Exodus: Gods and Kings

Ridley Scott – 2014 – England

Since his very first feature, The Duelists (1977), Ridley Scott has always been so great at period films that it’s easy to take him for granted.  Where the awkwardly titled Exodus: Gods and Kings veers from the line of solid historical epics such as 1492 (1992), Gladiator (2000) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005) is its basis on religious rather than historical records.  Religion was a motivating element in those films, but Exodus is different in presenting the supernatural literally, in the form of miracles.  As with Darren Aronofsky’s near-simultaneous Noah (2014), there is a slightly unconvincing exuding of irony in the treatment of the supernatural in Exodus that alternately claims to take the Bible at face value and also tends to imply that the Hebrew prophets were clinically insane, what with hearing disembodied voices and being prodded to bold actions by angels and dreams.  Scott seems uncharacteristically weak in this department, and I wonder if the film might have been better off either as a faithful adaptation of Moses’ tale as told in the Bible, or as a revisionist tale presenting the plagues of Egypt and other miracles as either lies or illusions.  The aspects that work best – as they do in Scott’s earlier films mentioned above – are those involving politics and war.  Moses as a revolutionary fighter and disgruntled former rival for the Egyptian throne against Ramses is very interesting.  Why then have him played by bland Christian Bale in yet another stringently earnest portrayal of heroism?  It’s the kind of performance that is usually essayed in Scott’s films (many times, in fact) by Russell Crowe, and I have a hard time believing that the only reason Crowe isn’t Moses in this film isn’t because he was busy being Noah in Aronofky’s film.  Having ancient Egypt portrayed in a big-budget film by Ridley Scott seems like a tremendous once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that is sadly wasted as the grandeur of Egypt is seen so briefly since we have to spend so much time with Moses’ soul searching in the desert and outskirts of cities.  Why the Moses story if Scott doesn’t seem to have a strong feeling for the religious implications of it?  Why not the story of Akhenaten or Tutankhamen that have never been explored in a major narrative film, let alone by someone of Scott’s stature?  I may seem to be having a lot gripes about the film, but they are really about the film that doesn’t exist.  I actually found Exodus: Gods and Kings, as it is, very worthwhile, with exceptional special effects that convey the sheer spectacle of locust swarms, rivers of blood and, of course, the parting of the Red Sea.