Exodus: Gods and Kings

If I were to grade Exodus: Gods and Kings solely on a technical and visual level, this would be a rave review.  Ridley Scott, a director who has never been one to turn away from a stylistic challenge, has created a visually beautiful Biblical epic, with lots of wide shots that let us truly take in his sets and digital work, and expertly shot battle and action sequences that are edited in such a way that we can truly take the action in.  There are no rapid cuts or heavy editing that you see so often in big budget films these days.  Scott has sunk a lot of money into this project (reportedly well over $100 million), and he wants to make sure that you see every dollar up there on the screen.

This is admirable, and I applaud him.  But what are we to make of the script that he's been given to work with?  Credited to no less than four different writers, they have taken the story of Moses, and turned it into a dramatically inert, unemotional, and ultimately forgettable tale that has all the effectiveness of your average special effects blockbuster that emphasizes style over substance.  How did this happen?  It's not like this story hasn't been adapted to film before, and Scott was roaming in uncharted waters.  He seems to have captured most of the grandeur the story needs, but absolutely none of the emotion.  Characters are thinly developed, or not developed in any way shape or form.  Either that, or they are haphazardly dropped into and out of the narrative, seemingly at random.  Most curious of all, the movie seems to brush over some of the major aspects of the story, while oddly emphasizing endless shots of Moses (played by a miscast and oddly ineffective Christian Bale) trekking through the desert for one reason or another.

Needless to say, this makes for a very tedious experience, which feels like it's been dragged out at times in order to fill a two and a half hour running time.  I've read some reviews that have said that this was too brief of an amount of time to tell the story.  After all, the most famous film version of the story, The Ten Commandments, was much longer.  I happen to disagree.  The 1998 animated film, The Prince of Egypt, not only successfully told the story in about 100 minutes or so, but told it much better and with much more emotion than what can be found here.  This is a visually spectacular, yet lifeless slog of a movie that completely ignores the human aspect of the story.  An excellent example would be the plagues, which are represented with skillful special effects, yet leaves the audience feeling indifferent, because the movie refuses to show us the impact it has on the characters.  There is one effective moment, when Ramses (played by an unrecognizable Joel Edgerton) cries over the death of his first born son.  Yet, I couldn't help but feel the moment would be even more dramatically powerful if the film did not treat his baby as a prop who exists simply for that one moment.

Despite the extended running time, the movie has a habit of slowing down or speeding up the narrative at odd times.  Sequences that should be glossed over seem extended, while parts of the story that we feel the movie should focus on more are simply brushed past without a second thought.  We never get a true sense of relationship in any of the characters up on the screen.  The actors perform so forced and in such a frigid and stoic manner, we don't even believe they know each other, yet we are told (and know from the original story) that Moses and Ramses were friends since they were children.  We don't get a sense of any bond between them, which makes the parts of the film where they must stand on separate sides completely ineffective.  I don't just blame the writing here, but also the performances.  Bale and Edgerton act like they've spent all of two minutes together, even when they're supposed to be allies on the battlefield.  There's just such an odd chilliness to this movie and its portrayals of the characters.  I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it took me completely out of the film.

There are some great actors that have been gathered here, but nobody is performing at the top of their game.  Maybe they knew how underwritten their parts were.  I have never seen Ben Kingsley used to such little effect in a drama than here, playing Nun.  He's the one who helps Moses understand who he really is and his backstory, and once that job is done, the movie pretty much pushes him into the background and forgets about him.  Same goes for Sigourney Weaver, who has one ineffective scene as Tuya (it's not her best work), and then is equally forgotten about, other than standing in the background in a few shots.  Considering that Ridley Scott launched Weaver's career with the original Alien, her appearance in this film seems more like a private joke for film geeks to pick up on, rather than something that needed to be here.  The only actor who makes the most of his screen time is John Turturro as the Pharaoh Seti, but he's not on screen for very long.

Perhaps even more so than Noah from earlier this year, Exodus: Gods and Kings is a wasted effort of special effects and spectacle squeezing the life out of the story it is trying to tell.  The movie has been made with great technical skill, but none of that matters when the story of Moses has been reduced to something on the emotional level of finding a quarter on the sidewalk.  You get a fleeting moment of joy, then you kind of forget about it, and go about your day.

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