KNOCKED UP (2007): Made for Television

I’ve seen the plot for Knocked Up before.  I’m positive I saw it on television (anytime between 1970 and the present) - although I’m not quite sure what show it would have been in.  It could have been in All in the Family, Dallas, Murphy Brown, Roseanne, or Desperate Housewives.  (I’ve never actually seen a full episode of Desperate Housewives, but five minutes of viewing and you get the gist of it.)  By the way, it’s truly remarkable how fertile the women are in all of these shows.  After a lifetime of striving to hold onto their virginity, they give in just one time and they become pregnant.  And so Knocked Up is not so different from the average sit-com – better than what we typically see on television, and about average or slightly above average for what we see in the theatre.  (The movie gets away with a few things that the FCC would have cracked down upon had it first been shown on television, but it has the same sentimental feel good ending as most television specials.)  If you like an average movie and are not too particular, you will probably like this one.  If you avoid most movies that are mediocre and unoriginal (which is the majority of films), you may want to save your money and wait for Knocked Up to come out on DVD. 
 
The movie begins with Alison (Katherine Heigl) getting a promotion at the television station she works at.  In fact, she is now going to be appearing on air interviewing celebrities about their various foibles.  Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) is setting up a quasi-pornographic website, and spends most of his spare time getting high on whatever substance happens to be available.  He made some money at one point off of a court settlement, and he has not had a steady income in a number of years (though his money is about the run out).  Alison meets Ben at a bar where she is celebrating her promotion.  Both of them get drunk, they go back to her place, and have unprotected sex – which means it’s not difficult to figure out what will happen next.  Neither Alison nor Ben wants to abort the child.  On the other hand, Alison has her doubts about Ben, and turns down his offer to marry her.  Some harsh words are spoken and feelings are hurt on both sides.
 
Alison still lives with her sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann), brother-in-law, Pete (Paul Rudd), and her two nieces.  The sister and brother-in-law usually don’t get along very well.  Debbie is annoyed that her husband doesn’t seem concerned enough about the well-being of the family, and Pete is annoyed at his wife’s constant nagging.  Ben and Pete commiserate with each other and become friends.  After Ben’s marriage proposal to Alison is turned down, Ben heads to Vegas with Pete to watch the Cirque du Soleil.  The two get high on some mushrooms and then are forced to flee the performance when they start to hallucinate.  The two seem to have a great deal in common, though Ben is beginning to rethink his ways because he’s in love with Alison.  At one point, Ben tells off Pete and says he doesn’t want to end up like him.  Thus, Pete goes back to his wife and their marriage seems to have improved.  At the film’s end, Alison goes into labor, is brought to the hospital by Ben, and the two now make up and decide to make a life together.
 
What one finds to be comical is truly a matter of individual taste.  I’ll let the viewer decide whether Knocked Up is truly the comic masterpiece that some of the critics make it out to be.  But even if a movie does contain a number of funny scenes, this will not by itself make a movie worth seeing.  The mistake that Judd Apatow, the director, producer and screenwriter of Knocked Up, makes is that he tries to create a movie that appeals to all tastes.  No truly great movie (nor book, nor work of art) ever appeals to everyone.  Here, Apatow was trying to make a family film that was bawdy, and he didn’t succeed in either case.  Any reference to drug usage unless portrayed in the worst possible light is not acceptable in a family film, and any movie designed to make the audience touchingly coo disqualifies it from being considered cutting edge.  Knocked Up contains references to drug usage along with many scenes too embarrassingly sugary for anyone with a sense of decorum.
 
There seems to be a trend in contemporary comedies to stick in side-plots that somehow are supposed to portray the psychological subtleties of certain characters.  In Little Miss Sunshine, you have the son who hasn’t spoken to anyone for a number of months.  Apparently, this occurred because of a profound reading of Nietzsche.  In American Beauty, there’s the neighbor boy who pushes drugs and incessantly spies on his neighbor with a camera, not because he’s a voyeur or a troubled kid, but because he’s a profound observer of human nature.    So in Knocked Up, the sister, Debbie can’t simply be relieved that her husband has been faithful when she discovers he has been spending his time with his fantasy baseball league and not with other women.  Instead, she has to be profoundly outraged that he’s not paying attention to her.  I suppose it gives the director twenty or thirty more minutes of filler.   And in Knocked Up, as in all other modern sit-coms, nobody can just hold ordinary occupations.  One researches porn, and the other works in entertainment television.   (It’s merely coincident that she also happens to be pregnant, drop-dead gorgeous, and allegedly in desperate need to hold onto her job.   With all she has going for her, we have to wonder why she’s still living with her sister.)
 
