Analysis Of Oliver Stone's 'Life Of Alexander'

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Recommended: “Alexander the Great: Two Contrasting Views”

Life of Alexander the Great of Macedonia is one of the most remarkable Ancient Greece stories that prevail even in this present era. The ancient Greek sources clearly identify the life of Alexander as the one which broaden our understanding about the heroes of the Ancient times. Plutarch parallel lives are one of the sources that equip classical study and any other studies with necessary details of how Alexander manifested his life as an Ancient Greek hero. However the invention of motion pictures (cinema) had created another dimension in analysing Life of Alexander. Firstly Robert Rossen released a life of Alexander a nearly half century ago, which did not make much effort addition to what literature has far reached, and it was argued that his film consist some inaccuracies. Oliver Stone, a screenwriter also wrote a Life of Alexander (2004-2005) and it reached its hype as a cinematic presentation and it also depicts nearly accurate historical information about the life of Alexander the great. Oliver Stone’s Life of Alexander remains the controversial presentation when studying the Life of Alexander. This short essay will critically investigate how Stone went about constructing his ‘biopic’ of Alexander, including a consideration of which episodes were included as well as those which were excluded.
The definition of biopic can lay an important background on what Oliver Stone’s Life of Alexander is really about. In media terms ‘biopic’ is a word from ‘biographic’ and ‘picture’. This entails that the life of a person drawn from literature is converted to a motion picture to entertain, inform or otherwise provide a cinematic study of that person. Oliver Stone’s life of Alexander biopic fulfil these aspects but the debates revolving a...

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... a large amount of information which was going to make a film boring and change it nature. Stone made Alexander biopic as a film not documentary. So his work should be viewed as a film with feature of other films not a literature review with voice over and too long information.
To conclude the essay it can be stated that biopics as the media presentation are minimized by history or literature to enjoy the way in they represent what they ought to. It is also important to bear in mind that screen writers need to refer in history and sometimes scientific finding to create a concrete and well informing screenplay. Stone can be said as the hero on his own by trying to create wonderful play without accepting more criticism from both historical and media sides but he used his own conscience and struggled to find what will enable his biopic to reach the stage its on today.

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