EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Grade: B

Directed by Ridley Scott

Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver; also Featuring Maria Valverde as Zipporah, Hal Heweston as Gershom, Golshifteh Farahani as Nefertari and Isaac Andrews as God

Premise: Raised as a prince of Egypt alongside the rising Pharaoh, Moses discovers his roots and flees Egypt. After living in the wilderness and starting a family, he returns to Egypt following what he believes to be the call of God to lead the Hebrews out of 400 years of slavery.

Rated PG-13 for intense action and violence, scenes of peril and destruction, and intense emotional content

My initial impression of Ridley Scott’s new Bible-based epic Exodus: Gods and Kings is that, in some ways, it is almost the exact inverse of March’s Noah, this year’s other big biblical feature. That film, directed by the always-edgy Darren Aronofsky, overshot in taking massive liberties with its story, adding characters and/or changing the importance of characters, using too-obvious special effects at times, and adding a nasty domestic conflict that very nearly swallowed the film whole. I remember being disappointed—but unsurprised—at that film’s minimizing the use of God in the story, but, ultimately, Noah, whatever its flaws, ended up being a fierce, challenging, well-acted wallop of a movie that you’d be hard-pressed to forget. Being a movie geek, I may have been more impressed with it than most, but I thought Aronofsky successfully transcended the story and made a really interesting movie.  

 On the contrary, Exodus: Gods and Kings, though it features enough spectacle and mayhem to be a memorable movie, strikes me most as under-written; I had heard early reports that the film was supposed to be as long as 200 minutes (nearly three-and-a-half hours), and the finished product I saw today does feel like what’s left after some massive cutting took place. It, too, is a fierce film, so I don’t like the idea of calling it “defanged”, but instead of almost completely cutting God out of the story (the way Noah did), Exodus goes the tamest route possible, making God a boy (Isaac Andrews) with a British accent muttering vague platitudes. Other than this clear misstep, however, it is easy enough to trace the main plot points of the biblical story, and some of the big-budget furnishes are top-notch.

Ultimately, I expect Exodus: Gods and Kings will go over better with the non-believing crowd and the more accepting Bible-believing crowd, as it onscreen is closer to Scripture’s description of the Moses/Exodus story (found in Exodus chapters 2-14) than Noah was to its source material (Genesis chapters 6-9). And while it is a visual marvel (as I expected) and has some spectacular sequences and a few impressive performances, this movie gives short shrift to most of its cast and registers as a largely emotion-free zone.

Plot

**While the following synopsis may largely seem a pretty straightforward summary of Exodus 2-14, the movie makes many tweaks those familiar with Scripture will notice; a friend of mine has suggested that the best way to approach big-budget Hollywood takes on Bible stories (like this and Noah) is to go in not thinking to oneself that it is Bible story, simply a movie story. This is good and sound advice.**

For nearly 400 years, the proud, powerful kingdom of Egypt has held the nation of Hebrews captive, forcing them to work, day after day, hauling brick and stone and mortar and building massive monuments, temples and pyramids. With this enslaved labor force working constantly, Egypt’s power has grown world-wide. When they’re threatened by the more nearby, more barbaric nation of Hittites, Egypt’s ruling pharaoh, Seti (John Turturro) dispatches his legions to crush their armies. Led by the prince and heir to the throne, Ramses (Joel Edgerton), and his commanding general and sort-of brother, Moses (Christian Bale), Egypt’s armies route the Hittites and come back to Egypt with its two leaders the toast of the town. However, all is not quite peaceful—Ramses senses his increasingly-sickly father favors Moses for his wit and wisdom, and has grown jealous, even though the throne will be his. Moses, however, is fully supportive of his brother and doesn’t want the throne. One day, when Seti gives Ramses the by-the-numbers job of visiting some of the overseers of the workforce and hearing about the conditions of the slaves, Moses offers to take it instead to spare his “brother” embarrassment. But, down amongst the slaves, Moses hears some troubling things—namely, that he is not a prince of Egypt, but was born a Hebrew and was lucky to be accepted and raised by pharaoh’s daughter rather than drowned in the Nile River like most other Hebrew boys of the period. After hearing this, Moses kills two Egyptian soldiers in a panic, then, when Ramses threatens to mutilate a Hebrew servant, Moses stops him. For these actions, Moses is banished.

