All the way back in February of this year I posted the second of three set reports from the Alexander set in Thailand, and out of respect for the several historians and Alexander fanatics who may or may not have been upset from what appeared to be the description on how Alexander dies in the movie I want to make sure there are no assumptions made.
Be aware that this report concerns the ending of the movie and should be considered a spoiler for those that don’t want to know what may or may not happen.
In the report that you can find here, our insider described a scene in which Alexander was shot through the chest with an arrow, and our insider presumed it was the filming of the death of Alexander, which can be considered reasonable since I don’t know how well I would do after being shot in the chest with an arrow.
To get a better idea of what I am talking about we were sent an image of the scene from ‘Anonymous’ so check that out below.
Not looking too good is he? Nonetheless, I am sure several historians will tell you that this is not in fact how Alexander actually died.
In reading the production notes for the film it is evident that Oliver Stone did not set out to make a 100% accurate documentary on the life of Alexander, but he did not intend to rewrite history, which is totally understandable considering audiences demand drama, but it is apparent that he set out to make what he felt was the best historical story he could with a bit of fiction mixed in.
Stone’s historical advisor on the pic was Lane Fox, a fellow of New College, Oxford, whose 1972 biography of Alexander has sold more than a million copies and is considered one of the finest contemporary works on his life.
Fox believes that Stone has woven together a fascinating interpretation of the many sides of one of history’s most complex and charismatic leaders. “Epic films about history have been much discussed for showing a ‘Past Imperfect,’ but this neat label is the wrong one to apply,” cautions Fox. “But ‘Perfect history’; does not exist, nor was it ever Oliver’s aim. His aim was an intense drama, not a documentary. The framework of Alexander’s life is a much more fascinating starting-point for such a drama than an ignorant imagination of it. As a result, history is the film-drama’s springboard and gives it force, but fiction is built into it too. We cannot hear Alexander nowadays and we have next to no idea what he said. So a scriptwriter has to invent, and Oliver’s script is a historical fiction. But it is a fiction exceptionally rooted in history.”
So what about the death of Alexander, and how will it be told in the movie? My guess is that Stone is going to stick to the known history and Alexander will return to Babylon after a near mutinty on the way to the Ganges River. A short time later, it was there that Alexander died of an unexplained illness, in June of 323 BC.
Based on what I know of Alexander’s history I can only guess that the image that you see above, and what was described in the set report was a scene in which Alexander was shot through the lung, a shot he did not die from.
The historical notes supplied to press depict the scenes that were described in our set reports as the time when Alexander and his army embarked towards India, a land that held many astonishing sights for the Macedonians. In the film, a fierce forest conflict pits Alexander’s army against Indian troops, with the soldiers facing dramatic weather, a landscape inhospitable to their military formations, and most incredibly, war elephants – the Macedonians had never encountered anything akin to the giant beasts that the Indian soldiers employed in combat.
It is here that I believe the image above came from and it is after this that Alexander dies in the manner that is described in Alexander history.
I am sure historians will still argue the fact vs. fiction of the film as people are not always easy to please, but I guess audiences will just have to wait until November 24th to see what really happens.