Are we prepared to call Knocked Up a flaunting of convention?  I hope not.  Knocked Up is not compelling.  It’s dressed up to be chic, but the contemporariness of the film is a disguise.  If I happened to be in a contrary mood, I’d say this movie is about as refreshing as watching When Harry Met Sally* for the fourteenth time.  The humor is bound up by the limitations imposed upon a movie that wants to appeal to young adults out on their first date.  (Even the drug humor has been portrayed in about as much depth on that other media outlet called television.)  Yet the movie also attempts to appeal to that type of conservative and/or traditional audience that values having a child raised by both parents – even if both parents hate each other.  Only the brother-in-law, Pete, comes across as a character in the movie that is not a type. 
 
Knocked Up certainly does not goes so far as to glamorize the relationship or future that Alison and Ben have together.  They don’t always get along and it’s obvious that they will have some struggles in the future.  Pete and Debbie seem to struggle because they are two non-conventional people stuck in a conventional marriage.  Yet Alison and Ben eventually come together through compromise – by being more like other ordinary couples.  And somehow, as in all of this type of movies, the poor and dumpy looking boy ends up getting the rich and beautiful girl.  It seems a bit naïve.  We know that the two will end up on their feet, and we know when we’re not even a quarter way through the viewing that this movie will have a happy ending.  I’m not even outraged by the crassness of the film’s humor.  The predictability of the entire picture took the edge off of the humor and made it less funny to me, personally.  Apatow also directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which is not so very different from this one.  How many more movies is he going to direct with the same formula?  Probably several.  The formula seems to sell movie tickets.
 
* Does anyone remember a single scene in When Harry Met Sally outside of when Meg Ryan fakes the orgasm?
 

June 27, 2007
© Robert S. Miller 2007

THE BANK JOB (2008): Movie About a Bank Heist

For a movie that is supposed to be based on a true story where the names have only been changed to “protect the guilty,” The Bank Job does not come across as particularly authentic or unique.  There’s some violence, a moderate amount of luridness, a number of subplots that at first seem baffling, and a lot of posing by actors that makes us think they’re pretty tough.  In truth, if the events of the 1971 robbery of Lloyd’s Bank on Baker Street in London had really taken place as portrayed in the movie almost every major character would still be in jail or dead.  It just goes to show that movies made in England are not always so different than ones made in America.

 

In The Bank Job, there are some compromising pictures taken of Princess Margaret, sister of the Queen, when she’s off vacationing with a couple of younger men.  The pictures are in the possession of Michael X (Peter De Jersey), an alleged black power advocate (but actual drug dealer) and friend of John Lennon and writer, William Burroughs, and are stashed away in safety deposit box no. 118 in Lloyd’s bank.  Martine Love (Saffron Burrows), recently busted for cocaine, is “persuaded” by a federal agent to set up a robbery of the bank to get the pictures back.  To assist, she presents the offer to her old boyfriend, Terry (Jason Statham), and Terry then recruits a few of his friends as well.  Terry’s seems likeable enough.  He runs a car dealership and has some debts he owes to a couple of loan sharks, but up until his involvement in the bank robbery (where he has a sexual encounter with Martine while inside of the bank vault) he appears entirely devoted to his wife, Wendy (Keely Hawes), and their two daughters.  Terry would like a little extra money to help the family out.

