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Sword and Sandal movie updates

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Kerry:

--- Quote from: Mikaela on July 08, 2009, 05:25:50 pm ---
Now the "sword and sandal movie I'd like to see made, would be someone filming "The Persian Boy", and actually staying true to the source material. Except I wouldn't mind the film being a tad more explicit, since Mary Renault's novel very maddeningly skirts around the sex oh-so-politely and with eyes very firmly closed. I wouldn't mind seeing a bit. Or two.  :P


--- End quote ---

I love Mary Renault's romantic writing style. I wouldn't have it any other way. One of my favourite Renault quotes is from The Persian Boy. Bagoas is describing Alexander:

"He was seemly in sleep, his mouth closed, his breathing silent, his body fresh and sweet. The room smelled of sex and cedarwood, with the tang of salt from the sea. Autumn drew on, the night wind blew from the north. I drew the blanket over him; without waking, he moved to me in the great bed, seeking warmth."

Now I really am all hot and bothered. Quick, someone, hand me a fan!  ;)   :D

I'd love to see a movie of Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine; though, I dread to think what obnoxious Hollywood pretty boys would be cast to play Alexias and Lysis. Probably best left to my imagination.  :-\

Mikaela:
*Hands Kerry a fan that - hopefully - would have been good enough for Alexander*



Your quote from the Persian Boy really had me yearning for a movie. *sigh*
I was so disappointed when Bagoas didn't even have one spoken line in "Alexander". It was sad to realize that Oliver Stone's fiasco probably killed anyone's possibility of getting financing for making a *decent* Alaxander-themed movie in the foreseeable future.

delalluvia:
I was so disappointed when Bagoas didn't even have one spoken line in "Alexander". It was sad to realize that Oliver Stone's fiasco probably killed anyone's possibility of getting financing for making a *decent* Alaxander-themed movie in the foreseeable future.

The movie Alexander did well overseas.  It didn't do well in the U.S. for obvious reasons.  I very much liked the movie Alexander.  Saw it multiple times at the theater.  Own two DVD versions of it and many books about Alexander.  IMO, Oliver Stone did an excellent job of melding history with homages to Mary Renault while trying to reach a large audience.

Trouble is, sometimes audiences don't really want to see history.

I think even the greatest filmmaker would have had a problem doing an Alexander movie.  The man was a bisexual from a nation whose culture valued might over right.  He was the son of a famous warrior king who came to power after his father was assassinated by an ex-lover he'd tired of and cast away to be gang-raped.

It's hard to get a modern movie audience to sympathize or empathize with someone who loved his friends dearly, but had no problem taking them into war with him nor executing them later when he felt they'd betrayed him.  In this day and age, trying to tell the story of a man who liked to conquer - he wasn't defending his nation or people, he was simply expanding his power base - and had whole towns massacred if they didn't surrender to him, sold innocent people into slavery without a second thought is not someone a modern audience is going to want to identify with or understand.

I mean it can be done, but only to a degree.  For example, in the HBO series Rome, the producers/writers succeeded quite well in making the two main characters who were unrepentant rapists, murderers and slaveowners the sympathetic heroes of the series.  However they did this by keeping the POV strictly on their side, by keeping them as small cogs in a bigger machine, by only hinting at some of the more heinous acts they committed and by keeping them strictly heterosexual and loyal family people (kinda like when they make movies about mobsters).

Alexander can't really be manipulated this way and stay true to history.  He was in charge.  He was completely aware of what he was doing.  He is just not a sympathetic character.  And granted, one doesn't have to make movies only about people who are warm and fuzzy, filmmakers still want to reach an audience.  So if you remove audiences who only want a popcorn, modern morals Hollywood-ized action adventure movie, who are you left with?  A limited audience for a movie about a real Alexander, and even fanboys who fancy themselves anarchists and would enjoy a character who believes in and enforces a might-is-right policy are sometimes the worst kinds of homophobes and would not take to the other aspects of the historical man.

How big is that remaining audience now?

I just don't think it's possible to make a good but true movie about Alexander that's going to find a wide audience.

Look at the examples on my original post.  I titled them both "Alexander the Straight" because both the Bollywood version and the teenage series have a fictional female character as a love interest for Alexander.  The makers of these productions aren't interested in reality or history, they're interested in reaching a bigger audience. 

Mikaela:
Oh my, Del, you actually liked Alexander?

