Alexander the Not-So-Great

[williamjm]

I went to see "Alexander" at the cinema yesterday. It had some good scenes in it (the battle of Gaugamela in particular) and is generally a fairly well-made film but overall I don't really think it worked.

Even though the film is something like 27 hours long it still isn't long enough to fully describe a lifetime (even a short lifetime). This really should have been a TV mini-series, it just isn't possible to squeeze Alexander's life into a film without either missing out crucial chunks of his life (Alexander suddenly goes from being an inexperienced youth in Greece to a seasoned battle commander in Persia with nothing in between) or changing the historical facts to fit a traditional Hollywood story (thankfully Stone didn't try and do that). The overall effect was unsatisfying, it seemed like we were missing out on crucial pieces of the story and Alexander remained an enigma throughout the film.

I notice that the whole thing was Aristotle's fault. If only his geography lesson has been less speculative, Alexander would never have tried to reach the end of the world, he would have got a bit of a surprise if he did get through India and then encountered the Chinese Empire. Personally I think he was just trying to find the land where his accent came from, sadly he was going in the wrong direction.

Probably still worth seeing, but I think it should have been better.

Comments

[dsky.livejournal.com]

"Personally I think he was just trying to find the land where his accent came from, sadly he was going in the wrong direction. "

Hee!