 

The amateur burglars do manage by some hard work and dumb luck to get themselves into the bank vault, but until they begin rifling through all of the safety deposit boxes they had no idea what all they were going to find.  Besides photos of the Princess, they also find a ledger of Lew Vogel, a trafficker in the porn business, who has kept the names of all of the corrupt cops that owe him favors.  There are pictures of wealthy aristocrats taken while visiting a brothel.  And there’s enough money secretly hidden away in the boxes to satisfy the greed of all of the accomplices to the robbery.  Unfortunately, because of some walkie-talkie communications by the robbers that were overheard by an amateur ham radio operator, it was fairly easy for all parties involved to figure out who the burglars were.  On the other side, we have individuals connected with the monarchy, the police, and members of the underworld all who were willing to take extreme measures to get the stolen goods back.

 

Efforts to recover the goods from Terry and his gang result in a couple of the minor players getting killed.  Then Dave (Daniel Mays), a good friend of Terry and Martine as well as participant in the heist, is captured by the sadistic Lew.  Lew tortures Dave and kills him after first pumping him for information.  Terry and Martine take this loss very hard.  Terry then makes a deal with the royal family – a deal he intends to keep.  The deal goes something like this: Terry and all of his partners will receive passports and a promise that no prosecution will occur in return for his turning over the pictures of the Princess to representatives of the monarchy.  As for the money, that’s for Terry and his cronies to keep.  Terry also negotiates with the other pursuers (though he has no intention of keeping any additional promise other than the ones he made to the royal family).  Mostly he feigns making other deals to keep all parties off balance and arranges to meet everyone at a train depot.  As far as Lew is concerned, Terry has other plans.  At the train station, Terry beats Lew up and manages to fight off all of Lew’s henchmen.  Terry gets his passports and the promise that he and his cronies will not be prosecuted, and he walks away from the train depot unscathed.  In the closing scenes, Terry apologizes to Wendy for his indiscretion, Martine tells Wendy that Terry loves her (Wendy), and Terry and his family then buy a big boat.  We also find out that Michael X was arrested and later executed for a murder he committed in Trinidad. 

 

It sounds confusing, but other than Director Roger Donaldson’s deliberate obscuration of the plot it’s not all that difficult to figure out.  We can’t exactly accuse it of being a blatant rip-off of Little Caesar starring Edward G. Robinson because The Bank Job contains a number of modern touches.  There are themes about scandal, police corruption, greed, lust and anger, but we’re not moved nor particularly upset by anything that ever happens.  There are already too many movies showing similar motifs in more graphic detail (including ones starring De Niro or Joe Pesci).  The acting of the lead character is the movie’s main asset.  Jason Statham as Terry comes across as delightfully human through most of the movie until the last fifteen minutes when he becomes a super hero.  Terry screws up, tries to make amends, and bumbles his way through the bank robbery.  Sadly, I felt Saffron Burrows as Martine to be about as genuine as a typical female police detective in a television drama. 

 

The movie is well paced (110 minutes in all) and doesn’t leave you much time to be too bored.  None of the characters are too good to be true.  The movie does not rely too much on one-liners by the characters to make up for a lack of a plot.  The Bank Job probably is better done than the thousands of movies already made about bank heists, and it is moderately entertaining.  It’s just fairly forgettable. 

March 27, 2008

© Robert S. Miller 2008

BLOWUP (1966): Michelangelo Antonioni and the Need to Communicate Better

Blowup is a well-crafted and complex movie that was released in 1966 and, for me, was too perplexing to enjoy.  A London photographer (David Hemming), Thomas whose name is practically never mentioned in the film, practices his art by being belligerent towards whatever person happens to be the subject matter for his camera.  He has a girlfriend, Patricia (Sarah Miles), to whom he pays almost no attention or affection.   He’s not above offering modeling jobs in return for sex to women he never intends to actually photograph.  His studio is furnished with abstract art and props that he impulsively purchases.  And he is not conscience stricken by disturbing people’s privacy to take what he feels to be an interesting photo.  The subject matter of many of these photos is ugly and depressing.

