Why were there so many Christian films in 2014? In part, because Ridley Scott's adaptation of Moses' story hit theaters in early December. If we're to believe Scott's comments regarding the film's casting, had he bothered scouting for actors whose background remotely reflected those of characters and historical persons of Middle Eastern descent roughly 2000 BCE, we'd have gone down a film that year. Apparently, hiring actors whose skin is too dark or whose names are too foreign-sounding when making a film about the Exodus narrative means no studio will fork over a budget big enough to depict the Plagues or Parting the Red Sea properly. Whether the film was worth dousing Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, and others in varying degrees of brownface is a little bit up in the air, as the final product is a fairly mixed.
Giving a tiny bit of credence to Scott's financial justification for whitewashing and brownfacing his cast, the special effects during the big, spectacular Acts of God sequences are appropriately grandiose, and have an interesting bent to their execution. The film tries to find some natural means of explaining fantastical events, and so the plagues have initially sound justification for the Nile turning to blood, frequent swarms of destructive insects, and boils upon every Egyptian. Moses parting the Red Sea is treated as a potentially coincidental happening with only circumstantial ties to his own actions, which he must take advantage of as means of proving his connection to God to the doubting tribes. When it comes time for God's hand to become visible and explicit in its actions, the visuals gain a properly cinematic sheen, with a creeping shadow claiming each firstborn and the sea slowly collapsing back in on itself in a rushing tidal wave.
Exodus' new interpretation of Moses has some merit as well. It ditches the traditional role of shepherd and vessel of God in favor of a military man whose connection to the Lord may well be resultant from a traumatic head injury. There's a potentially neat dynamic around the midpoint, when Moses has returned to Egypt and determined to free his people through guerrilla warfare, intending to break Ramasses' will through attrition. As a concept, it makes some sense for a man brought up to lead armies to approach freedom from a fighting standpoint, and the film expands on this notion by contrasting it against God's proof that He can manage the same strategy far more effectively. I can see the intent, slowly nudging Moses out of his comfort zone and into the part of spiritual leader, and it might've worked!
But then we get into a major problem with Exodus: Gods and Kings: the storytelling and acting. Say what you will about Cecil B deMille as a director of crowds rather than actors; The Ten Commandments handily demonstrates how, with a lengthy enough running time and some talented players on hand, he could hammer a fully fleshed, comprehensive version of the material. Ridley Scott, working with still considerable two-and-a-half hours of screentime and actors of far greater standing than Charlton Heston, somehow cannot wrangle an ounce of humanity or relatability out of one of the quintessential religious stories about the power of faith and striving for freedom. He changes the script up far too frequently, giving Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton very little time to establish their characters as much beyond the same basic personalities in a slightly different situation before they overextend themselves or fade into the background. It's weird to think of a movie this long as feeling rushed, but it tries to cram in several additional scenarios for the rival brothers to work their way through in addition to the already shifting narrative of scripture, which makes odd moments like Edgerton's over-reliance on bellowing his lines to convey emotion, or the absolute stone-cold-stunner of, "From an economic standpoint alone, what you ask is problematic at best," stand out all the more.
Moses suffers the most here, as Scott's conception of a more secular prophet of the Jewish peoples comes off half-formed at best. The notion of moving him from commander of armies to rough-hewn freedom fighter to the Moses of Biblical understanding DOES have merit, but the film's eagerness to move from scenario to scenario means it never really slows down to examine Moses' psychology, or the deeper implications of his transformed state. A large portion of the middle stretch is taken up with Moses arguing with God in little circles about the morality of his actions without moving forwards. While his hollowed, resigned warning to Ramasses on the eve of the tenth plague and full confirmation of God's might has promise, it becomes a weirdly-shaped wrinkle when Moses' next big action involves triggering the parting of the seas with an act of doubt at God's presence. He awkwardly jolts from state to state depending on what the film deems necessary, and for all the hats he wears throughout the narrative, we ultimately see something less than the textual Moses.
When considering Biblical stories and characters, one needs to remember they rarely follow modern conventions of narrative structure or dynamic characters. The presentation on page frequently involves little more than "and then this happened, and so it was, and then this happened, and so it was, and then..." while the characters we're meant to learn from achieve their status as teachers by way of embodying an infallible moral righteousness. Introducing fallibility and uncertainty, then, is an easy way to make the old patriarchs and prophets more relatable, and examine their ideologies in greater detail. Taking Moses for an example, you have a man who knows exactly what he means to do the second God comes into his life, and hammers against the Pharaoh with unflinching certainty until he succeeds, only to turn the wrath of the Lord upon his own people when they fall short. Following the need to transform the character into something understandable and readable as an actual person in the moment, deMille kept the strong authority figure image, and whilst heavily emphasizing Moses' role as a lawmaker and Jesus-like figure, a good fit for mid-50s American culture.
Ridley Scott and Christian Bale's Moses does not only suffer from the story refusing to slow down long enough to examine him as a person - he sinks further because the film is naked about its intent to change him for profit. This Moses is not a man brought up to lead armies who later uses his experience to engage in a dragout war with his brother because it contrasts with any particular weightiness against his eventual turn to pure belief and subservience to God. He is a general-king because it enables to filmmakers to actionize the material, cram a few extra battle sequences in amidst the scenes of Biblical devastation, leverage the allure of a recently-departed Batman hanging around the studio. Action is not an inherent evil, and can be readily employed to underscore some greater point within the story, but Exodus' action scenes exist only to wow. Without proper interrogation of what this new strategically-minded, ready-to-doubt characterization means for Moses, the lurching nature of his character arc becomes more pronounced, and we end where we should have started.
They go and sideline the Golden Calf portion of the story, too, which is pretty much the most important part of Exodus if you're trying to give Moses a story about coming into conflict with God's divine wrath and learning to trust in His will instead of the strength in your own hands. There's fertile ground in a changed Moses suddenly turning against the very people he won over, the challenge of leading them to as pure a faith as his over forty years in the desert, and it's relegated to a single, far-away shot. That's how unwilling Gods and Kings is to engage with the implications of its alterations.
Initially, I felt three made for a fair rating. Ridley Scott at least provided some rather impressive vistas and battle sequences and visions of destruction on a mass scale. As I thought through the film more, though, I realized most of those visual effects-dependent scenes were either unnecessary attempts at actionization, or an inkling less impressive than equivalents in the deMille epic thanks to the (relative) ease of creating such shots in a computer compared against wranglings tens of thousands of cast and crew for similar effect. Though I do still find the Plagues and the Red Sea sequence both visually compelling and well-executed storytelling, I don't think the press of so many other visuals souring the more I contemplate them deserves too high a praise. Loop the brownface back into the discussion, and I'm more than happy to give Exodus: Gods and Kings my patented "there's some good things here, but man, the bad will weigh on your mind" rating.
Next time: The final installment of this impulsive Christmas series! Who all's ready for Kirk Cameron to celebrate the virtues of greed, gluttony, and conspicuous consumerism!
I'm not.
2.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment