"Alexander" (the Oliver Stone biopic about Alexander the Great)

[Os Cangaceiros]

I re-watched this recently (I'd seen it once before, somewhere along the line I came into contact with the three and a half hour version of the film), and I think it's unfairly maligned. I remember when it was first released, the only thing I'd ever heard about it was "that movie is so gay...literally!" So I was expecting it to be like an ancient Brokeback Mountain or something. :rolleyes: Which it wasn't at all.

I can see why American audiences didn't like it. There's not much action in it, only two battle scenes (although both are well done set-pieces). It's mostly just a big costume drama/ancient soap opera, with Colin Farrell's histrionics driving it all along. I admit to snickering more than once at a few of the unintentionally funny moments in the film. But it's definitely not that bad of a film. Maybe the edited down theatrical version was terrible and the extended version rounded it out, I dunno.

[cynicles]

I actually don't remember the movie it's been a while since I saw it. For some reason I'm not surprised that someone would make the gay comment about.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I'll have to watch it again. When I saw it I didn't like it.I almost couldn't watch it, although I've long been fascinated by Alexander.I kind of like what Stone was trying to do but it seemed ahistorical-Alexander as a multicultural visionary and then as a gay camp hero.

[Permanent Revolutionary]

This movie was shit.
Shitty version of the Alexander story, shitty acting, shitty action... Just pure crap.

[Book O'Dead]

I didn't like the film. There was too much speechifying on the part of Alexander.

[Sendo]

Does anyone else find the whole speculation on Alexander's sexuality annoying? I don't know if it's homophobia or what, but every great (as in large figure not as in swell) man in history is considered possibly gay if he dies without a bunch of children. As if bisexuality and low sperm counts and asexuality and circumstance don't exist. If he lived another ten years and fathered fifteen kids with a bunch of concubines his sexuality would have been beyond reproach I wager. England has its share of childless princesses and Queens but no one blames it on lesbianism.

It's as if it's a man's duty to impregnate women (who are always willing sperm recipients of course) and if someone fails at that we must suppose that he was a die-hard homosexual unless proven otherwise. It also assigns the desire for offspring and sons and heirs (adopted, surrogate, "natural" or otherwise) to be exclusively hetero and the lack thereof to be exclusively homo.

Also, given ancient Hellenistic culture, even if he did engage in loads of homosexual relations it wouldn't be the subject of melodrama the way Brokeback was in American society.

This underlines a pattern of thought in Anglo-American academia (headed by male heteros) for the past two centuries: "If I were an autocrat I'd fuck all the *****es I could. Only a fruitcake would do otherwise"

[Os Cangaceiros]

Guess revleft doesn't like this movie! I don't know, I thought it was funny.

[Yu Ming Zai]

The problem with trying to depict the life of Alexander the Great in a two and a half hour movie is that it is virtually impossible. Its the same with that one movie from Clint Eastwood about the director of the FBI. Its just that the scope and scale of this man's achievements is beyond what the limited time is available for a movie. You would have to make it into a trilogy in order to even grasp the basic concepts of who this man was. Better yet I think a television series much like Rome or Game of Thrones would be a much better choice as you get to have more time to develop each of the many characters of Alexander's life more efficiently.

However I also dun really understand what all this fuss is about on how the film is depicting Alexander's sexuality. He's not really gay as he has a number of children. At most he was bisexual but even that, whats the big problem? I even remember at the time of this movie's release, Greek lawyers was ready to sue the movie for I believe it was an inaccurate depictions of their country's hero's sexuality... really? Im pretty sure the Greeks would know their own history. The whole thing was pretty silly. If I could give this film a rating, I would give it a 6/10 just because I am a fan of Alexander the Great.

[Grenzer]

I consider myself a pretty huge geek on ancient history, especially Greek and Roman. I wasn't a huge fan of the movie. I don't think it was great from just the perspective of being a film, nor from a historical perspective.

[Igor]

The whole question of Alexander's sexuality is kind of stupid anyways because homosexuality and heterosexuality didn't exist as concepts during his time. It's quite likely that Alexander had sex with men, but that wasn't particularly exceptional then. The ancient Greek didn't divide people by who they had sex with, but more like what kind of a role they had in the act, and a man was breaking the social norm only if they took the supposedly "submissive" role.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Does anyone else find the whole speculation on Alexander's sexuality annoying? I don't know if it's homophobia or what, but every great (as in large figure not as in swell) man in history is considered possibly gay if he dies without a bunch of children. As if bisexuality and low sperm counts and asexuality and circumstance don't exist.

I don't know this history too well, but it was my understanding that it was the norm in his army for soldiers to all have homosexual relationships with eachother. It's fairly common in modern same-sex military situations as well, though it's officially denied and an "open secret".

I think the speculation on the sexuality of historical fugues is historically incorrect though because in most of these cultures there was no concept of a "type of person" who engaged in specific types of sex-acts. In fact homosexual acts in feudalism in many cases was categorized with adultery and heterosexual anal and oral sex acts. In some Greek cultures, to my knowledge, homosexual relationships were considered part of apprenticeships between male mentors and male students and considered in some ways to be superior to heterosexual relationships.

The "sensationalization" or focus on questions of the sexuality of pre-capitalist historical figures IMO may not be motivated by homophobia specifically, but is a result of creating inherent "sexual categories" of people rather than seeing sexual intercourse as a behavior and sexual preference as just a preference.

