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| Exodus: Gods and Kings review – holy Moses, wholly acceptable for the devout | Exodus: Gods and Kings review – holy Moses, wholly acceptable for the devout |
| (about 9 hours later) | |
| “Welcome to Pithom! You’ll get used to the smell.” So says Ben Mendelsohn at the start of Ridley Scott’s Moses movie. For a while now, people have been detecting something fishy about Exodus, what with the all-white casting and Scott’s reassurance there’d be a scientifically watertight explanation for that Red Seas business. | “Welcome to Pithom! You’ll get used to the smell.” So says Ben Mendelsohn at the start of Ridley Scott’s Moses movie. For a while now, people have been detecting something fishy about Exodus, what with the all-white casting and Scott’s reassurance there’d be a scientifically watertight explanation for that Red Seas business. |
| Might it turn out as non-kosher as Noah, 2014’s other Old Testament epic? Yet the final film, released in the UK on Boxing Day, looks set down to slip down if not a treat, then certainly smoother than anticipated. It is half turkey, half triumph – with an odour to match. | Might it turn out as non-kosher as Noah, 2014’s other Old Testament epic? Yet the final film, released in the UK on Boxing Day, looks set down to slip down if not a treat, then certainly smoother than anticipated. It is half turkey, half triumph – with an odour to match. |
| We start in ancient Egypt, as conceived by someone who’s spent a lot of time in the hotels of Beverly Hills. There are marble halls and indoors ivy, lavish fruit platters and topless slaves fanning toga-clad groupies. The paths are paved with tiger skins, the streets measured out in palm trees. This is home for two brothers, Moses and Ramses, the first (Christian Bale) earnest in a towelling dressing gown, the other (Joel Edgerton) only opting for clothes if they’re gold, and then generally just a skirt and choker. | |
| Pious Moses dotes on dying dad, the pharaoh Seti (John Turturro). Ramses looks on crossly and stomps off to fondle his pythons. Moses thinks the slaves should be freed. Ramses disagrees. “From an economic standpoint alone, what you say is problematic – to say the least.” (Dialogue quality is sacrificed at the altar of accessibility.) | Pious Moses dotes on dying dad, the pharaoh Seti (John Turturro). Ramses looks on crossly and stomps off to fondle his pythons. Moses thinks the slaves should be freed. Ramses disagrees. “From an economic standpoint alone, what you say is problematic – to say the least.” (Dialogue quality is sacrificed at the altar of accessibility.) |
| Why does Moses stand out? It’s not just his liberal sensibility, nor his rejection of guyliner. It’s because he’s actually a Hebrew discovered in the rushes and adopted by Ramses’s sister – information confided to him by Jewish elder Ben Kingsley, then leaked by Mendelsohn’s slimy viceroy. Moses is duly exiled to the desert where he shacks up with a girl he meets at the well, whom he woos by being sweet to a sheep. They have a son, but a head injury triggers visions telling Moses to return to home and check up on Ramses’s reign. | Why does Moses stand out? It’s not just his liberal sensibility, nor his rejection of guyliner. It’s because he’s actually a Hebrew discovered in the rushes and adopted by Ramses’s sister – information confided to him by Jewish elder Ben Kingsley, then leaked by Mendelsohn’s slimy viceroy. Moses is duly exiled to the desert where he shacks up with a girl he meets at the well, whom he woos by being sweet to a sheep. They have a son, but a head injury triggers visions telling Moses to return to home and check up on Ramses’s reign. |
| All Hollywood’s takes on the tale – from Cecil B DeMille’s The 10 Commandments to Disney’s The Prince of Egypt – have run with the sibling rivalry angle, despite scant supporting evidence. In Scott’s case, it was a good call. There’s an integrity at work here which finds full force in the final reel, as Moses tries to save Ramses from himself, then turns terribly potent in end-title dedication to Scott’s own brother, Tony. | All Hollywood’s takes on the tale – from Cecil B DeMille’s The 10 Commandments to Disney’s The Prince of Egypt – have run with the sibling rivalry angle, despite scant supporting evidence. In Scott’s case, it was a good call. There’s an integrity at work here which finds full force in the final reel, as Moses tries to save Ramses from himself, then turns terribly potent in end-title dedication to Scott’s own brother, Tony. |
| But Exodus trades in other myths too: most obviously a superhero origins story - quasi-Thor, vaguely Star Wars, in which a man must face up to murky origins in order to save the world. Must abandon his child, too – as in Interstellar, a film which Exodus weirdly resembles, right down to the terrible weather. There’s also some Arthurian rhetoric involving a special sword; a dash of Hunger Games, with the massed rebels and flaming archery. | But Exodus trades in other myths too: most obviously a superhero origins story - quasi-Thor, vaguely Star Wars, in which a man must face up to murky origins in order to save the world. Must abandon his child, too – as in Interstellar, a film which Exodus weirdly resembles, right down to the terrible weather. There’s also some Arthurian rhetoric involving a special sword; a dash of Hunger Games, with the massed rebels and flaming archery. |
