[lbo-talk] Alexander

[Joel Wendland]

An alternative view of Stone's flick:

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/423/1/32/

Greatness is in the Eye of the Beholder
By Roberta Jones

The story seems familiar. The son of a king, always feeling as though he 
hasn’t lived up to his father’s standards, drives his army across the world 
to Babylon (modern day Iraq) to conquer an empire. This empire (Persia) is 
commanded by a tyrant whose rule, or so goes the Macedonian propaganda 
machine, is based only on brutality and slavery. With hatred fueled by 
rumors that Persian gold paid for the father’s assassination, the son 
invades this romanticized eastern world. But if you believe writer and 
producer Oliver Stone’s version of how this gripping film came to be, 
Alexander has nothing to do with modern day politics. It is only 
storytelling in pictures.

Oliver Stone has played that game before. On numerous occasions, Stone has 
denied imposing art onto truth in his work. He took a lot of heat for his 
artistic license in such films as JFK and Nixon all the while claiming that 
he had no intention of revising history and only sought to pursue the 
artist’s main objective of producing a great fictional work.
Partial Cast of Alexander

Alexander has endured another kind of criticism, however. David Ansen, 
writing for Newsweek, describes the film as "stupefying" and a "madly 
ambitious film [that] doesn’t compute."

[...]

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/423/1/32/