Originally published December 14, 2014 on FrontRowCentral.com
2014 has proven a banner year for two genres nobody asked to be resurrected: the religious film, and the sword-&-sandal epic. As the year draws to a close, Ridley Scott melds the two in a whirlwind of religious fervor, clanging steel and mind-numbing histrionics. Scott’s Exodus: Gods & Kings is a ponderous slog through biblical history that boils the awe-inspiring story of the Israelites’ escape from slavery into two-and-a-half hours of boring spectacle purely for its own sake.
The film opens on Moses (Christian Bale) and Ramses (Joel Edgerton) as grown brothers, tasked with leading an assault on a band of Hittites camping near Memphis. In the heat of battle, Moses saves Ramses’ life, fulfilling a prophecy that whoever saves the leader shall one day be a leader himself. This sets Ramses on edge, as he knows their father Seti (John Turturro) favors Moses. Ramses exposes his brother’s true heritage and…
You know what? Whether you’ve studied the Exodus story in school, sat through sermons about it, seen any of the dozen or so film versions, or simply have it memorized through cultural osmosis, you know where this story is going. Moses is exiled, speaks to God, returns to Egypt, brings plagues, “Let my people go,” the Red Sea parts, hooray!
Ridley Scott assumes you know all this, as well. It’s clear he has no real interest in telling this story himself, as he skips ahead in the narrative seemingly at random. The film tells its story in fits and starts, only occasionally slowing down to paint these characters as people and not merely props in a revue of Moses’ Greatest Hits. This completely kills the flow of the story, making Exodus feel more like a History Channel dramatization than a cohesive film.
Much has been made of the choice to cast white actors rather than those of Egyptian and Hebrew descent. John Turturro, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul; none of them get enough screentime to even make an impression, which makes the whitewashing even worse, as these roles could conceivably have gone to anyone. Exodus is mostly the Christian Bale Show anyway, which is a pity, because his sheer presence is the single most distracting element of this entire film. They at least make an effort to have Joel Edgerton look the part. Bale just looks like he showed up on set the day he finished American Hustle and said “Let’s roll.”
Among the principal cast, Edgerton is the only one who even comes close to acquitting himself. He plays Ramses as a spoiled brat desperately clinging to his status as royalty. He’s not particularly bright and more than a little self-conscious about it. This makes his every encounter with Moses crackle with tension. Edgerton’s Ramses acts as though he may explode at the slightest provocation, and is therefore one of the only interesting things going on in this film.
The other interesting thing is the way Exodus depicts the supernatural. Scott largely paints God’s mysterious ways as somehow explainable by science. Moses first encounters God after a brain injury sustained during a rockslide. He wakes up in a pile of gravel (with only his face cartoonishly exposed) and finds a small child standing next to a burning bush. The child reveals himself to be God, and periodically shows up during the film acting like Isaac from Children of the Corn. The image of God as a petulant child may be a little on-the-nose, but it’s a neat stylistic choice that adds some flavor to an otherwise drab telling.
Later, Scott depicts the ten plagues of Egypt as natural phenomena. The Nile runs red after a series of vicious crocodile attacks spill an insane amount of blood. Frogs flee the bloody water en masse; the frogs die, giving way to flies, boils, disease, and so on. And just in case you don’t get the idea, Ewan Bremner shows up as an advisor who explains to Ramses why all of these things are happening. There’s a perfectly rational explanation for everything, right up until a shade of darkness descends upon Egypt and kills every firstborn.
The message is clear: Ridley Scott is less interested in the Exodus story as a religious text than as a piece of historical fiction. That isn’t necessarily a bad impulse, but his insistence on verisimilitude robs the story’s supernatural elements of their power. No amount of slickly-produced fight sequences can save Exodus from its director’s apparent lack of enthusiasm. There are a handful of great moments to be found in this film, but everything surrounding them is impossibly dull, even by the standards of the genre.
Leave a comment