| At times, it can feel like the Bible is the least key text. Yet the devout have less to worry about than many suspected. The main story arc, even co-opted by a secular director such as Scott, remains the hubris of acting immortal. Ramses doesn’t just make the error of declaring himself God, he expresses his divine entitlement through the contemporary foible of over-ambitious home improvement. | At times, it can feel like the Bible is the least key text. Yet the devout have less to worry about than many suspected. The main story arc, even co-opted by a secular director such as Scott, remains the hubris of acting immortal. Ramses doesn’t just make the error of declaring himself God, he expresses his divine entitlement through the contemporary foible of over-ambitious home improvement. |
| Pre-plague Pithom is basically a building site, a big budget episode of Grand Designs in which Ramses berates his architect, who in turn says he should have prioritised the tomb, not the temple. So when the river fills with blood and rotting fish (“How long will that take to purify”) it feels less like a harbinger of apocalypse than just another construction hiccup. | Pre-plague Pithom is basically a building site, a big budget episode of Grand Designs in which Ramses berates his architect, who in turn says he should have prioritised the tomb, not the temple. So when the river fills with blood and rotting fish (“How long will that take to purify”) it feels less like a harbinger of apocalypse than just another construction hiccup. |
| The plagues are as well rendered as you’d hope given the $200m budget and cutting edge tech. Scott adds crocodiles and sharks to the mix for good measure and you do get a sense of relentless assault, what with the boils and the hail, the dead babies and the vomiting bulls. Even Moses himself has words with the Lord: “Is that it, are you done?” | The plagues are as well rendered as you’d hope given the $200m budget and cutting edge tech. Scott adds crocodiles and sharks to the mix for good measure and you do get a sense of relentless assault, what with the boils and the hail, the dead babies and the vomiting bulls. Even Moses himself has words with the Lord: “Is that it, are you done?” |
| In The Ten Commandments, God’s voice boomed back out at him from behind the burning bush; one of Scott’s innovations is God appearing to Moses as a 10-year-old boy. For Christian audiences who don’t find the Italia Conti intonation grating, this will likely be fine – a creative reading of God speaking in a still, small voice. The seas parting, too, are presented as all His work; there’s no forecast of how a cold front may result in tsunami-like conditions. | In The Ten Commandments, God’s voice boomed back out at him from behind the burning bush; one of Scott’s innovations is God appearing to Moses as a 10-year-old boy. For Christian audiences who don’t find the Italia Conti intonation grating, this will likely be fine – a creative reading of God speaking in a still, small voice. The seas parting, too, are presented as all His work; there’s no forecast of how a cold front may result in tsunami-like conditions. |
| Yet as the mood turns bleak, the film becomes if not quite grinding, then certainly remorselessly grim, fixated on mortality, beaches filled with feasting vultures, seas studded with bloated corpses. | Yet as the mood turns bleak, the film becomes if not quite grinding, then certainly remorselessly grim, fixated on mortality, beaches filled with feasting vultures, seas studded with bloated corpses. |
| This should be affecting stuff, but it’s consistently undercut by the massively naff aesthetic. In particular Alberto Iglesias’s horrendous score, all Casio choirs and panpipes, which serves to neuter even the most human moments. It’s impossible not to feel some awe at the spectacle, but more shocks would have helped see you through the two-and-a-half hour running time. As Moses eventually staggers down with his tablets, looking every day of 120, your chief sense is not excitement at the founding of a faith but relief you can both, finally, clock off. | This should be affecting stuff, but it’s consistently undercut by the massively naff aesthetic. In particular Alberto Iglesias’s horrendous score, all Casio choirs and panpipes, which serves to neuter even the most human moments. It’s impossible not to feel some awe at the spectacle, but more shocks would have helped see you through the two-and-a-half hour running time. As Moses eventually staggers down with his tablets, looking every day of 120, your chief sense is not excitement at the founding of a faith but relief you can both, finally, clock off. |
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