TO FAIL IS DIVINE...

...failure is more typical of the human condition than heroism.

-- Ian Buruma,
Wages of Guilt


Long live failure!

Right now, critics around the world are trouncing Oliver Stone's ALEXANDER, a film I'm dying to see, with their linguistic weapons of war. (Well, not all critics -- Harry Knowles of www.aintitcoolnews.com and Armond White of www.nypress.com have championed the film, but they're in the minority.) Overlong, garish, ludicrous, filled with bad acting and an implausible tale -- in other words, a typical Oliver Stone flick.

That's what they say. I've long been an Oliver Stone fanatic; that particular obsession will have to wait for another, epic-length blog. Let's just say that the rampant, galactic-wide dismissal of the film saddens me.

Not because of the film itself. Hell, maybe it is a mess. Who knows? I'll decide when I see it, whether it's on DVD here or in a theatre somewhere else in the world. The moment you start allowing critics to dictate your entertainment options is the moment you have, officially, given up all vestige of independent thinking. Epic or epic-yawn, I'll watch the flick.

Why?

Ah, because to fail in a noble quest is better than succeeding at a mediocre one. There is great, worthy respect due to someone who has bitten off more than they can chew. And what a sight to behold, to pay homage to! How ennobling to see effort spent -- misplaced, perhaps, misguided, to be sure, but spent, nonetheless. Exerted and unleashed effort, regardless of the outcome, is always inspiring.

George Lucas once said that he spent two years thinking about a movie while a critic spent twenty minutes writing and thinking about it. (And all of you jesters out there up in the balcony who are thinking that twenty minutes is too long to spend thinking about a George Lucas flick can exit now. Watch your step on the way out.)

Think about it. Think about what it takes to write a script about Alexander the Great. Think about what it would take to cast it, shoot it, edit it. You know what it takes? Passion and balls.

What does it take to write a review? A piece of paper and a pen. A computer and a keyboard. (Or an, um, blog...) This does not mean that a review cannot also be a noble piece of work. But too many critics take a perverse glee in cutting others down to size. To use your art for those principal aims is small, petty, demeaning.

We are here on this planet to do grand things or fail miserably trying. That's what I believe.

Clive Barker, the horror writer, was asked how he would like to be remembered. "As a failure," he said. Why? Because that means that he had not reached his ultimate goal. Because that means he sought to do something beyond his grasp and did not quite attain it. Because that meant he was striving.

Ah, to strive. To strive, friends and neighbours, Romans and countrymen.

You don't learn from success. You learn from striving, failing, falling short. In the last few years I've failed quite a bit. I trained for a marathon in Japan, only to blow out my knee in the week before the race. Couldn't run it. I took Level Three of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Didn't pass it.

But as every true warrior knows, even the losses are battles. To fail while attempting something above and beyond yourself is proof of your appetite for life. If every attempt is to be met by ridicule from the weak, the cowardly, the meek, than what does say of us, the human race? What does it say to the young? It says that we make ourselves bigger by putting down and ridiculing those who try and achieve something, that's what it says, and that doesn't say much about us at all, in the end.

So let's make a toast to Oliver Stone, shall we? Maybe the film is riveting, or maybe the film will make you want to eat rivets, but let's salute the foolish, the mad, the bold quest of a man who dared to bring Alexander's impossible life to the silver screen. Let's raise a glass to the last-place runner of the race, the goalie pulled after five goals in ten minutes, the employee sacked after a week on the job.

And I can say, with all honesty, that, should success elude you, I wish you a long life full of failure. I wish you scorn from critics, be they family or friends or, well, critics. I wish you a horse to fall off of in battle. And another to hop back on.