Review: Alexander the Great

DVD review: Alexander the Great

Dir: Theodoros Angelopoulos

Runtime: 205 mins

Genre: Historical drama

Country: Greece

Language: Greek w/ English subtitles

A sprawling period drama, Alexander the Great explores themes that resonate strongly in the minds of present-day Grecians such as politics, economy and power. Despite the traditional conventions of the historical epic, the film does not take itself too seriously and peppers the script with moments of comic farce.

It is the turn of the 20^th century, and a legendary bandit known as ‘Alexander the Great’ has escaped from prison. Alexander has returned with a simple edict; the landowners of Greece must release their stranglehold on the peasant classes, ushering in a new era of communal equality.

To this end, Alexander and his men take a group of wealthy English dilettantes as their political prisoners; refusing to release them until their demands are met. However, they fail to reckon with the stubbornness and power of the English government, and soon negotiations reach stalemate.

Caught in the middle of these two great forces, a village exists in peaceful, self-sufficient bliss. The presence of Alexander’s forces causes tensions to run high amongst the villagers, who feel that the revolution will threaten their delicate and idyllic way of life.

Eventually, Alexander’s demands are met in return for the safe release of the Englishmen. The soldiers rejoice, anticipating a glorious new era for Greece. The villagers though, are desperately unhappy, and feel that their fragile existence will come crashing around their feet. Can Alexander maintain the loyalty of the people and avoid punishment for his crimes?

Alexander the Great is an epic in only one sense of the word; it is excruciatingly long. Any film pushing three and a half hours in length will test the patience of even the most eager devotee, as anyone who has sat through the extended edition Lord of the Rings movies will attest. Usually, such films boast colossal runtimes in order to accommodate their complicated, multi-faceted storylines or lavish, expansive set pieces. Alexander the Great however, seems to be conducting an unusual experiment investigating how much tedium it is possible for the human brain to endure. Most people would have been capable of squeezing the same amount of plot onto the back of a postage stamp or a cornflake, but here the filmmakers have been content to let the film progress at the same rate as continental drift, lumbering from scene to scene without ever significantly furthering the story.

This is truly a film where nothing happens; a phrase which is generally overused but in this instance is wholly appropriate. Five minutes in, Alexander escapes from prison. At around forty-five minutes, a man is hanged. Roughly two hours later, there is a murder, followed by three hammy executions. Over the course of 205 long minutes, Alexander the Great doles out its drama as frugally as a recession-hit Dickensian workhouse owner. Any editor worth their salt could have condensed this film to a more palatable 90 minutes, or even a 30 minute short. Every shot is drawn out to the breaking point of even the most saintly patience, with so little occurring within the frame that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was on pause. A film that runs over three hours is self-indulgent at the best of times; here it is unforgivable.

Not only is the film overlong and boring, but it is also difficult to follow. There are characters who have been granted such elaborate screen time that you’ll soon be mistaking them for members of your own family, and yet you are never told their names. Everyone is underwritten, dialogue is minimal to the point of non-existence and character motivations are universally unclear. Could the eponymous Alexander the Great be the legendary leader of men and conqueror of worlds, risen from the dead after 2000 years? Is the name purely coincidental? You’ll never know because the film doesn’t deem it necessary to let on.

Similarly, the film’s technical execution leaves a lot to be desired. Performances are uniformly drab (perhaps because the actors have little to do other than trudge around waving guns in the air) and occasionally lapse into the outright theatrical. In one memorable scene, a soldier gives an impassioned speech before breaking down into tears and burying his head in his hands, where he stands statuesque for the next five minutes as if waiting for the curtain to drop. The score is infrequent at best, and one can detect the telltale hiss-and-drop of a poorly mixed soundtrack. Shots are held for an eternity, and when they do eventually cut, the edits are often clunky and unnatural. Exposure issues abound, (both under and over) and any dialogue recorded from upward of three feet away is effectively inaudible.

Alexander the Great’s only redeeming feature is its cinematography. Despite the aforementioned exposure issues, the composition is largely excellent and the camera movement both innovative and creative. It is evident that the cinematographer has struggled gamely against the film’s restrictive budget to make the most of what is in all honesty a magnificent series of locations. Both the camera work and art direction have given the film a visual legitimacy which is categorically not borne out by its narrative content.

Anyone who can sit through Alexander the Great without complaint deserves some kind of medal. Both unfocussed and spectacularly uneventful, Alexander the Great is that most unforgivable of things; a boring film. The film boasts some excellent visuals, but this in no way makes up for what is a terrifically dire 205 minutes.


1 Star