When I was a kid I had a Children's
Bible – where they retell the bible stories in language a 7 year
old can understand and with lots of illustrations. My favorite story
was always the tale of Moses, from his mother saving him with a
basket in the reeds, to the burning bush, to “let my people go”
and the plagues, to the Red Sea and the Ten Commandments. Moses was
a real hero, and what kid doesn't love a hero story?
But Hollywood is never happy with a
good story – they want to offer “something new”. Earlier this
year “Noah” (2014) did it, with the stowing away of Tobal-Cain
aboard the Ark and with Noah's near-homicide of his son. In “Exodus”
director Ridley Scott takes the same liberties with the written word,
but in a slightly different way. Rather than change the story
itself, he changes the details around the story that alters the
context of the entire thing. Why do directors do that? Do they
think their version of the story is better than the one people have
been fascinated by for thousands of years?
I won't say much about the
geography of the film other than that I have been to Egypt and
Ridley Scott seemed to want to get the entire country into one city. The pyramids
and the Saqarra step pyramid are shown right next to each other (they
are 30 miles apart), the Karnak temple is right outside the pyramids
(it's hundreds of miles farther up the Nile) and the Temple of Abu
Simbel is also very near Memphis (when it is actually on the north shore of Lake Nasser, a thousand miles away). Impressive looking but
ridiculous. Enough said.
Christian Bale is Moses in this
retelling, and Joel Edgerton as Ramses, and both play their parts
extremely well. Ramses is one role in the film that doesn't seem to
have been seriously altered – he is an egomaniacal paranoid who is
sure of his own divinity. But the part of Moses is very different
than the biblical story – this Moses is a fiercely proud man,
unwilling to bow to the word of God unless he personally supports
God's position and instructions. Toward the end we find out that God is pretty much
okay with this (umm, when the heck would that ever happen? The Judao God is a
“take it or leave it” kind of deity).
Like in the Bible version, Moses was
saved from the Nile as a child and raised a prince of Egypt, and he
and Ramses are like brothers. But unlike the bible which tells how
Moses was banished from Egypt after saving the life of a Hebrew
slave, here an Egyptian overlord discovers Moses' true origins and
reports it to Ramses to prevent Moses from reporting his own
theft of riches from the treasury. Ramses is only too eager to
believe the tale, and gets Moses to admit its truth by threatening to
cut the arm off Moses' sister. Admission under duress, anyone?
God himself is reimagined for the story
as well – here God does not appear to Moses as a burning bush, he
appears as a nine-year-old child that usually looks like he needs a good
spanking. The burning bush is there, but only in the background
while the brat whines to Moses about what he wants him to do. I
guess Ridley Scott decided that he had to have the bush in there
somewhere, so he squeezed it in – that is literally what it looks
like. Moses decides to do what he was told and return to Egypt, but
he spends a lot of time questioning God and yelling at him. At one
point he even yells, “Do you think you have humbled me?” For
anyone that has read the Bible, this is a ridiculous idea as it
was Moses' pride that keeps him out of the Land of Canaan in the end,
for a sin of pride much less blatant than this.
The plagues are presented differently
as well, though they are presented very nicely on screen. Here Moses does not appear to Ramses to tell him that these
are acts of God and that they will continue until the children of
Isreal are freed until after the 6th plague. To Ramses,
the crocodiles, the bloody water, dead fish, frogs, flies, locusts and hail are just a bunch of bad luck befalling his kingdom. But after
Moses reveals that there is another, more terrible plague coming
Ramses decides to take his chances. I did like this sequence, the
first Passover, very much. The deaths of the firstborn sons of Egypt
was shown clearly and with sympathy, and the scenes showing the agony
and pain of Egypt for their deaths was extremely well done. Ramses
pain over the death of his beloved son drives him to release the
Hebrews, and Moses leads them across the desert.
Everyone knows the story, so I won't go
on about the changes other than to say that the parting of the Red
Sea was unspectacular in this version (and meant to be so), though
the “closing up” of the Red Sea was VERY spectacular. I didn't
really like the presentation of this aspect of the story, but the telling of the tribe fleeing from the approaching chariots was otherwise excellent. But post-Red Sea, the story lost all strength as the “Ten
Commandments” part of the film was glossed over (and again
presented God less as deity than whiny child) and the 40 years of
wandering in the desert was not touched upon at all. Key elements of
the story, in my opinion, that the film didn't make any attempt to
deal with.
Overall this is a good movie –
enjoyable cinema with absolutely fantastic production values,
excellent cinematography and near-perfect CGI. The performances are
solid (look for Aaron Paul as Joshua – I was disappointed he didn't
call anyone “bitch”) and it is entertaining. But it would have
been MORE entertaining if they had simply told the story as it was
written. That version would have made a better movie than this one.
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