larry richette wrote:Dear joefromchicago: you are (forgive me) dead wrong in almost all your criticisms. The story of ALEXANDER is no more a "mess" than the story of THE LAST EMPEROR or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, two films that came to mind as I
watched Stone's epic. Historical subjects just don't lend themselves to the sort of one-note obvious storytelling you seem to prefer. You're right about the flashback but all your other points are either wrongheaded or irrelevant. Jolie does well with a difficult part, she DOES age in the course of the movie, and her accent is no worse than Meryl Streep's in a dozen worse movies. I repeat, Oliver Stone is going to laugh
Dear
larry, I won't attempt to refute your assessment of "Alexander," since I don't think such a thing is possible. We clearly have very different views of the film, but those views are entirely subjective.
Chacun a son gout. Anyone who watches this film will be able to judge it for themselves.
I can, however, take issue with some of your assumptions about
me, and also make a few additional remarks about the film. You're wrong that I prefer "one-note obvious storytelling" (whatever that means): I'm quite happy to see a film tell a coherent story in whatever fashion that suits the story itself. "Rashomon" is a great film, but the story is anything but linear. Likewise, I think both "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Last Emperor" are masterpieces of storytelling. In contrast, "Alexander" is a mess. A good example is the late flashback (which you also seem to have disliked). Not only is the flashback placed too late in the film, but the entire movie is framed as a flashback -- Ptolemy's flashback. The flashback to Phillip of Macedon's murder, however, appears to have been Alexander's flashback. Now, how did Alexander's flashback end up in Ptolemy's flashback? Was Ptolemy somehow chanelling Alexander's spirit? Was Ptolemy relating a flashback that Alexander had mentioned to him? Or did Oliver Stone just forget that he was already using Ptolemy's extended flashback as a framing device when he wrote a flashback for Alexander?
As for Jolie, I could discern no aging on her part throughout the course of the film. At most, she changed her hairstyle and Stone shot her in low light or through a filter for her later scenes. That's it.
As for accents, I know that Streep gets a bad rap for adopting new accents for practically every picture, and for some actors it can seem like getting into an accent is a rather cheap substitute for getting into a character. But I have never seen a Streep film where I thought she adopted an accent for the sole purpose of adopting an accent. If she adopts an accent, it's because the character (or her interpretation of the character) demands it. In contrast, there is no earthly reason why Jolie should be speaking like a gypsy fortune-teller from some 1940s "Wolfman" movie. Indeed, there's no reason for any of the actors to adopt
any kind of accent. After all, everyone is Greek or Persian: why is a British or Irish or bogus Russian accent any more authentic or believable than a regular old American accent? Just like Jared Leto's half-hearted attempt at an Irish brogue, Jolie's accent wasn't just bad, it was completely unnecessary -- which makes it even worse than bad.