Although it proves to be sporadically stirring and suitably epic in its ambitions, legendary director Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is a film that doesn’t – especially in the spiritual context – quite live up to its classic source material. Scott did a great job reviving the Roman sand-and-sandals epic when he made the Oscar-winning “Gladiator”, but this Egyptian saga is not quite in the same league. Yet, at the same time this cinematic interpretation of the story behind Moses genuinely confirms the director’s flair for truly ambitious imagery. There’s nothing small about Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings”, including its mistakes; if you bought a ticket searching for eye-popping Old Testament spectacle, then Scott delivers you to your Promised Land. Starring Christian Bale as the titular Biblical hero, the film’s story is a loose elucidation of scriptures first fourteen chapters in the Book of Exodus. Beginning at a point where Moses and his half-brother – the future pharaoh, Ramses – are joined at the hip in the army of King Seti, on the battlefield Moses fulfills a half-baked prophecy uttered by one of Seti’s sketchy soothsayer, suggesting – at least in the mind of Ramses – that the king’s adopted son (i.e. Moses) is somehow more fit to lead and eventually assume the throne of Egypt…rather than Ramses. Elsewhere, seeds of doubt and uncertainty begin to form in Moses in the midst of enduring his own personal journey. While on a mission for Seti, Moses encounters Nun, a Hebrew who recognizes in Moses the traits of a promised leader – a great man who one day might free the Jewish community from the harsh grip of the Egyptians and lead them back to their Holy Land (even if, as Moses points out to Nun himself, this cherished turf isn’t quite as sacred as the Hebrews would like to believe). It isn’t until Moses begins to encounter the checklist of Biblical staples – a burning bush, a series of deadly plagues, the epic parting of the Red Sea – that he ultimately comes to believe in his role as mouthpiece for a much higher power. Hollywood has not shied away from Biblical narratives this year, with distinctly different filmmakers tackling beloved stories of faith, hope and determination. One thing is for sure: compared to director Darren Aronofsky’s inane environmentalist dribble in “Noah”, Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is ultimately – at least, comparatively – the more impressive to hit theaters. Scott takes a number liberties, secular in nature, with the Old Testament text we might’ve read, replaying the various plagues rained down on the house of the Pharaoh by using all of the tools at his fingertips, especially in terms of CGI as well as personal conviction as an artist. But, in the grand scheme of things, he weaves enough mystery into the origins of these amazing spectacles to keep his audience invested in the “how” and the “why” of God’s miracles as we march to the film’s foregone conclusion. As a Christian or especially a Catholic, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” will come across very frustrating. Why? Because it is ultimately an atheistic analysis of Moses’s journey. What does that mean? To begin with, in the film Moses himself isn’t necessarily shown to be a man who, as one understands from scripture, is legitimately guided by God’s divine instruction. Instead, Moses encounters a rather rough blow to the head from a mudslide carrying large rolling rocks – quite literally – whilst climbing a mountain to seek the Lord, rendering him physically incapacitated. When he wakes up from being unconscious, he sees the burning bush and has a “vision” of God talking to him in the voice and form of a male adolescent. Is this really God speaking to Moses, or is it merely a delusion resulting from his head injury? Well, the film more or less consistently maintains that it is in fact a delusion as opposed to divine revelation; God isn’t speaking to Moses, he’s just gone nutty. Christian Bale plays the Old Testament figure like a man ill at ease, humorless, vain, and surprisingly one-dimensional. I was expecting some kind of before-and-after transformation on experiencing the burning bush. Well, before he realizes his true purpose, Moses is surly and arrogant; afterwards, he remains surly and arrogant, but this time with the added boost of being mentally disturbed thanks to that bump on the head. All this gives us a “new Moses,” of course, one radically different from what has gone before on screen, especially—heaven forbid—the one played by Charlton Heston. This is Moses for a new generation, an anti-Christian generation; in Scott’s “Exodus” film, Moses is portrayed as the tribal psychopath—a sort of