Regarding the new
Bible move, Exodus: Gods and Kings,
all I can say is, Not only "no," but "hell no." Even as a
generic fantasy movie (along the lines of Lord of the Rings) it is totally
lame. As a retelling of the exodus story, it moves to horrid. As to what they
got right: well there is a Pharaoh, and a Moses, and some slaves, and some
plagues, and being caught between a sea and Pharaoh's army. But that's about
it. It would be worth seeing only as an exercise in how to totally mangle a
biblical story. It's not even their gap filling that I object to, though a lot
of that was bad. It's what they left out. The aim seems to be to turn Moses
into a fighting man. Here is my list of things that are wrong. It is by no
means exhaustive.
The movie begins
inexplicably with a battle between the Egyptians and the Hittites. Inexplicable
because the major battle at Kadesh between those two armies took place during
Ramesses II’s reign, not during his father’s. Plus there’s no mention of the
eventual peace treaty signed between the two nations. The only point seems to
be to establish both Moses and Ramesses fighting abilities and to round out one
of the gap fills, an Egyptian prophecy that someone will save someone’s life,
and then become king. During the battle Moses saves Ramesses. And that means
what exactly?
Since the movie begins when Moses is
already an adult, it entirely omits chs. 1-2. One of my objections to most
movies about Exodus is that they fail to establish why Pharaoh enslaved the Hebrews (keeping in mind that Pharaoh
pretty much enslaved everyone so there were always plenty of other slaves in
addition to the Hebrew ones). But at the end of Genesis, the Hebrews are
coexisting quite peaceably with the Egyptians. How do they go from friend to
enemy? In the text it is because a new Pharaoh comes along who doesn’t know
about Joseph. He looks around a sees a bunch of them and perceives them to be a
threat (Exo 1:8-10). Gosh, might there be similarities between that and today’s
debates about the changing demographics in the US? But that key plot point only
comes up for a few seconds and is raised by the overseer of Pithom, not
Pharaoh.
Also by omitting chaps. 1-2 t there is no
Shiphrah and Puah. That’s two Exodus movies that don’t mention Shiphrah and
Puah. Neither does Prince of Egypt.
The actions of Moses' mother and sister are recounted to Moses by Joshua's
father, Nun. Apparently Moses didn't know he was Hebrew and his Egyptian mother
didn't tell anyone. She gave some story about an Egyptian general. Though how
she accounted for not being pregnant is left as a gap.
Moses doesn't have to flee because he
killed an Egyptian, but because he was outed as a Hebrew to Ramesses by the
overseer at Pithom (who apparently is also flamingly gay).
When Moses is expelled, his Egyptian
mother and Miriam are sent away on a cart, never to be seen or heard from
again. So there's no Song of the Sea and no Miriam leading the song. Like Lord
of the Rings, women play no substantive role, which is ironic considering that
only women are actors in the first two chapters and without them there would be
no Moses. The end result is to suggest that until Moses came along no one had
ever considered resisting Pharaoh’s tyranny.
Moses "call" comes about
apparently through traumatic brain injury. The movie also omits most of Exo 3-4
so there is none of Moses arguing with God about why his going to Pharaoh is a
bad idea.
I was not surprised that they omitted Exo
4:24-26, that bit about where God tries to kill Moses and Zipporah comes to the
rescue. No one wants to touch that episode.
God is a bratty 10-year-old boy with a
British accent. They couldn't at least make God a bratty 10-year-old girl?? The
only good thing I can say theologically is that at least there was some
questioning of God's genocidal tendencies.
Egyptians probably didn't have luxurious
pillows or mattresses on their beds. Hadn't anyone in this movie seen the head
rests from Egypt?? (http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/images/glos/headrest.jpg)
Aaron is a total non-character. He mostly
stands around and says nothing. The plagues just happen. There is no back and
forth between Moses/Aaron and the Egyptian priests, much less between Moses and
Pharaoh.
After they cross the sea and Pharaoh's
army gets drownded (as the song goes), there's about 5 minutes of movie left.
First they have Moses going back to get Zipporah and Gershom because they're
"in love." Which might actually be an improvement over the Bible
where Moses seems to divorce Zipporah at some unknown point of time (Exo
18:1-7).
Then there is a scene with Moses going up
a mountain. In the distant background you see people, and lights (it's night)
and something that looks like a framework for the golden calf. But that's the
only reference to Exo 32-34. There is no other mention of it and the God
character certainly doesn't say anything about it. If you didn't know the story
of the Golden Calf you might never know that's what the scene was about. The
"calf" structure wasn't very obvious so it might just look like
people celebrating. So what was the point of it?
Then there's Moses chiseling the
commandments on a stone tablet - apparently from left to right. (A reminder
that Hebrew is written right to left).
And then the people are on the move and
Moses is in a cart with a box in it, presumably containing the tablets.
Fade to black.
OK. Yes the special effects were nice.
But like Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars 1-3, there’s just way too much computer
generated stuff that looks computer generated. Mostly you think that everything
looks fake and unreal. Which is a pointed contrast to the movie Noah, which actually looked like it
happened in a real place to real people.
There you have it. And that's not even
considering the race issue that all the leads are white people. (And what was
the point of Sigourney Weaver's role??) I don't know what Ridley Scott was
thinking, but there was really no point, that I can discern, to making this
movie. Both Ten Commandments and Prince of Egypt do more justice to the
biblical story than this does, and both of those have problems as well. One of
my biblical studies colleagues posted the following on Facebook about the movie
after she saw it. “Nice horses.” I think that’s all the good she found in the
movie. Which is too bad because it’s not like there aren’t themes within the
exodus story that are relevant to today.
So, if you see it, let me know what you
think. Maybe you'll be more generous and charitable than I am.
Nancy Bowen is Professor of Old Testament at Earlham School of Religion.
No comments:
Post a Comment