Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Thinking that we could laugh our way through the bad parts and enjoy the sweeping battle scenes, we rented Alexander last night. Omigod. We had to watch the second half of the third Lord of the Rings afterwards just to get the bad bad movie out of our brains.

Try comparing the two elephant battles. Peter Jackson's LOTR's battle with the oliphaunts is a masterpiece of story-telling. Alexander's is barely coherent, making it far better than the first battle scene in Alexander which we spent asking "Are those the good guys?" and "Wait, weren't they just coming from the left?" even after the strategy had been ploddingly explained in the previous scene.

Or compare any of Alexander's "stirring" speeches to his men with the words Aragorn says before the gates of Mordor open. Or compare the "touching" scene between Alexander and his near-death friend and the truly touching, human scene between Sam and the near-death Frodo before entering the volcano. Sam and Frodo's relationship is far more real and they're freaking, hairy-footed hobbits.

At least Alexander exposes Oliver Stone for what he is: A wildly incompetent director whose subject matter has led us to excuse his embarrassingly bad productions. Find a movie of his — I've seen most, but not all, of them — that doesn't have a cliche-filled script, black-and-white characters, camera-work that needlessly calls attention to itself, actors pushed into career-damaging performances, and self-righteous, unsympathetic, simple-minded political stances. ("U Turn" is the one movie of his I've seen that's exempt from most of these criticisms.)

On the other hand, the popcorn generally was good.

Note: For heaven's sake, do not rent Alexander thinking that there must be some redeeming qualities. There aren't. Half the movie is spent in exposition, including letters read on screen, lectures in caves, a framing narrator, generals talking while pushing models around on maps, and actual maps with animated arrows on them. Ten minutes are spent in battle scenes that make no sense, and not in a "fog of war" way. The rest of it is a lot of wailing and longing looks without a single true human emotion ever expressed. Have I mentioned that it's a bad bad movie? [Tag: OliverStone]

James Wolcott responded to the above. He doesn't allow comments, so I'm responding here. (He also doesn't actually link to me, only to Jeff Jarvis' link to me, which strikes me as odd.)

First, he calls my comments about Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie "jejune." I am certainly jejune, but I didn't make a single comment about the 9/11 movie. Fwiw, I have absolutely no problem with Stone making another awful movie about any topic he wants. It's a free country.

James says the first commenter at Jeff's site "handily disposes" of my "contention that Stone's movies are always melodramatically 'black and white.'" The commenter is a Vietnam vet and thinks Platoon is the best depiction he's seen of the war. Yes, Platoon was a relief after Green Berets. But, the commenter says: "In Platoon and Salvador there are no black and white main characters." Salvador I remember liking ok, but it was a long time ago and after Alexander I'm afraid to see it again. But no black and white characters in Platoon?? It had a good and a bad officer that might as well have had "Good" and "Bad" tatooed on their foreheads — except you didn't need that because Stone flagged the good and the bad so obviously.

When Stone wants to give us a bad character, the bad character has all the subtlety of Gordon Gecko's name. Is Gecko about anything except greed and moustache-twirling evilness? And how nuanced was that first great character that Stone penned, Scarface? Is there a major director — one with a sheen of respectability — who so consistently writes and directs such one-sided, cliched characters?

Wolcott writes: "Weinberger disqualifies himself from serious respect when he alludes to Stone's 'camera work that needlessly calls attention to itself'." He then defends the use of innovative camera work. I refer back to the use of the adverb "needlessly" that would seem to indicate that I'm fine with some camera work that is noticeable. James then produces obvious and indisputable examples of excellence in camera work, but I actually don't agree that they all call attention to themselves. The fact that the opening scene of The Player was done in one shot is impressive to people who care about such things (I do), but if you don't, then it still serves its primary purpose, which is not to impress us with Altman's skill but to set the stage by giving us a half dozen, very funny snapshots of Hollywood at its most jejune. (I'm just looking for a way to reclaim the word.) Likewise for the opening of The Stuntman: It was done in one high-risk continuous take, but it also serves the movie, not just the director's ego. The fact that there are directors who use cameras well so well that we gasp doesn't change the fact that Oliver Stone sucks.

Of course there's nothing wrong with the techniques of art calling attention to themselves. One of the joys of art is in fact being aware that the impossible is happening. Some of ballet is thrilling simply for its athleticism, which is technique making itself conspicuous. Some of ballet is heart-stopping because you know the grace of the simple results from technique that is so hard. When I look at a great Monet my attention enters a weird vibratory state in which I'm awash in the scene depicted and aware of how unlike the scene is the technique by which the scene was created. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that every time you're made aware of technique, you're in the presence of art. Sometimes it's because the technique is so bad (Oliver Stone) and sometimes it's because it's so pretentious (Oliver Stone).

(Then, of course, there's Natural Born Killers. There the shopworn camera work pretends to be innovative because the theme is so trite, the plot is so ridiculous, and the directors has set the actors on Full Froth.)

Next James takes me to task for saying that Stone pushes his actors into "career-damaging performances," and here James is absolutely right. I should have said that Stone pushes his actors into performances that should have ended their careers but instead leads them to Oscars. We need to compute a spittle-to-Oscars ratio to explain this. No, not every performance in every Stone movie is awful. Just more of them than we can count.

Finally, Wolcott acknowledges that he hasn't seen Alexander. My post's point was that you can't see that movie without reevaluating Stone's previous work. It was the movie he longed to make, he had a huge budget, he filled it with terrific actors, and he had creative control. Yet he came out with a piece that is incomprehensible visually, narratively and emotionally. When a great director like Scorcese makes an artistic dud, it's The Gangs of New York which is — wait, let me get out my slide rule — still 184 times better than Alexander.