 

One day, he takes a number of photos of a woman and man together in the park that appear to be lovers.  The woman, Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), upon discovering that photos have been taken offers to pay money and even to pose nude to be given the negatives.  The photographer is fascinated with this woman, though not so fascinated that he’s ready to act with integrity.  The photographer gives her a role of negatives that he knows are not the correct photos, and the woman in return writes down a phone number that turns out to be made-up.  The photographer develops the photos and discovers a number of strange discrepancies regarding the photos.   A gun can be seen protruding from the bushes close to where the couple was embracing.  Other photos show the woman at the park first with the man she was embracing and later with another man whose face we cannot see.  Finally, he develops a photo that shows the original man she was embracing lying down besides the bushes.  The photographer, late at night, returns to the park to find this same man still lying in the same position as in the photo.  Obviously, he turns out to be dead.

 

The photographer tries to locate the woman in the photo in the event that she is in danger.  The photographer, for the first time probably in his life, seems actually concerned about the welfare of another person.  We’re not sure if this newly found conscience is because he actually cared about this woman, or because he realizes that he made his girlfriend unhappy after he discovers her in bed with another man.  We are left to guess at many things in this movie.  In any case, he tries to locate her on the streets and at a concert (featuring the Yardbirds and showing Jeff Beck destroying his guitar).  The photographer never locates the woman.  When he returns to his studio, he discovers all of his photographs to be missing (except for one photo that was too grainy to be used as evidence).  When he returns to the park to take more photos of the corpse, he discovers that the body also is missing.  At the end of the film, he watches some revilers that he had previously seen on the streets of London, acting as mimes in the park while playing a mock game of tennis.  The tennis game is almost as real as anything in the photographer’s life.

 

David Hemming, in his role of photographer, though not as obviously psychopathic, is remarkably similar to the character that Malcolm McDowell plays in Clockwork Orange.  The character has a high degree of energy and has little regard for the consequences of his actions towards others.  There are certain films such as this where the character is played with so much permeation that it becomes uncomfortable to sit through the entire movie.  The Talented Mr. Ripley, Taxi Driver and, again, Clockwork Orange would be examples of this.  Blowup came out before any of these movies and, if anything, Hemming plays his role with more complexity.  The photographer is not a violent man, but he nevertheless manages to damage everyone around him.  And like the lead characters in the three movies I just mentioned, the movie gets us inside the brain of a person we would probably otherwise choose not to ever know.

 

Hemming plays his role with the physicality it requires.  He sneaks around and moves with great vitality.  Some of the best scenes are while tailing the woman in the park where he hops over fences and runs quickly up and down the hill.   Any physical exertion he does with ease, which makes all of his mental and emotional efforts that much more awkward.  Hemming’s character seems capable of doing nothing else well outside of physical activity.  The photographer’s major flaw is that he is unable to express himself to anyone else.  This seemed to be an actual conscious choice of the photographer.  He cuts people off or refuses to speak to them on the telephone, he begins conversations that he never ends, he never keeps a promise, he immerses himself in a lifestyle where he can avoid communicating with anyone, and he associates with individuals where communication almost becomes a hindrance.  When he finally makes a sincere attempt to communicate something of value, nobody is interested in listening to him.  He tried to tell his girlfriend about the murder and she asks him an obvious question: why didn’t he tell the police about this?  He tries to tell his book publisher about the murder, but the publisher is at a party and is so high on drugs that any real conversation would be fruitless.  The photographer only seems to find any understanding in the group of revilers who also happen to be mimes that never speak a sentence.  The revilers mood of communication is through squeals of joy and physical activity.  Their situation is much the same as the photographers except that they have each other and they know how to express their pleasure.

 

Experimentation of the kind shown in Blowup was so new at the time of the filming that we probably can’t even cite any influences.  And though director, Michelangelo Antonioni, lived to be ninety-five, he remains an enigma.  I’m not certain why he wanted to muddy the waters concerning so many plots and subplots in this movie, or why he decided to film this movie in English when about everything else he directed was in Italian.  Having died just one day before the more famous director, Ingmar Bergman, we now can only guess.

