mainly Irish cast sybolise this. I notice that they weren't afraid to go to Morocco to make this movie like Pitt & co. were, but then there've been so many bombings on our island that we all have immunity, so why would we be worried about Al-Queda?
Which brings me to my main gripe about the critics response to the movie. It's alarming to me that only one of the reviews I came across interpreted the film as an allegory about modern America, and even then he didn't mean it as a compliment.
Yet this movie is as cogent a warning about the dangers of imperial overstretch and the sort of hubris that's gripping the American Right as is likely to be made in America in the current climate.
I noticed one poll conducted among people in EU nations about their opinions on the US war in Iraq. The country that was most opposed to the war was not France or Germany, who both know a bit about the dangers of imperialism, but Greece, who know from way, way back that trying to conquer Central Asia is a troublesome business. Many have tried, even before they found a use for the slimy black stuff under it's sand, recognising it as the gateway to the riches of India, China, and South-East Asia.
It's fascinating to watch the young Alexander being brought up to believe that his people are inherently better that anyone else, much as American children are today by being forced to recite an oath of allegience every day. The paradoxical thing was that back then, it was the Europeans who saw the Arabs as being licentuous and ill-disicplined, whereas now it's the other way around. It's ironic how Alexander was able to defeat a much larger army with little more than a zealous belief in his own destiny with little more than the sort of swivel-eyed fanaticism that characterised the crusaders a millenium and a half later, and Some Arab terrorists today.
And how did all those critics not notice that Alexander repeatedly insists that he's trying to spread freedom, when it's more than obvious that he wants to plunder the wealth of what the narrator Ptolemy calls "occupied territories" (!) and convert them to his way of life?
A lot of the criticism that the movie has solicited concentrates on the influence of Alexander's family on his life. Perhaps it's apposite that this film was made when America was led by a man who spent $200 billion of the country's money trying to catch the man who killed his wimpish dad. More than once in the film Alexander is told that he was not fulfilling his father's will, just as George W Bush did the opposite of what his father recommended in a 1995 book.
That this movie bombed at the box office is hardly an indication that Americans don't want to be warned about the dangers of imperialism, after all, Fahrenheit 9/11 was a smash. It's surely not that the allegory was too subltle, after all this is Oliver Stone we're talking about here. I'd hate if audiences spurned the movie just because the critics told them to, when one of their main complaints was how long the movie was, after all, if you pay 8 0r 9 bucks, you want to get your money's worth.
The movie isn't without faults, particularly when Ptolemy, played by Anthony Hopkins, skates through a large part of Alexander's early career. It's hard to disagree with the critics who accuse Angelina Jolie of camping it up and not aging until the very end. Stone doesn't do anything original with the battle scenes, keeping to the old Alexander Nevsky template. Actually, the whole movie is a traditional hollywood sword-and-sandal epic in many ways, though there are some neat Oliver Stone touches, like when he juxtaposes scenes from Greek myth with events in Alexander's life. It's a shame that he feels the need to give us a course in Greek Mythology 101 when so many of their archtypes are still our archetypes, but then this film was aimed at the multiplex.
Some critics criticise Stone for skirting around (as it were) the issue of bisexuality. Oh, please, give the guy a break. You know he couldn't risk either alienating the American right or the Greeks who still haven't come to terms with the fact that one of their heroes may have occasionally attacked via the rear passage.
Perhaps it's that I was so mesmerised by Stone's work as a teenager that I'm always going to be loyal to him, so maybe all the critics are right and I'm wrong. That he's been able to make counter-establishment movies for so long is an indication that the freedom which the US boasts about isn't completely non-existant. It's my hope that America will eventually realise the folly of it's current policy in the middle east and that this movie will be seen, like High Noon, as a brilliant historical allegory
posted by seamus @ 3:40 pm
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