Fiona Rose Greenland

A disparate collection. If you have an interest in any aspect of the subject, no doubt, like me, you’ll find one or two fascinating, one or two exasperating, one or two irrelevant to you.

For instance, I had an interest in how you can shape biography into a story: unlike, say, Gladiator, he had to deal with the shape of a historical life, and the difficulties of that are meditated upon.

I’d have to say I found at least three of these essays bad-tempered; one from a film person, impatient with historians who don’t understand creatives; the others from historians, irritated with fictional license. A couple of these qualify as excoriation. On the other hand, I came away with a few tips as to the intelligence of Stone’s film – things I hadn’t noticed for myself.

Oliver Stone’s afterword was good stuff. ‘Humble’ he calls it, but he also stands up for his vision.

A main focus was on why the film became an official failure – in the English-language world, headed by the US. I can’t say I know why, at the end of the book; contributors tended to think it was because of the failing they cared about: Angelina Jolie and Oliver Stone’s mother (that essay got a bit personal. He’s eloquent on his Olympias in the afterword); or the harem (which he admits he misconstrued). Or the Alexander the Gay furore. Nobody knows why a film flops, I suppose; as I write this review I fear I am watching a similar fate overtake John Fusco’s Marco Polo, killed in the cradle by this mysterious popularity contest-contagion that goes on. These guys only have theories. Most of them like to quote the film: ‘his failures were more spectacular than other people’s successes’ or words to that effect. Stone’s Alexander was an interesting project, worthy of a book of this sort. I am sore that Gladiator, Troy and 300 -- less ambitious, less historical -- were commercial and in part critical successes, while this was not. Life isn’t fair and neither is art.… (meer)

A collection of essays written in the aftermath of Oliver Stone's film about Alexander the Great (2004) that look at various aspects of the film, its reception and its relationships with history and two earlier stage and film versions of Alexander's life, with an afterword by Stone. I enjoyed reading most of the essays (Marilyn Skinner on sexuality seemed by far the weakest to me—yes we have most evidence about Athens and that evidence from Athens is the most likely frame of reference for contemporary viewers but might it not have been worth asking in considerably more depth to what extent any of that has much relevance to Alexander or Macedon?); but more specifically, Joanna Paul discussing the film in relation to Hollywood historical epic as genre, Jon Solomon writing about the film's reception, Elizabeth Carney on the weakness of the characterisation of Olympias (to which Stone tries to respond to in his Afterword, but I'm with Carney here), Jeanne Reames on Hephaistion, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on Persian royal women and how Orientalising their depictions are, and John F Cherry on museum exhibitions on Alexander/Macedon during the past thirty years or so.… (meer)