Moses’ wanderings in the desert eventually lead him to Midian, where he falls in with a tribe of shepherds and simple merchants, marries a beautiful young woman named Zipporah (Maria Valverde), has a son, and lives a life of peace as a shepherd. After nearly a decade, however, while high on a mountain watching his herd, Moses has a vision of a burning bush and a figure speaking to him with unsettling authority and knowledge. He gets the message: go back to Egypt and free your people. Leaving his wife and son is a wrench, but Moses goes. Of course, at first, Ramses, now the leader of Egypt, laughs off Moses’s claims of having met God and his assertions that the slaves need to be freed. Even Moses’ mobilizing of many of the Hebrew men into a lethal army doesn’t truly trouble Pharaoh. But then things start happening—things no man could do. The Nile River turns to blood, killing fish and crops. Egypt is flooded first with frogs, then with flies; lice infect animals and people, painful boils and infections spring up on people’s flesh, livestock die by the thousands, hail pours out of the sky, and Egypt’s food supply dwindles. Things eventually become so horrific that Ramses tells Moses and the Hebrews to go, but, once they’re out of Egypt, he can’t resist the idea of running them down and slaughtering them with his army.

What Works?

As you might have expected from an epic based on a story with these sorts of events—and in this day and age—Exodus: Gods and Kings is a visual wonder. There are some magnificent scenes, from huge panoramic shots that give you an idea of the size of the kingdom of Egypt and the size of some of the monuments built, to epic scenes of armies on horseback charging down hills and across fields and along mountainsides. And the plagues, of course—I mentioned most of them; as you might expect, Exodus is at its most epic and unsettlingly awesome when it’s depicting each of the horrendous things God brought down on Egypt. If you’ve ever thought a swarm of flies would be merely pesky, not truly intimidating or scary, you’ll change your mind if you watch Gods and Kings. Ditto the swarms of locusts. Frogs, lice, boils, dying livestock…these scenes are a succession of gut punches. And yet these are the moments a person can somewhat accept. Exodus’ emotional peak concerns “a great cry” going up from house to house as the calamities finally become truly personal for the proud Egyptian people. And then there’s the great finale. Contrary to what the trailers seemed to show, Scott does not turn this story into a Hebrews-versus-Egyptians battle royale, but the scene of thousands of Egyptian chariots racing in, only to be utterly demolished by collapsing walls of Red Sea water, is as breathtaking and astonishing as it’s ever been previously imagined or depicted.

 Like Russell Crowe was as Noah, Christian Bale is the right actor for the monumental role of Moses. As audience surely know by now, this chameleonic actor is capable of almost anything in terms of voice, attitude and characterization, and there’s no denying his physical durability, either. While this won’t rank particularly high on this decorated actor’s list of Best Performances, the movie needs an actor of his magnetism at the helm, and he makes it truly work. The actor’s constant physical changes in his roles (like the massive weight loss for The Machinist, the burly physique of The Dark Knight and the slobby bod of the con artist in American Hustle) is also a plus in a role that demands a lot of physical change—it doesn’t throw an audience to see Bale with an increasingly-bushy beard, or even in old-age makeup and hair.

As his opposite number, Ramses, Joel Edgerton does fine work. Though Edgerton plays one of the leads in one of my favorite films (2011’s MMA drama Warrior), I was somewhat skeptical of his casting as an Egyptian heir, if only for the accent and constant makeup it would require this white Australian actor to pull off the part. But after seeing the film, I can’t picture anyone else as Ramses. Edgerton’s physicality is also convincing, and he brings a significant presence to all the weightiest scenes, including one in which he cradles the dead body of his infant son in his arms. His final moments onscreen here are also some indelible images.

