 Starring: Colin Farrell, Jared Leto, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Val Kilmer
Director: Oliver Stone
Year Of Release: 2004
Plot: Oliver Stone directs the epic story of Alexander The Great, who having been taught by Ptolemy and went on to conquer much of the known world in the fourth Century BC. The film follows his military campaigns, as well as his difficult oedipal relationship with his parents and his love for both men and women, up to his death at the age of only 32. |
While we’re used to Director’s Cuts of films. It’s quite rare for someone to announce they’re working on a director’s cut the week after a film comes out at cinemas and flops, while admitting the theatrical version wasn’t what they wanted it to be. However that’s what happened with Oliver Stone and his mega-budget epic, Alexander. Rather unusually, rather than just adding a bit of extra footage, Alexander – Director’s Cut is actually 10-minutes shorter than the theatrical version, often using alternate footage and different scenes, and completely reorders how the events are told (technically 18 minutes of theatrical footage was removed and nine minute of previously unused scenes was added).
That would be unusual enough, but that’s not where the story ends. As while by the time the movie came to DVD, Stone was already prepared to release both the theatrical and Director’s cut versions, a couple of year later along came Alexander –The Final Cut, which added in 30 minutes to the running time of the theatrical version, and is again altered enough that technically it features 45 minutes of footage that wasn’t in either of the previous versions.
What this shows is two important facts about filmmaking. Firstly, that editing is probably the most important part of the process, and can fundamentally alter a movie and how an audience reacts to it, and secondly, that it’s often very difficult to know when to stop. As Alexander was Stone’s labour of love, when it flopped he obviously found it difficult to let go, and had a studio behind him that was prepared to let him go back twice to see if he could sort it out. However he didn’t manage to create a masterpiece on any of his attempts, as while the different versions feel like completely different movies, there simply wasn’t the footage to create a piece of genius.
While the Director’s Cut is probably the best version, the different cuts just go to show quite how much editing can alter a movie. The Director’s Cut adds impact by expanding the role of Alexander’s parents, which then makes you more emotionally invested in what he did as an adult. It also tones down the conqueror’s predilection for man-on-man action, as while historically accurate, Stone felt stung by criticism that including it had meant fewer people wanted to see the epic at cinemas. The Final Cut, while interesting, is just too long and ponderous at three hours, 25 minutes.
The interesting thing is how completely different each version looks and feels, showing just how vital editing is to the way an audience will react to a movie, and that it’s not simply a case of filming some stuff and putting it together. The reason so many DVDs have deleted scenes is because it’s normal for filmmakers to shoot a script put it all together into and initial cut, and then chop and chop, often ending up with a final version that’s much short that the first cut. It’s not just entire scenes that are cut out, but every single moment that’s looked at and tailored, with the director and editor deciding exactly how long each shot should linger, and what the next shot should be, to build up the film brick by brick.
It’s a common maxim in Hollywood that while editing can turn good footage into a bad movie, it can’t turn bad footage into a masterpiece. Although this initially suggests editing is something secondary to what happens on set, what it also means is that it’s in the editing room than good footage becomes a great movie, and where a lot of good work can be completely screwed up if handled badly.
The important thing to remember it isn’t too much of a stretch to say that it’s in the editing room that a film actually gets made. A screenplay is a blueprint for what to film. The footage is simply a succession of shots from different angles of people doing different things based on that script, ( the director often films different endings or versions of scenes, so they can later decide what works best). However it’s in the editing room that all that is taken and turned into an actual film.
As Alexander proves, editing is not merely a case of taking the screenplay and footage and piecing the movie together based on that. Directors and editors choose which scenes will and won’t make it into the final cut, and even what order the events are told in. You have a million choices of what shots and scenes to use, what order to put them in and how long each shot will last, so therefore it’s not surprising that sometimes filmmakers find it difficult to know when to stop.
It’s a tough job, as while much of editing is about getting from shot to shot, at the same time you’ve got to keep in mind how the entire film will work, and how each scenes and the shots you use will effect all the others. Alexander shows that while the reason there’s probably no perfect version of the movie is down to flaws in the script and what was filmed, editing can vastly change a movie to the point where is barely seems like the same film. While most aspects of filmmaking are important, it’s certainly not a stretch of the imagination to say that editing may be the most important of all – as long as you know when to stop, even if that mean admitting your labour of love will never be the masterpiece you’d hoped.
TIM ISAAC
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