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la_belle_laideI just saw Alexander and I don't feel like cutting for SPOILERS, so let me just warn of SPOILERS and be done with it. Besides, can you actually count it as SPOILERS if it is all historical?
This will be brief, even the SPOILERS, because I'm tired and heading to bed in a minute or two.
I might have watched it at some point anyway, no doubt with my friend Kim on one of those nights when we just feel like watching grand, huge, historically based melodramas that have good-looking men in them, however I have to be totally honest and tell those of you who haven't guessed already that I only watched it because it had Jared Leto, who, in my considered opinion, should always have long hair and, GOD HELP ME, LOTS OF BLACK EYELINER. I'm sorry if I seem to cheapen a really beautiful moment in movie history, because it was a very effective scene. (Not only that, but Oliver Stone made the exact point that I always try to make about what bugs me in regards to cheap slash and yaoi, which is, why can't men just love each other? Why do people always want all men to bang each other? Does it have to be about the banging? It's true that Hephaistion and Alexander probably banged in their youth, but why exploit it? [sez the hypocrite--me--who only watched the film for Jared Leto with long hair and black eyeliner....]) Anyway, so there was that.
Three scenes in this movie really affected me. One, well, I knew the horse was going to die the moment it appeared on screen. The horse always dies; that's the movie law. It still upset me when the horse died. Two, I had to shut my eyes--albeit too late--when the elephant's trunk got cut off. I hope I don't dream about that. So that upset me.
And then there was the somewhat realistic yet disturbingly beautiful death of Hephastion. Which, of course, everyone knows is coming, and not only because it's historical fact, but even if you didn't know that, you'd see it coming because Hephaistion was too loyal and noble to be anything but the sacrifice; that's how it always goes in movies, it, too, is the movie law.
TraumaWhore--that's me--loves nothing better than a good death scene in a movie. ("So gentle, helpless, stirless and unmoved..." said Byron in a passage I've rememebered since I first read it in college, only he said it of sleep, not movie death, "like death without its terrors.") I had actually waited the entire film just to see that scene you know, because I knew that he'd master it. (He's so good at pain.) But then Hephaistion said to Alexander, "I feel better," when he was clearly dying in agony, and TraumaWhore kind of whithered for a moment, because damn, that was too brutal. And then after he was dead, his eyes kind of freaked me out, not in that "holy crap, they are as blue as my pajama bottoms" (they are,) but because, I don't know, they didn't look real and I had to wonder if there was some digital witchery going on there, although I really don't think there was. I kind of wish there was.
And of course there was all the predictable "going into battle" scene which is handled exactly the same in every movie that has a big battle, you know with the leader rallying the soldiers on the field and inevitably telling them "some of you will die today and I might die too," and then lots of people shout and there are some drums for an inordinately long time and then you see the leader of the other guys and then some more drums and then everyone runs at each other and hack and slash, blah blah dicker blah. I actually fast forward through those scenes in almost every movie in which they occur.
Overall it was a pretty decent ride. I might have to own it just for those few scenes, though. And Jared Leto's eyes really are the color of my pajama bottoms, and as large as eyes that you might see depicted in anything released by TokyoPop. Is he real, or is he anime? Christ.
(Here's the punchline: Jonathan Rhys Meyers was in it, too. Last year I might have watched it for him. He's very pretty in this, also, but doesn't have half as interesting a role this time around.)
This will be brief, even the SPOILERS, because I'm tired and heading to bed in a minute or two.
I might have watched it at some point anyway, no doubt with my friend Kim on one of those nights when we just feel like watching grand, huge, historically based melodramas that have good-looking men in them, however I have to be totally honest and tell those of you who haven't guessed already that I only watched it because it had Jared Leto, who, in my considered opinion, should always have long hair and, GOD HELP ME, LOTS OF BLACK EYELINER. I'm sorry if I seem to cheapen a really beautiful moment in movie history, because it was a very effective scene. (Not only that, but Oliver Stone made the exact point that I always try to make about what bugs me in regards to cheap slash and yaoi, which is, why can't men just love each other? Why do people always want all men to bang each other? Does it have to be about the banging? It's true that Hephaistion and Alexander probably banged in their youth, but why exploit it? [sez the hypocrite--me--who only watched the film for Jared Leto with long hair and black eyeliner....]) Anyway, so there was that.
Three scenes in this movie really affected me. One, well, I knew the horse was going to die the moment it appeared on screen. The horse always dies; that's the movie law. It still upset me when the horse died. Two, I had to shut my eyes--albeit too late--when the elephant's trunk got cut off. I hope I don't dream about that. So that upset me.
And then there was the somewhat realistic yet disturbingly beautiful death of Hephastion. Which, of course, everyone knows is coming, and not only because it's historical fact, but even if you didn't know that, you'd see it coming because Hephaistion was too loyal and noble to be anything but the sacrifice; that's how it always goes in movies, it, too, is the movie law.
TraumaWhore--that's me--loves nothing better than a good death scene in a movie. ("So gentle, helpless, stirless and unmoved..." said Byron in a passage I've rememebered since I first read it in college, only he said it of sleep, not movie death, "like death without its terrors.") I had actually waited the entire film just to see that scene you know, because I knew that he'd master it. (He's so good at pain.) But then Hephaistion said to Alexander, "I feel better," when he was clearly dying in agony, and TraumaWhore kind of whithered for a moment, because damn, that was too brutal. And then after he was dead, his eyes kind of freaked me out, not in that "holy crap, they are as blue as my pajama bottoms" (they are,) but because, I don't know, they didn't look real and I had to wonder if there was some digital witchery going on there, although I really don't think there was. I kind of wish there was.
And of course there was all the predictable "going into battle" scene which is handled exactly the same in every movie that has a big battle, you know with the leader rallying the soldiers on the field and inevitably telling them "some of you will die today and I might die too," and then lots of people shout and there are some drums for an inordinately long time and then you see the leader of the other guys and then some more drums and then everyone runs at each other and hack and slash, blah blah dicker blah. I actually fast forward through those scenes in almost every movie in which they occur.
Overall it was a pretty decent ride. I might have to own it just for those few scenes, though. And Jared Leto's eyes really are the color of my pajama bottoms, and as large as eyes that you might see depicted in anything released by TokyoPop. Is he real, or is he anime? Christ.
(Here's the punchline: Jonathan Rhys Meyers was in it, too. Last year I might have watched it for him. He's very pretty in this, also, but doesn't have half as interesting a role this time around.)
