IS it me or I am just tired of how predictably impressive computer-generated special effects on films are? I ask that question after sitting through Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings.
Even before entering the theater, I knew that present-day technologies would be harnessed to tell of a saga, an epic story about Moses. The problem with technologies is that epic tales, like that of Moses, does not require much in order for its grandness to suffuse and overwhelm us. Still, it must be told that when the sea receded to allow the Israelites to wade across and then reach Promise Land, I thoroughly missed the parting of the Red Sea. Or, as my high-school Religion teacher, summoning his own biblical hermeneutical analysis, the crossing of the Sea of Reed.
Whoa, in high school, the idea proffered by a teacher that the Red Sea did not really part but that the Chosen people made their escape through a wide swath of reeds was radical and nearly irreverent. In those years, the 1956 retelling of the Exodus by that most grand storyteller of celluloid, Cecil B. De Mille, updated all Catholic boys and girls. Added to the narrative were the elements of suspense, sensuality and sauciness. We, young and impressionable, were caught in the story of sibling rivalry (although Moses and Ramses were not really brothers) and the possibility of a fight to erupt onscreen. And let’s not forget that those roles were played by two of the most charismatic figures in Hollywood then, Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. We don’t give those names to actors anymore. Indeed, we don’t have those kinds of actors anymore. Say it again: Charlton Heston. You can hear the sound of a belt, and the shoes thudding on the floor. Say: Yul Brynner. The mix of the Orient and decadence, of bald heads and theories of potency and indiscretion are cinematic effulgence that could sell both cinema and cologne, faith and fashion. They had faces then, if we may quote Norma Desmond. They had voices too.
Think of Nefretiri as enunciated by Anne Baxter. She gave Yul Brynner’s bass-baritone serious competition. When Baxter half-moaned, half-intoned “Moses, Moses!” you know someone had read into the affairs of pharaohs and prophets.
Thus, I never thought I would, one day, think of Cecil B. De Mille and his fantastic film, The Ten Commandments, and compare that to Scott’s Exodus.
The problem of character development plagues this Exodus. For some reason, we really do not care about what happens to Moses and, to a certain degree, his people. He never claimed them as his people until he set them free. There was not much of a connection between those people he was supposed to liberate and his acts of liberating. If there is one moving line—and, yes, we want to be moved by the film—it is in that moment where Moses’s wife asks him who are these people now inhabiting the land of her clan.
Part of the problem is the diminutive personification of the Pharaoh and his wife. In The Ten Commandments, there was much love and, later, hatred emanating from Anne Baxter’s royal whispers. Was there a basis for that? All that is gone.
There is also a problem of dimension. When Christian Bale’s Moses is exiled, we do not see him agonize that much. The landscape, except for two dull assassins, is none too hostile. There is a sandstorm, alright, but there are signages as well. One gets this feeling that the way out of Egypt is that easy and all it takes is a navigator and not a general.
Moses finds a wife. He leaves the wife and finds his way back to Egypt. I had to consult the map to be convinced of this odyssey.
Anyway, the plagues come. For all the crude special effects of the much older De Mille film, that film is suddenly, by memory, more compelling now than this Exodus. Again, the special effects are interesting but the impact on those who are supposed to be afflicted by them appear to be minimal. We know that in the story, the pharaoh had to wait for his son to die before he decides to let go of the Israelites but, for some reason, the retelling is deathly boring.
Is there a bias in the story of Exodus?
For all the scientific savvy of Egyptians, they appear lost in the face of plagues and pestilence.
Did they not think of the Hebrews as overseas Filipino workers they should be pleasing so that they, Egyptians, could continue building those giant monuments?
The story of imperialism is at the heart of this story. And like any imperialists, the Egyptians in this tale do not recognize the dialectics of patron and slaves.
In the end, the Hebrews move out. In the end, the Egyptians decide to haul them back to slavery.
In the end, there was the sea and it did not part. That was bad. That was sad. Christian Bale is an attractive Moses at the start. He needs a foil and there is none. He is made dirtier as the narrative continues to make things realistic as we see realism now. Joel Edgerton vanishes in the face of Christian Bale’s warrior. Sigourney Weaver is also not recognizable in the film.
There is the odd image of God or a messenger, as this is not clear, as a boy. There is also the crafting of the 10 laws, the Mosaic Rules, where Moses is shown as an artisan. I, too, miss fires shooting out and moulding the letters on slabs of stone.
I, of course, do not want to miss Mel Brooks’s retelling where three slabs were actually made, to compose 15 rules. In his haste, Brooks’s Moses drops one down and proceeds to announce only 10. Funny in a gross, hysterical way.