Thursday, September 29, 2005
ALEXANDER
Oliver Stone's Alexander, is not a very good movie. It jumps around. Scenes are incoherent. The movie is incoherent.
Yet there is passion in the film, passion within scenes, and spectacular set pieces.
Watching his commentary suggests that the problem may be Stone's own passion for, and expert knowledge of the life of Alexander. He had too much to say for one two hour movie. (Watching the commentary is worth is the price of the DVD. It's better than the film.)
If only it had been made as a TV series -- with many hours in which to tell the story -- I suspect we could have had something very exciting, interesting, and completely coherent.
Indeed, if it were possible to salvage millions of the dollars spent on the movie and reconstitute it -- as I suggested in the post on Rome -- as material that could be used by students, that too would be a tremendously valuable disposition for so much of the energy that went into making this production
