Alexander: The Director’s Cut But Not The
Director’s Final Cut
After Lawrence
of Arabia but before Sex And The City: The Movie, there was another
gay epic made by controversial auteur Oliver Stone. Alexander tells the tale of Alexander
The Great of Macedonia, the man who had a vision of uniting the world beneath
himself. He travels around in a walking
army like those 300 guys only shouting less, killing more, and despite
the fucking of dudes, being generally less gay.
Everywhere he goes he sets up another Alexandria, proving himself to be
the inventor of the franchise. There’s
no little guy with a mini Starbucks empire inside of Alexander’s many
Alexandrias, so I guess it must’ve been Genghis Khan or somebody years later
who would invent the franchise within a franchise.
Alexander is
continually referred to as better than his father, Philip, played by Val
Kilmer. He conquers way more than his
father. He achieves more younger than
his father. He’s better at doing an
Irish accent in the Mediterranean than his father. And because he knows to remove the baskets of
snakes out the bedroom beforehand, he’s more successful at raping his own wife
than his father. However even though
he’s a better rapist than his father, he’s worse at actually fathering children
and dies with no heirs.
The film
follows some of the standard swords ‘n sandals structure, only it’s really
weird. You get some scenes of the dude’s
formative years. Instead of witnessing
his village getting razed or some sentimental thing that he will reflect on
later in life like how Maximus in Gladiator had all those fond memories
of wheat, in Alexander you get one fucked up childhood.
Like a lot of
busy working dads, Alexander’s father Philip struggles to maintain a
relationship with his son. He loses a
bit of face with his boy when he tries to rape Alexander’s mum (Angelina Jolie)
on Alexander’s bed while he’s sleeping in it but trips over a bunch of baskets
of snakes. He tries to make up for it by
taking over storytime duties, but the stories are all really gorey and the
illustrations are painted on walls in a dark underground cavern and none of
them are pop-up or scratch ‘n sniff.
Alexander does
still grow up to be a tough ruler like his father, but he’s a bad motherfucker
more in the Oedipus way than the John Shaft way. His mother, who does not age, manages to
manipulate him his whole life, even over the telephone or something when
Alexander goes as far as India.
The film shows
Alexander’s great ambition of a united world taking him very far. He grows a blonde mullet and eventually his
ego and the egos of his posse cause his whole venture to collapse. We are clearly supposed to see parallels with
other historical figures such as David Lee Roth. But this film concerns itself with other
strange things. We get standard battle
scenes, but Stone puts weird spins on them.
There’s the big moment where you know a Braveheartian speech is coming
to rouse the army he’s gathered for a battle.
But then Alexander starts speaking in a normal speaking voice and giving
each soldier an individual performance review before the battle. Then he finally does start speaking more
loudly and addressing the group as a whole and Stone does funny things. Stone actually lets you know what it would be
like to be the guy at the back of the crowd who can barely hear the
speech.
Then Stone goes
all Terrence Mallek and asks the question: what would a hawk think of all
this? We cut to a CGI hawk flying
around watching the war. I know a lot of
you ornithologists have wondered what a hawk would think about a gay Greek gay
with a blonde mullet and an Irish accent conquering lands for the sheer sense
of achievement. Unfortunately, the hawk
does not get a narration track.
Presumably it is hoping that the battle will produce a black car for him
to shit on, which is perhaps the greatest truth of war.
Stone also
hasn’t learned any new music video tricks since he put Natural Born Killers
through the Avid blender almost twenty years ago. He stills thinks filters and tinting have
some sort of intense meaning. He does
that thing where when a guy is speaking he will cut to an extended shot of the
guy with his mouth closed but leave the audio of his voice flowing to show that
ambition makes ventriloquists of us all.
I wonder just how much time in the audition process Stone allots for
constipated grimaces.
I’m not really
sure how much of an overall vision Oliver Stone had for this film. This cut I watched was called The Director’s
Cut, different from the theatrical cut, but then there was another cut after
that called Revisited: The Final Cut.
Which makes me think he just didn’t have a clear idea of what he wanted
while he was making it. He clearly
forgot to send out a memo to the cast about what he was going for with the
accents and so all the actors just drew their own conclusions. Christopher Plummer and Anthony Hopkins do
the standard Shakespeare-in-the-park Britishy voice we’re used to in this sort
of thing. Farrell opts to keep his
native Irish accent and Kilmer kinda follows his lead doing a bit of lilt as
well. Rosario Dawson tries to do some
sort of accent (?). Angelina Jolie uses
this part to audition for Cate Blanchett’s role in Indiana Jones And The
Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. I’m
not sure if Jared Leto is trying to sound English or just dainty. If you put Kevin Costner in here it would
probably start an accent tornado that would destroy the set.
I will give the
movie studios credit for pouring what looks like a lot of money into an openly
gay epic. And this film does make a good
case for gays in the military.
Especially when all the straight guys with wives back home start whining
that they need to go home and see their ladies again. An army the screws together won’t lose
together! (that rhymes!) Some people
complained that there were no man-on-man love scenes, but we didn’t need to see
Judah Ben-Hur on screen blowing his load in a lady to know he was straight, so
I don’t see why we need shit that explicit here. I mean, he declares his love for a man as “the
one true love of his life”, he hugs and kisses men, his mother comments on
how he prefers boys to girls, he surrounds himself with a posse of dainty
prettymen like Jared Leto and Jonathan Reesemakers who all lounge about wearing
no pants. Sorry if not seeing his erect
cock go in another dude’s mouth kept this whole thing a little too vague for
some people but I think this movie is as clearly gay as you can get.
The film ends
up being about a guy who achieved something extraordinary but for no real
reason other than for the sake of doing it.
Alexander’s path is like in Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier, when
Captain Kirk says that he climbs a mountain “because it is there” and
then a fucked-up movie ensues. Alexander
The Great’s example would inspire other historical figures with more of a sense
of purpose, such as Adrian Veidt. I got
a fair bit of enjoyment out of the sheer what-the-fuck factor in this film, but
I wouldn’t really watch it again or bother to investigate other cuts of this film. And I really think the hawk should’ve talked.
If you liked this, here are some other
recommended readings:
It’s a lot of guys.
Is it a lot of movie? You bet you bottom three hundred dollars it is!
This guy is sorta like
Bourne, but with friends.
DEBS: They’re Crime-Fighting Hotties with Killer Bodies
May the Jordanafication
and Brewsterization of Hollywood continue.