Angelopoulos' study of the cult of personality-the myth, the lure, and the corruption of the political hero-takes as its subject Alexander the Great, but not the Alexander the Great. His is a fusion of two characters: Drawing from the so-called Dilessi incident of 1870 (updated in the film to the dawn of the twentieth century), this Megalexandros is a bandit, of the sort that typically plagued nineteenth century Greece. Wrapped in the spiritual cloak of yet another Megalexandros-a legendary Greek liberator and King Arthur-like figure whose tale was handed down in the oral tradition dating from the fifteenth century Turkish domination-he becomes a leader of mysterious charisma. He kidnaps a group of English aristocrats and takes them to a mountain village where he is attempting to establish an agrarian commune among a company of Italian anarchists. The socialist hero becomes a Stalin-like tyrant whose trademark silence only reinforces his power. Omero Antonutti, the star of the Tavianis' Padre Padrone, portrays Megalexandros in this film that is a true work of demythification-from the roots of myth to the false promises of the new century. Angelopoulos' style of long takes and breathtaking circular pans and compositions somehow intimates this passage through time, although the narrative itself is uncharacteristically linear.