June Newsletter
June is a great month in Canada with risk of frosts usually in the past and the promise of summer ahead.
When we look back into the past, this is the month when King Alexander III of Macedonia, known ever afterwards as the Great, died on June 13 in 323 B.C.E. after conquering the largest area ever unified in the Mediterranean littoral before the Romans.
After unifying Greece, he pushed east and conquered the Persian Empire and then continued east to the Indus River and the great civilizations of India.
He never got to cement his conquests and after his death his empire crumbled and was split up between his generals to become the great Hellenistic empires of the Ptolemies, Seleucids and Antigonids. His passage through Greece and the East forever changed the face of those lands.
Recently Alexander has been the subject of a movie directed and produced by Oliver Stone. It has been slammed by the critics in America for its acting and direction, but was usually well received in Europe.
Criticism in the US has centered in on the depiction of Alexander’s homosexuality and controversy has risen again with the rumours that Stone has cut some of that material for the DVD version.
This is fueled by the current debate about gay marriage which has sensitized all discussion of homosexuality. By contrast, in the rest of the world, the focus for discussion of the film has centered on how it reflects an indictment of the USA’s position in Iraq.
The depiction of Alexander’s competition with his father for military glory has been compared to the two Bush presidents by European critics, analogies often ignored by American reviewers.
I enjoyed the acting and had no problem with Colin Farrell’s accent. He certainly did a better job than his predecessor in the role, Richard Burton! I recommend the film if only for its breathtaking vision of Babylon and the other cities of the Persian Empire.
It also has some truly spectacular battle scenes. The final battle against the Indian armies equipped with their battle elephants, was simply amazing!
I also recommend it for the attention to ancient details of life. Unlike Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, which showcased a horrendous pastiche of misused artifacts, Alexander, exhibited no howling lapses in research. Of course there is some condensation of character and plot for dramatic purposes, but on the whole there are no serious problems.
People have criticized the structural device of having King Ptolemy I (played by Derek Jacobi), narrate the history of Alexander.
Frankly I enjoyed both the voice over and the views of the post Alexander world!
The conceit of showing him in the famous library of Alexandria which was one of the first things Ptolemy founded as a newly minted monarch, was fun and entirely appropriate as it was the first research institution.
The decoration of the interior of the library has the famous Pella pebble floor mosaics raised up onto the walls. Although placed in the wrong part of the room, they are precisely comtemporary and evoke Alexander’s favourite pursuits of hunting and fighting!
For more information about the movies discussed here, check out the following websites:
www.alexanderthemovie.warnerbros.com »
www.troymovie.warnerbros.com »
I also recommend Robert Rossen’s 1955 film Alexander the Great, not for Richard Burton’s overacting but for Fredric March’s depiction of his father Philip II!