 

Probably, Antonioni, by showing the lack of meaning in the life of the photographer and the people he associated with, was actually condemning their aimlessness.  Antonioni’s attitude towards pop culture seemed to be one of questioning the very senselessness that it came to represent.  The attitude of a painter, the musicians who destroy their instruments, and the photographer, himself, all show a disregard for creating anything they actually care for.  But at the same time it would be very strange for a movie director to question such experimentation in a movie that was so extremely experimental for its time.  Antionioni should be credited in that no one overacts in his movie.  Antionioni takes great care to show the suffering of his characters in real if somewhat understated terms.  We see their sadness and Antionioni does not need to make this more obvious.  Blowup is an interesting movie and one worth seeing if one is in the mood for a disturbing film.  But it’s not a movie that most viewers will be able to watch again and again because of its very nature and, frankly, it will only appeal to a small portion of the viewers.

 

© Robert S. Miller 2007 

August 8, 2007

THE BIG SLEEP (1946): Bogie and Howard Hawks

I neither encourage nor discourage anyone to watch an old movie.  Our memories distort everything, and there was no golden age of movies.  A movie might be disarming and quaint and bring back fond memories of our youth, but that doesn’t make it a good movie.  Most actors in the good old days put more effort into being a type than a real person.  We remember Cary Grant or Mae West or John Wayne because they played the same character in almost every movie.  On the other hand, older movies contained much less cynicism than today’s blockbusters.  If the special effects looked amateurish or if the storyline seemed hokey, at least we understood that the production costs didn’t exceed one hundred million dollars.  Money has made the producers crass and less motivated to put out a quality product.  Sensationalism rather than characters we care for is what now draws people into the theatres.

 

The movies that Bogart starred in were better quality than most others for reasons other than his acting ability.  Bogart was actually at his best when playing more atypical parts such as Angels with Dirty Faces where Bogart plays the sniveling villain, or in Treasure of Sierra Madre where Bogart plays the paranoid and pathetic loser.  Otherwise, Bogart almost always plays the tough and crusty leading man whose integrity is irreproachable and whose attraction to women is irresistible.  And so this too is the role that he plays in Howard Hawks 1946 production of The Big Sleep.

 

Bogart plays Philip Marlowe (of Raymond Chandler fame) and he is almost perfect for the part.  As glorified as Raymond Chandler may be among those who like novels about detectives, he did not write any storylines in his books that did not come off better on the movie screen.  He could just as well have had Bogart in mind when he first created the character of Philip Marlowe in one of his novels.  In any case, Marlowe is hired on by the Sternwood family to locate a missing person.  General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), a millionaire who was at one time heroic in his youth, is now an old, lonely and sickly man, and he hires Marlowe as a private detective.  Marlowe likes him.  The General also has two daughters: Vivian (Lauren Bacall) is beautiful, protective of her father and younger sister, tough, and attracted to someone like Marlowe; Carmen (Martha Vickers) is also beautiful and attracted to someone like Marlowe, but she is at the same time irresponsible and psychotic.  While Marlowe attempts to track down the missing man, he also stumbles across a number of unsolved murders.  All of the murders, however, seem to center around a casino owner and mobster by the name of Eddie Mars (John Ridgely).  Marlowe immediately assumes that Eddie was responsible for the death of the missing man because the missing man was rumored to have at one time been in love with Eddie Mars’ wife.  Not so.  As it turns out, the missing man was shot a half dozen times or so by Carmen after the missing man had spurned her advances.  And so, Marlowe after being beat up a couple of times, having his way with every woman that he wished, and finally finding himself attracted in return to Vivian, discovers what actually happened to the missing man.  At the same time, he ruthlessly disposes of Eddie Mars by setting him up to be shot by Eddie’s own henchmen.

 

Hawks had for many years wanted to make this movie, but it took a very long time to get the material in this movie by the censors.  Hawks had hired on the great William Faulkner and an unknown 29-year old female writer by the name of Leigh Brackett to write the screenplay.  As legend has it, Brackett actually was the one responsible for the juicier portions of the script.  Hawks supposedly rushed the job of making this movie to such a degree that it really must have seemed like he was making it up while he went along.  Frankly, the screenplay is really not so different from the novel.  Again, Chandler must have already been thinking about what The Big Sleep would have looked like on film when he wrote the novel.  As legendary of a director as Hawks was, he only directed one film before this that must have shocked the movie audiences, and that was Scarface, which was released in 1932.  Not even The Big Sleep, with its depictions of blackmail, pornography, homosexuality and violence, could compare in adult content to the earlier movie with its incestuous references and portrayal of a truly sick killer.  Still, The Big Sleep was probably the only other movie that Hawks made that approached modernity.