gang supremo with messianic aberrations…or just poor medication. He has to be anything other than a leader of a nation of believers sure of its place in the universe as the Chosen People. Then there’s the issue with the ten plagues of Egypt. Rather than establishing them as miraculous examples of God’s justifiable fury against Pharaoh’s atrocities toward the Hebrews, Ridley Scott instead noticeably seeks natural, more rational causes for what transpires. Where the plagues are specifically concerned, the screenwriters present them in such a way that they are all connected, each one only taking place as consequence of the other, the one before it – crocodiles viciously feast upon Egyptian sailors in the Nile and then suddenly turn on eachother, polluting the water with their own blood and the blood of the sailors they were munching on (water into blood, first plague); frogs abandon the blood-contaminated water and invade the kingdom (frogs, second plague); the frogs eventually decompose for lack of water, attracting flies and gnats (third and fourth plagues); the flies and gnats carry the germ of the frogs’ decomposition, spreading it throughout Egypt by making physical contact with people’s flesh, creating boils and blemishes (fourth plague); the disease of the frogs is spread further unto Egypt’s livestock, killing them (diseased livestock, fifth plague); lice then carry the germ of the unhealthy animals (sixth plague) and in turn use it to destroy crops, drawing swarms of locusts (seventh plague); thunderstorms befall Egypt, coincidentally delivering showers of hail (eighth plague); an implied eclipse of the moon creates a shadowy darkness across the whole of Egypt (ninth plague), and finally Pharaoh’s first born is slaughtered along with the other first-borns of Egypt’s non-Hebrew children. In the film’s mindset, these plagues are not evidence of the wrath of God, they’re just the outcomes of bad weather, lack of hygiene, and piss-poor fishing skills. God is given no attribution except through Moses, whom we’re meant to believe is certifiably insane anyway. But it doesn’t just stop with the plagues; the filmmaker’s atheistic reading of what he might ineptly call a biblical “farce” continues with the climactic parting of the Red Sea, perhaps the most iconic image in Old Testament history. In the film, Ridley Scott depicts the parting as being merely the drainage that ensues from a tsunami – when the water returns, it naturally comes back (and with a vengeance), wiping out everything in its path, including Pharaoh and his men as they attempt to cross through it. That’s Scott’s simplistic excuse for the miracle of the Red Sea’s parting: it wasn’t God, it was just a perfectly lucid scientific anomaly. So what does all of this mean? It means we have a biblical epic with much epic and little that is biblical. Lots of loud speech-making by actors, before crowds of Israelites and crowds of Egyptians, lots of chariots and lots of weary trudging about, acres of desert with moving sands, and by the end lots of water sloshing about—but after a while one longs for some kind of solid earth and a conversation about what lies behind all this: faith, or to be more exact, the Covenant. Instead, we have a cross between “The Mummy” melodramas and a “Lord of the Rings”-style escape movie, mystical hokum mixed up with pure hokum. Where to start with this film’s biblical theology? Perhaps, it is easier to sum up: there isn’t any. This is a Bible-based movie only in marketing terms. The very opening gives the game away: “1300 BCE,” not BC—we are in the secular world’s version of the past, not a faith based one. The only time the word faith is used is when Moses’ wife berates him for confusing their son’s faith in God; or, as she puts it – i.e. Scott himself putting it, as an atheist – “their God.” And that’s the ultimate conclusion on “Exodus: Gods and Kings.” It runs long, but is never boring. It tackles far too much story, but doesn’t feel like it strays too far or loses its way too drastically. It’s strengthened by an abundancy of remarkable effects-driven visuals, but roots its struggles in character before it allows the digital exuberance to overwhelm. Whereas it is anchored by an understanding of biblical history that is secular and atheistic, director Ridley Scott at least nonetheless manages to espouse his personal scientifically “clarified” knowledge without trying to indoctrinate, and that is somewhat admirable. “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is a decent film. Just don’t expect any coherent biblical accuracy. https://youtube/watch?v=dFC3xE2Si9c
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 21:00:22 +0000
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