[Sendo]

I don't know this history too well, but it was my understanding that it was the norm in his army for soldiers to all have homosexual relationships with eachother. It's fairly common in modern same-sex military situations as well, though it's officially denied and an "open secret".

I think the speculation on the sexuality of historical fugues is historically incorrect though because in most of these cultures there was no concept of a "type of person" who engaged in specific types of sex-acts. In fact homosexual acts in feudalism in many cases was categorized with adultery and heterosexual anal and oral sex acts. In some Greek cultures, to my knowledge, homosexual relationships were considered part of apprenticeships between male mentors and male students and considered in some ways to be superior to heterosexual relationships.

The "sensationalization" or focus on questions of the sexuality of pre-capitalist historical figures IMO may not be motivated by homophobia specifically, but is a result of creating inherent "sexual categories" of people rather than seeing sexual intercourse as a behavior and sexual preference as just a preference.

Homophobia wasn't the right word. It's not so much a fear or hatred, but a general ignorance. It's a kind of other-ing. Kind of like Orientalism and how yellow-skinned actors must always play "East Asians" and it must be a part of their identity. I'll say the the best mainstream movie to feature "new minorities" of America (as opposed to the old minorities of blacks, Amerindians, Eastern Europeans) is Harold and Kumar, sadly enough.

It's like every character or actor with immigrant parents from Asia must have it feature in his character and not in the victim of discrimination way, but in an "I am fundamentally different" way. Likewise for gays. If you want to make a love story that happens to include gays, just make it fiction. If you want to make a movie about Alexander, don't waste your time with that crap. When I think of Caesar from my history classes in school I think of political concepts, autocracy (though incorrectly since the successors were far far more "dictatorial"), civil war, the large Roman Empire, betrayal. When I think of Alexander I think big Empire stretching to India (???), Alexandria city in Egypt, death by malaria, gay. Caesar was quite the player and had his share of lovers, yet the history texts rightly focus on everything else over that. The creation of his empire is done so quickly and then the texts just focus on the Hellenistic culture of the empire. The few pages dedicated to the man seem to be in a rush by comparison.

I don't see history textbooks spending much time discussing Mao's "love life" but I remember James Buchanan was possibly gay! He wasn't even married! Yet this lack of activity is given a few sentences in the textbooks or by the teachers. Jimmy Carter probably never had sex in the backseat of a Porsche; I don't think Zapata ever went to Central Park. Why waste time on this garbage, especially the things the historical figures didn't do.

How about Popes who had children and had high profile affairs? That is relevant to their station and to hypocrisy yet glossed over because having sex with women is simply the natural order of things. If any historical male figure deviates from the model of wife(s) and kids, then you can bet there'll be at least a sentence that speculates on homosexuality.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Honestly the whole thing about sensationalism vis-a-vis homosexuality isn't something that's a problem with the film IMO, as the topic isn't hardly mentioned, and when it is it's talked about rather plainly, there's no "OMG what a homo!!1!" in the film. I think the sensationalism is more a factor of the reaction to the film, not the film itself.


If I could give this film a rating, I would give it a 6/10 just because I am a fan of Alexander the Great.

That's probably what I'd rate it, too, maybe slightly lower. Didn't deserve the power-bomb it received critically though, LOL

[Geiseric]

HAHA it wasn't as bad as JFK

[RedSonRising]

It's actually one of my top 10-15 favorite films. I was shocked when I heard it was universally panned. There were issues with it of course, but I believe Stone got a lot of things right in this film.

First off, he was able to give Alexander a lot of dimension as a character and show different sides of him. Not only that, but he gave his motivations and desires to be great a base within his personal life. The way he struggles between the different treatments and characterizations his parents give him particularly interested me. He's bold, confident, intuitive, but is also prone to the vulnerabilities felt by anyone with a sense of self attached to deep family attachments.

I thought the cultural atmosphere was very believable. Whether in Macedonia, or Babylon, or India, the richness of the set brought about visuals that made the empires of the past more tangibly believable and also more attractive. Audiences have seen countless sword-and-sandal buildings before, but an extra emphasis on decoration made a marked difference for me.

Some of the acting from Kilmer and Jolie was over the top, but their characters were fleshed out really well. Again, Alexander's personal and political life is given dimension by the people that surround him. Performances from those that played Hephaistion, Cleitus, Parmenion, Cassander, all help give the sense that he's grown up with the influence of elite military culture and a deep camaraderie.

The film takes its liberties historically, but it includes lots of little tidbits that I think make the film richer. His mother claiming his lineage to be of Achilles', the training of his life-long war horse as a young boy, the public feud with his father, Cleitus saving his life at Gaugamela (and later dying by his hands in a drunken quarrel), his marriages, all make the portrayal of Alexander more majestic.

One thing I often wonder about was the political consequences of the multi-cultural outlook they had him espouse. He was of course an imperial aggressor to foreign lands, but its interesting to think if he really valued the literacy and education of his conquered subjects. There's also the question of xenophobia and racism, the latter which many scholars argue only existed post-capitalism; this topic comes up as Alexander adopts Asian practices.

Overall, I thought it was an enthralling biopic. Sometimes over-acted, occasionally melodramatic, but rightfully stoic in its tone and comprehensive in its re-imagining of a tremendous historical figure.