When I went to see it, I'd read numerous reviews so I knew what others thought (not good). I fully expected to defy them - I so much *wanted* to like it! But I had to agree it was bad. Everything from the strange way the narrative was cut together, the incomprehensible never-ending battle scenes, the boring voice-overs, Colin Farrel's horrific wig, the way they didn't *really* dare show that Hephaisteon and Alexander were lovers, ancient titles and place names without any explanations, the ludicrous Alexander/Roxane fighting/mating sequence and so forth and so on... it just was disappointing. Unengaging. And most of all, I didn't understand what Stone thought about the person Alexander. I didn't understand what he *wanted* with the film. What was he trying to convey? A portrait of someone who drove himself to the ends of the earth to conquer it all and *still* could not be satisfied with himself? That power always corrupts? A history lesson?

I think there *is* a market for an Alexander movie - but not one that tries to tackle Alexander's entire life and times. That is just too big of a tale, there would have to be so much exposition to explain the times and customs... it would all have to be incredibly rushed....there are all the objections you mention.
So IMO it would have to be either the life story of someone more on the fringes of the big events (cough*Bagoas*cough), or it would have to deal with one or a few events - or one year/one place/one culture and Alexander's related impact. Ie. limit the extent, focus the subject matter, let us meet people to identify with. Show Alexander indirectly thought he eyes of others.

delalluvia:

--- Quote from: Kerry on July 09, 2009, 02:00:09 am ---
Some commentators believe Antinous may have ritually sacrificed himself by jumping into the Nile. Couple of reasons. Though he was born in what is modern-day Turkey, he was of Greek heritage and it is presumed he was raised in the Greek manner re the erastes/eromenos practice. This was not the Roman tradition, however, and even though Hadrian was a lover of Greek culture, his Court was not necessarily so. Hadrian and Antinous were a classic erastes/eromenos couple. Alas, however, where even the fundamentalist Romans of the day may have been prepared to turn a blind eye to this when Antinous was young, they were not prepared to do so when he became a man. And by all accounts, he grew into a fine figure of a young man, very athletic and masculine in his manner. He was certainly no mincing, perfumed, giggling court catamite. Whilst accompanying Hadrian on his inspection of Egypt, some believe that Antinous took the opportunity to sacrifice himself in the Nile (i) to save Hadrian the shame of having an adult male lover and (ii) because he knew that those who died within Hapy's dark embrace would be declared immortal and could possibly be deified. As it was, the latter occurred, thanks to Hadrian, though not formally. It was because of the depth of Hadrian's mourning for Antinous that so many fine statues of Antinous have come down to us. I recently read somewhere that his is one of the most recognized faces to survive the ancient world, mainly because of all the statues made of him and also because it was so late in the Roman Empire.

--- End quote ---

One author I read on their relationship also brought up the possible sacrifice by Antinous, but he doesn't put much credence in it for the following reasons:

There remains the fundamental objection to the sacrificial theory...if Antinous had devoted himself to death for Hadrian, why not did the latter say so, indeed trumpet to the world such a sublime abnegation?...does the absence of explicit accounts [of his death] from the period when the cult was established, 130-38 mean there was no such sacrifice and it was a later invention...?

If Antinous had died to save the Emperor from the onset of lethal sickness or from...dangers, would Hadrian have wished news of such...broadcast around his Empire?  Would someone so independent and proud, recently proclaimed as almighty and bountiful Zeus incarnate, have wished to confess in public and perpetuity his own impotence in the face of impeding illness or death?  Would the self-contained autocrat Hadrian...have wished his subjects to know that the future of his reign and stability of the Empire itself had thus depended on the whim of a mere youth?  Would Hadrian, who boasted of his independence [from] astrologers, have desired the world to hear that his fate had been dictated by the gibberings of Egyptian magicians? 

However much the sacrifice glorified Antinous, it belittled Hadrian.  It exposed his physical vulnerability the bankruptcy of his divine pretensions, his practical impotence in the face of disaster...If Hadrian were, as the magicians predicted, to die or be overwhelmed by disasters, would not that be the end of Antinous, too?  If the Emperor survived, was there much of a future for Antinous to look forward to anyway?

The author also goes on to speculate on possible suicide motives.  Antinous was getting older, growing hair, maturing and Hadrian basically liked smooth twinks.  There was a new member of the royal entourage to whom Hadrian was giving attention, a person whose education and aristocratic pedigree Antinous, a simple youth from Asia Minor, could not compete with.

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