Since the dawn of cinema there have been numerous films and TV mini-series made about Moses, the most famous being Cecil B DeMille's 1956 remake of his own 1923 film, The Ten Commandments, with the later version starring Charlton Heston as Moses.
It has been suggested that DeMille's lavish melodrama would still be the highest-grossing film of all time, if profits were adjusted for inflation. Exodus: Gods and Kings is unlikely to distinguish itself financially to the same degree. Nevertheless, director Ridley Scott conjures a menacingly camp atmosphere at the Egyptian court, depicting the Pharaoh Ramses (Joel Edgerton) as a shaven-headed thug whose primal feelings of protection only extend to his own son.
When the edgy, psychopathic Ramses learns that Moses (Christian Bale) is, in fact, a Hebrew, he banishes him to the desert and orders his killing. However, Moses will survive and return to lead 400,000 slaves out of captivity, after enduring some of those awful 10 plagues of Egypt.
The Nile turns red, the fish die, locusts infest the place, flies and gnats torment Ramses and his retinue and horrible pustules erupt on their faces. Worst of all, Ramses loses his son during the night of the death of the first-born. The Red Sea crossing is done with admirable restraint, and Scott resists any predictable parting of the waves. In fact you don't quite know what's happening at first.
One look under the lid of the internet reveals that the director has already excited quite a deal of online comment for Exodus: Gods and Kings.
Much of that comment accuses Scott of playing fast and loose with the facts as The Bible presents them. Yet there is also grudging acknowledgement that the veteran director's guess about how Moses encountered God is about as good as anyone's.
God, it so happens, is portrayed as an 11-year-old boy with an English accent that wouldn't go amiss at Hogwarts. He is a mischievous young divinity to boot as he is prepared to let Moses sink in a pool of baleful mud after he's hit by a fall of rocks on the mountain. Cue the next scene, of course, and Moses has been miraculously saved, if badly shook. Incidentally, the use of the young boy as angel or messenger who may also be God is not out of line with Biblical sources.
Anyway, Moses meets the messenger/young war consultant who bossily reprimands him for his tactics against the Egyptians. Somehow you feel the young fella should be off having a life, playing marbles or chasing girls with his pals rather than lecturing poor Moses.
It has been claimed that the Jews were never, in fact, held captive in Egypt. Moreover, depicting the Jews as slaves building the pyramids is anachronistic by a number of centuries, according to another school of thought. The pyramids had already been built by paid Egyptians it is argued from that corner.
What of it, gorge on Exodus' technicolor terror and its tender intimacies.
Paddy Kehoe