 

Unlike Scarface, this movie does seem somewhat dated.  If you’ve seen Bogart in Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon, you’ve also seen him in The Big Sleep.  If you’ve seen Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not or Key Largo, you’ve also seen her in this movie.  Unknown actors or actresses played most of the best characters in The Big Sleep.  Martha Vickers as Carmen was a model turned actor and played perfectly the eighteen-year old maniac who had no control over her passions.  Charles D. Brown played the loyal and sophisticated butler who looked after the Sternwood family.  Louis Jean Jeydt played the inept gangster Joe Brody, who ends up getting himself shot.  Elisha Cook, Jr. plays the tiny but tough Harry Jones, who died because of his loyalty to a gal who didn’t give a damn about him.  And Bob Steele plays the sinister Canino, whose very voice makes the flesh crawl.  It was these actors more so than the talents of Bogart or Bacall that made this movie memorable.

 

Maybe because it came before all of the imitations, The Big Sleep seems fresh and almost innocent in its depiction of a hard-boiled detective.  Unlike so many modern detective movies that have become introspective, The Big Sleep is a fun movie to watch.  We don’t see any heart break, and we don’t feel like we are watching a bunch of lost souls feeling sorry for their self.  It’s not a great movie, however.  Bogart and Bacall play “larger than life characters,” to use a miserable cliché, yet for people used to seeing the pairing, there are really no surprises here.  The Big Sleep is an early formulaic movie.  It’s just better than most formulas. 

 

October 19, 2007

 © Robert S. Miller 2007

BEN-HUR (1959): Romans, Jews and Christians

The character of Judah Ben-Hur, as played by Charleston Heston, had all of the attributes of greatness including courage, intelligence and great compassion.  Judah also had the one vice common to almost all great men, and that was pride.  Likewise, Messala, as played by Stephen Boyd, exhibited the characteristics of greatness that he shared with his boyhood (and Jewish) friend, Judah.  However, Messala’s one weakness was not so much great pride as it was loyalty to Rome.  Imperial Rome, once responsible for the death of more than 450,000 Carthaginians and for enslaving the remainder of Carthage’s inhabitants, that crucified 6,000 slaves and left them to rot on the roads leading into the city of Rome, and whose empire expanded into three continents, was during biblical times the total representation of tyranny.  In the movie, Ben-Hur, the conflict between the two characters is the center of one of the showiest (modern critics would say melodramatic and even homoerotic) spectacles ever filmed.

 

After years of being away from Jerusalem in the service of the Roman legions, Messala is appointed Roman Tribune of the Holy City.  An accident involving Judah’s sister, Tirzah (Cathy O’Donell) injures the provincial governor.  Messala, who investigates and who understands that this was only an accident, nevertheless sees this as an opportunity to make an example of prominent Jews who would rebel against Roman authority.  Messala has Judah, Tirzah and their mother, Mirium (Martha Scott), arrested for insurrection.  The logic is Machiavellian.  If Messala would not hesitate to punish an old friend and his family, this would send a message to all other Jews who dared to lift a hand against the Roman occupation.  Messala has Mirium and Tirzah imprisoned in a garrison, and Judah sentenced to hard labor as a rower on a slave ship.  Judah, having been deprived of all water, may not even have survived the forced march across the desert to the sea to arrive at the boat, if not for the compassion of a carpenter during a layover in Nazareth.  This carpenter defied Roman authority by providing water to Judah.  Even the most hardened of Roman soldiers did not stop this act, and it was an action that would leave Judah in wonder for the remainder of his days.

 

After three years of service on the galley, Judah has out survived all other slaves on the ship.  During an attack by Macedonian pirates (one of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed), Judah even manages to rescue the Roman Admiral, Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins).  In gratitude, Quintus Arrius grants freedom and even adopts Judah as his own, thus ironically making Judah a Roman citizen.  This makes possible Judah’s return to Jerusalem and his plan to take revenge upon Messala.

