..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
..A Few Minutes With
..The Cast Of Alexander..News & Preview Alexander
Directed by Oliver StoneNothing Oliver Stone does is written in cement. He is forever taking his feature films and tweaking them for their home video releases, and with his 2004 historical opus, Alexander, he has removed about a half-hour of footage from the 175-minute theatrical version and has added 20 minutes of new footage, along with rearranging scenes, for the 167-minute Warner Home Video 2-Disc Widescreen Special Edition release, Alexander Director's Cut (70456, $30). Fortunately, for academics and the rest of us, Warner has also released the theatrical film as a 2-Disc Widescreen Special Edition (38936, $30). They are two very different movies, though for all of Stone's efforts to improve his work without a theatrical release date hanging over his head on a thread, he hasn't made the movie any better.
In the past, Stone has done remarkable things as a film director. It wasn't just that he took an interesting script with JFK and turned it into a dazzling blockbuster or, in perhaps an even more impressive effort, took a really lousy script with Any Given Sunday and turned that movie into a dazzling blockbuster, too (yes, both movies also showed up on home video in 'Director's Cut' versions). By the time of Any Given Sunday, Stone's command of the film medium was awesome. He seemed to be inventing new approaches to storytelling and action in every scene, and drew performances from his cast that went far beyond the known capabilities of any of them except the primary star, Al Pacino. Stone could figuratively play a bugle like you never heard before. Thus, the tragedy of Alexander appears to be that, like his hero, Stone has tried to go too far and has lost his way. There is none of that dazzle that his other recent films have had, none of the visual innovation and absolutely no dynamic at all. The film, in either version, is plodding and mundane. Even the battle scenes are just too big and ungainly to manage. It's all clutter, without style or excitement.
The reason why Stone fell short will be undetermined until he makes more movies and this one can be measured with a more complete perspective, but he certainly chose the wrong time to lose his mojo, because the story of Alexander's adventures, for all of its coy parallels to recent military adventures, is not a subject that is well suited for motion picture entertainment. After finishing the unification of the Eastern Mediterranean begun by his father, and conquering Asia Minor, Alexander just went on and on, tramping farther and farther east, wearing out his men and wearing out any potential viewer at the same time. Stone's movie, which already doesn't have much going for it (Colin Farrell is adequate as the title character, Angelina Jolie is interesting and better than one would expect as his venomous mother, but Val Kilmer is lifeless as his bearish father and most of the other supporting players are good-looking bodies without souls), does not have history on his side. In the Director's Cut, Stone tries desperately to shuffle the beginning into the end, and loses his patience whenever a scene is used to reinforce a story point instead of advancing one. He also retreats in a near-embarrassing fashion from the theatrical film's display of the hero's sexual orientation, losing some of the story's critical emotional underpinnings with the cuts. The standard version, which moves in a chronological manner that a viewer can anticipate and follow, may actually be more appealing, because it at least conforms to expectations that the Director's Cut is ill-equipped to undermine. Nevertheless, the long, tedious and exhausting military campaign into India that culminates both films has no dramatic potential for Stone to utilize, other than to wallow in the hero's failures (even when he wins a battle). There is no escape for the soldiers who are with him or the viewer who is watching him. Since this is Stone, there is an obvious symbolic imperative in depicting the hero trying vainly to out-do his father's military accomplishments in the Middle East, and it may be the pessimism of history repeating itself that hovers over the tale like a cloud of doom, but even if the world were at peace, Stone has been too scarred by his own exposure to the rampant imperialism of his times to take the basic raw material in the story of Alexander's conquests and construct an affecting motion picture, one where the human side is compelling or the military victories mean something.
Stone supplies a marathon commentary for the Director's Cut, and while his praising of components of the film that do not deserve that level of praise can be tiresome at times-and he rarely goes into much detail about his technical choices, focusing more on a play-by-play of the characters and their motivations-his knowledge of history makes the talk worthwhile. He explains what Alexander's significance to human civilization was, and how he came so close to uniting the East and the West as one culture. The more he tries to prove that Alexander was a great figure in world history, however, the more he demonstrates that the greatness fell short, that the man had too many personal demons to take advantage of what accomplishments he managed. He does point out one change from the theatrical version to the Director's Cut that is worth applauding. It was discovered during previews that audiences didn't understand what 'BC' meant, and were therefore confused by the dates presented on inserts, so the theatrical version displayed relative dates instead-stating the number of years before or after the setting of the previous scene-while the Director's Cut retains the original dating scheme. Stone also discusses his inspired attempt to mix English dialects-Farrell speaks with his natural Irish accent-reasoning smartly that Ancient Greece would have witnessed an equally diverse application of its mother tongue.
A good portion of Stone's commentary is also used on the theatrical version, supplemented with more historical insight and analysis by Alexander expert Robin Lane Fox. Fox identifies the details in the production design that are precisely replicated and those that are reasonably good guesses, and speaks, as Stone does, to the facts behind the dramatizations. He claims that Alexander came very close to establishing the engine for a world market that would probably have advanced civilization in a remarkable manner, but that he just didn't consolidate enough to achieve that goal. Fox also claims that the spread of Christianity three centuries later was facilitated by the social and political foundations Alexander left behind him, and that is a stronger argument in favor of Alexander's accomplishments than the vague claims of military glory and expansion that Stone obsesses upon.
The theatrical version is split, somewhat abruptly, between the two platters, while Director's Cut fits entirely on the first platter. The picture on both discs is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The image transfer is accurate, but the film is really too cluttered and limp to have much visual appeal, despite the potential it offers as a window onto the past. You get glimpses of Stone's artistry at work, but you rarely have the opportunity to savor them. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is also disappointing. There is plenty of noise during the battle scenes, but the mix never really involves you the way the best audio tracks do. There are not enough distinctive moments, and the bland Vangelis musical score doesn't help to rouse emotions, either. There are optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.
On both releases, the second platter contains 87 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage. Much of it is interesting, particularly when there is unhindered coverage of problems facing the filmmakers, such as damaged footage that has to be reshot or extras that blow a big battle scene. The material is vaguely organized, and the optimism that Stone shares about the artistic value of what he is creating can become tiresome when you are privy to a future that he is not, but there are enough details and fresh views to make the program worthwhile. There is also a 4-minute piece about Vangelis (hey, at least Stone didn't pick Yanni, right?) and two trailers, which appear on the first platter of the theatrical version and the second platter of Director's Cut.
September 7 , 2005DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
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