Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Maria Valverde

Running Time: 150 mins

Release date: 12 Dec, 2014

Worldwide Gross: $45,700,000 

 

 

Basic Plot:

 

Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings journeys with Moses as he becomes the leader and deliverer of the Hebrew people. Raised alongside Pharaoh’s son Ramses, Moses’ life in the empire crumbles when he learns the truth about his Hebrew heritage. After being exiled by Ramses and attempting to make a new life for himself, Moses is called by God to face his past. He is instructed to deliver the Hebrew people from their Egyptian captivity. An identity crisis of an epic scale plays out as the gods of this tale (i.e. Moses and Ramses) face off in Scott’s limp version of the DeMille-ian biblical epics of Hollywood past.

 

Clock Watching? 5/20

 

Exodus plays like a Nolan-esque reimagining of Moses’ beginnings, evoking the grittiness of the Dark Knight trilogy. With this retelling, the filmmakers eschew much of the biblical text’s supernaturalism in favor of a more naturalistic reading. Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush is now a hallucinatory nightmare beckoning him into action. While this could’ve been a reimagining used more deeply to explore the story’s themes, the further the descent into this crazed delusion, the more I wished for its traditional take. By the film’s end, Moses’ character arc is completely abandoned for a full-on “Isn’t this guy nuts?” tale, with him never experiencing any real development.

 

One sequence of note is how the ten plagues are rendered. Scott lays them out as a naturalistic chain of events in a 20 minute scene of bad stuff happening to people. Where, as in the source text, these plagues would’ve been fertile ground for some of Moses’ richest character development – his past and present identities colliding – Moses remains almost completely absent. For a film about this man’s identity-faith crisis, he is far too often relegated to its margins as a screaming, belligerent fool.

 

From battles to prophecies to plagues, the film feels like a giant hurtling toward its end. It’s formal fatalism, each scene a checking off of the plot’s boxes, as the liberties taken with the story play as more thoughtlessly dull provocation than a new examination of this historical character.

 

Oscar Performances? 3/20

 

There has been much controversy surrounding the film’s casting in using Anglo actors to portray characters historically Middle Eastern. The choice is starkly felt. As the main roles are crudely painted onto the backdrop of history, they are severed from the context of the Exodus story, especially given that the film’s extras are cast of accurate (or at least close) ethnicity. Instead of toying with these casting choices a bit (e.g. using them as a commentary on Hollywood’s obsession with these stories), the characters are portrayed with such a straight-forward, senseless earnestness their present whiteness is made all the more odious.

 

The only performance of note is Joel Edgerton as Ramses. He most closely skirts the fun that could’ve been had by going all in with his bronzed, baldhead, playing of Ramses as an ancient Egyptian frat boy. And, surprisingly, his is the only truly satisfying character arc after the water settles, but the nuance is too little too late.

 

Lights, Camera, Direction? 5/20

 

Visually, Exodus feels blatantly fraudulent. Gone are the huge set-pieces and beautiful Technicolor of the olden days, as these ancient worlds are now fully rendered on green screens (ab)using CGI effects. The land of Egypt receives the over-glossed treatment as its dirt and sweat are completely smothered by sleek effects.

 

The cinematography and camerawork also seems second-rate, making it well-aware that Scott and his team have done this before and better. Though I will praise one scene in which the visual storytelling does stand out, when Moses, in a heightened mental state (possibly in a dream or hallucination), encounters God in a burning bush. The CGI is used to its best effect here, as the symbolism of Moses stuck in a muddy mountainside and the composition’s dreamy atmosphere heighten his internal struggle. It’s a visual respite in a film of mainly uninspired hurtling.

 

Ultimately, my biggest gripe is the way the camera is used to portray the plight of the Hebrew slaves. Their struggle plays out as mere plot device, subtext to Moses’ identity crisis, and is made evident in the camera’s gaze. Instead of diving into their disgustingly harsh and unjust toil in captivity, the Israelites’ dilemma is visualized mainly via big establishing shots focused more on the laborious products of their work than the actual people. It kept me at a distance from their pain and hardship, shunning any empathy for them as Moses’ crisis is the more elevated.

 

Tell a Friend? 5/20

 

Rent Aronofsky’s Noah. It is an imaginative and visually stunning piece of filmmaking that successfully interprets its respective biblical epic for the big screen. Also, it shows how a filmmaker can take liberties with the stuff of the story and not mutilate its themes. Ridley Scott, take note.

 

Again? 5/20

 

Unenthusiastically, I will probably see this movie again. As a Christian, I am invested in seeing the stories of the Bible imaginatively rendered in the visual medium. I will watch Exodus again to assess where that imagination failed.

 

Total: 23%

 

There is a more interesting cinematic blueprint for the story of Exodus in the pages of the Bible. In Ridley Scott’s take, the epic encounters of gods and men in the stories of Exodus are disfigured into a visually plundered tale about Moses’ overwrought identity-faith crisis.

 

by Colin Stacy