Exodus: Gods and Kings. Rated M (mature themes and
violence). 150 minutes. Directed by Ridley Scott. Screenplay by Adam Cooper, Bill
Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian.
Verdict: A
sumptuous visual feast that brings nothing new to the age-old contest.
Since time
immemorial, The Bible’s New and Old Testaments have provided film-makers with a
rich tapestry of spiritually-charged adventures on a grand scale. It was the
legendary Cecil B DeMille who first filmed the story of Moses and The Ten
Commandments in 1923 as a silent epic, before revisiting the story in 1956 with
Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as his ‘brother’, Pharaoh Rameses of
Egypt.
For his lavish
account of the epic, faith-based contest between Moses (Christian Bale),
Rameses (Joel Edgerton) and God’s messenger, Malak (11-year-old Isaac Andrews),
Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Prometheus) has created
a sumptuous visual feast that is simply breath-taking in its scale of cinematic
wonder. The work of his Prometheus collaborators – cinematographer Dariusz
Wolski, Production Designer Arthur Max, and Costume Designer Janty Yates – is
nothing less than awe-inspiring. And while everyone wears far too much make-up (especially
eye-liner), Exodus never looks less than magnificent.
The screenplay,
though, doesn’t do anyone any favours, with Edgerton’s Rameses reduced to a
thinly-drawn, snappy, inarticulate and petulant man/child. Bale gradually rises
to meet the demands of his role as the great prophet and saviour of the
enslaved Israelites, and his realisation that his God has not abandoned him, just
as The Red Sea begins to part, is about as good as the acting gets.
What remains
troubling about the experience of this film is how Scott fails to bring any new
insights about this well-known battle of faith and self-belief into
consideration. At a time where faith of any description is increasingly
difficult to maintain, the opportunity to challenge us about the role faith
might play in our lives is wasted completely. Faith, after all, is about how we
feel, not how we look.
This review was
commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
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