What Doesn’t Work?

I mentioned the writing. That’s my main criticism. The meat-and-potatoes scenes of this movie (i.e. the plagues, the Red Sea crossing, etc…) were always going to be grand movie fare, but, as mentioned, it’s not hard to tell this was once a much longer movie that was cut down. It’s not necessarily to the film’s detriment that it starts with Moses as an adult, unlike most other screen versions of the story, but it hustles along, short-cutting other major characters at every turn. Other than a Viceroy/work labor master and John Turturro’s Seti, no other major character seems to have more than a handful of lines. You might miss all the lines spoken by recognizable actors like Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver and Aaron Paul while you’re taking a noisy sip of your theater soda. And you’d be hard-pressed to remember exactly which bearded fellow was Aaron, Moses’ older brother and the original Hebrew high priest, or which dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in rags was Miriam, Moses’ sister who once set him adrift in a basket to save his life. And while luminous actress Maria Valverde gets a few short, sweet intimate moments as Zipporah, Moses’ wife, nothing of their relationship is depicted other than a few shy smiles.

There’s also the matter of The Burning Bush scene. I couldn’t possibly have imagined it would be so feebly done as it is here. It’s even set up well, with Moses stuck in a mudslide so about all he can see is the burning bush—that’s not biblical, but it’s interesting. But then…I didn’t exactly expect Morgan Freeman to embody God (like he famously did in 2003 and 2007’s Bruce and Evan Almighty films) but the sight of little Isaac Andrews, as mentioned, seems like a really toothless, corny way to try and appease those who come into the theater not believing in God. Rather than get anyone fired up about the gender-of-God debate, they just went with a little kid in a British accent, and who’s gonna freak out about that, huh? Well, I will. Couldn’t they have just gone with a disembodied voice? The Prince of Egypt—1998’s award-winning Dreamworks animated version of this story, and one of my all-time favorite movies—used a disembodied voice (Val Kilmer’s) to read God’s lines, and that worked just fine. If Scott and the other filmmakers couldn’t stomach facing the gender-of-God debate, they might as well have also gone with a disembodied voice; I can’t imagine too many people getting upset about that (shoot, I just watched It’s A Wonderful Life, the plot of which is set in motion by a scene of echoing voices conversing in the cosmos, and that movie’s a classic). Anyway, not only is the kid a disconcerting cop-out, but the very famous conversation between Moses and God at the site of the bush is watered down to something I can’t even remember, but I know it wasn’t quality or worth remembering. If there was a time to adhere to what’s written in the Bible, that was it.

Content

I believe I’ve mentioned…Thanks to just one of its particular plagues, Exodus: Gods and Kings probably contains more onscreen blood than every other PG-13 movie ever made. The rest of the plagues (flies, frogs, boils, dying livestock, locusts, etc…) may not be bloody, but, as I mentioned, when depicted on a large, biblical scale, they aren’t exactly walks in the park, either. There’s also some fairly straight-forward hand-to-hand combat in various fight scenes—you see the points of swords sticking out the fronts/backs/sides of people who’ve just been impaled. There’s no nudity (of course—this is based on a Bible story) and no cursing that I can remember, but this movie, while not nearly as edgy and scary as Noah, is a tough PG-13.

Bottom Line

If you go in expecting a to-the-word depiction of the Moses story, you’ll be disappointed, but Exodus: Gods and Kings is a pretty solid epic. The depiction of God is slightly ridiculous, and the Burning Bush scene is almost laughable, but there is some great acting and God’s infamous plagues are brought to vivid, astounding, awesome life. And the Red Sea scene? WOW. Unlike the darker, scarier Noah, I can say I would definitely watch this movie again, even though it’s underwritten. But The Prince of Egypt is still definitely my favorite movie version of this story.

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

Directed by Ridley Scott
Based on the biblical story depicted in Exodus 2-14
Screenplay by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steve Zaillian
Rated PG-13
Length: 150 minutes