Central to Alexander’s character are the expectations and deeply held beliefs put upon him by his mother, the intense Olympias. “Part of what the movie deals with is Alexander’s bargain with his mother,” says Stone. “In our script, Olympias tells Alexander, ‘In you lives the light of this world. Your companions will long be shadows in the underworld, when you will be the one, forever young, forever inspiring – never will there be an Alexander like you – Alexander the Great.’ Olympias put the mythology into Alexander’s head that he had a destiny that was equal to Achilles, and that like Achilles, he would die young. That was the trade-off. Great fame, but early death, as opposed to long life and little glory.
“I am a mother now,” says Jolie (Actually, Jolie is a mere one year older than Farrell), “so I simply saw Olympias as a mother. A lot of people say that she was insane, but I don’t know that I wouldn’t do exactly the same for my son. That might sound scary, but in 330 B.C., when people were being murdered left and right, it was a harder way of living and so Olympias was a hard, sometimes frightening woman. But in the end, she wanted Alexander to be as great and as strong as he could be, and I identify with that.”
Aristotle’s lectures to Alexander and the boys who will later become his closest companions – including Hephaistion, his lifelong best friend – touched on many subjects: geography, politics, the gods, and sexuality as it was understood in the ancient Hellenic world, a time in which contemporary definitions were meaningless. Although Alexander attempts to deal with the sexual mores of the era naturally, with neither apology nor sensationalism, a certain erotic tension is ever-present in the film, sometimes shockingly so. “There was a philosophy in that period that the sharing of knowledge and the physical was a very pure thing between men,” explains Farrell. “It was Eros, pure love, about growing, sharing and educating. There was no ‘homosexuality’ or ‘bisexuality.’ There was just an inevitable sexuality whenever it happened.
“I think that Alexander and Hephaistion had an instant kinship and brotherhood that transcended mere ‘friendship,’” adds Leto. “Most important was the love they had for each other, which wasn’t based on the physical, but on spiritual kinship. They played a part in each other’s destinies, which was a source of real tension between Hephaistion and Olympias, and later Roxane.”
The final moments of shooting were emblematic of the spirit with which the entire film had been undertaken. “I’ll never forget my very last image of Colin,” says Stone, “standing there on crutches, stage blood running all over his face, body and armor, with his broken ankle, that wonderful smile of his, and his mad, Irish eyes dancing. We had done it. We had made it to the end of one long, precipitous gamble – and Colin certainly looked like he was at the end of the line. It was a very special moment for both of us. And maybe it sounds portentous, but like Ptolemy at the end of the film, I feel like saying, ‘In his presence we were better than ourselves.’”
Alexander The Great relentlessly pushed his army across the sands, mountains and jungles of strange and mysterious lands, conquering every enemy who dared oppose him and weathering near-mutiny by his own men. This film chronicles, as much as possible, Alexander’s path to becoming a living legend, from a youth fueled by dreams of myth, glory, and adventure, to his intense bonds with his closest companions, to his lonely and mysterious death as ruler of a vast Empire. Alexander is the incredible story of a life that united the known world and proved, if nothing else, fortune favors the bold.
TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ALEXANDER, AND OTHER TRAGIC HEROES IN HISTORY WHO LIVED HARD AND DIED YOUNG, CLICK HERE