 

Now Judah is not the only one to miraculously survive.  Mirium and Tirzah also survived their imprisonment, though at a great cost.  The two of them contracted leprosy and were exiled to the leper colony outside of the city.  Instead of telling Judah of his family members’ fate, Messala leads Judah to believe that the two are dead.  In the meantime, Judah befriends a wealthy Arab by the name of Sheik Ilderim (Hugh Griffith).  Sheik Ilderim owns four beautiful white stallions that have been trained for chariot racing.  But not until Sheik Ilderim has met Judah does he believe he has found a chariot driver capable of beating the great Roman champion (who coincidentally also happens to be Messala).  Being able to convince Judah to participate in the chariot race as a means of revenge, of course, was easy.  All Sheik had to do was mention Messala’s name.  Thus, we have the justifiably famous chariot race.  (The rumor that the stuntman who played Messala in the chariot race was actually killed is merely legend, though you can almost believe it when you see this character dragged and then run over by horses.)  Messala, to show just how ruthless he is, has his chariot spiked, and this results in the deaths of many other participants.  The new Roman governor, by the way, who presides over the chariot race, is none other than Pontius Pilate (Frank Thring).  Judah, who is great in all things manly, rides so expertly that he manages to avoid disaster and in fact inflicts mortal injury upon his great rival.  After Messala’s chariot gives way, the rider is taken away on a stretcher to a doctor who is to presumably amputate both of Messala’s legs.

 

Despite all appearances, it is important to understand that the chariot race is not quite the end of the story as far as Messala is concerned.  On his deathbed, refusing all of the doctor’s ministrations, he waits for Judah to visit, and Judah does not disappoint him by failing to show up.  When Judah arrives trying to look compassionate, Messala is extremely direct.  Messala says to Judah: “What do you think you see?  The smashed body of a wretched animal?  I’m still enough of a man left here for you to hate!”  Messala then informs Judah that his mother and sister are still alive.  “Look for them in the valley of the lepers – if you can recognize them.  It goes on.  It goes on, Judah.  The race, the race is not over.”  And the race is not over because Messala deprives Judah of any pleasure in revenge.

 

Now Judah through his love interest, Esther (Haya Harareet) and his saintly friend, Balthasar (Finlay Currie), hears of a great healer who has been wandering through the wilderness.  Judah, the most rational of men who would otherwise have dismissed such rumors as superstition, is now desperate enough to cling onto any hope to heal his family members.  He goes to the leper colony, finds Mirium and Tirzah, and brings them into Jerusalem.  Unfortunately, when he finds the great healer, Jesus of Nazareth (whose face we never see in the film), Jesus is carrying the cross towards Golgotha.  Judah realizes that this is the same man who years before had given him water and saved Judah’s life.  Judah tries to return the favor by providing water to Jesus, but the water is kicked away by a Roman Centurion.  Judah stays by Jesus as he is crucified while Mirium and Tirzah retreat to the shelter of a cave.  When Jesus dies, a great storm erupts and the rainfall cleanses Mirium and Tirzah of their disease.  And Judah, having heard the final words of Jesus on the Cross, for the first time understands that there is more to life than merely hatred of Rome.

 

Ben-Hur is too much of an “epic” movie in attempting to appeal to all audiences not to have some considerable flaws.  Frankly, the director, William Wyler, does not even attempt to leave anything out of this soap opera.  We have action, violence, adventure, love and platitudes all wrapped up in an inspiring message.  However, this is a different type of movie than The Sound of Music.  The battle scene at sea and the chariot race alone are enough to make this 212-minute film worth watching for most males.  And though there are some awkward moments when Judah is courting Esther, the animosity between the Romans and the rest of the world tone down much of the mawkishness.  Just by viewing the movie, one can see why the novel of the same name written by Lew Wallace (a former Civil War Union General) was and remains so popular.  It appeals to those who at least tell themselves that they want a movie that’s more than just an escape.  And so the remake of the movie, Ben-Hur (released in 1959), was a vastly beloved phenomenon when it first came out, but has been loved and hated by the more hardhearted of critics ever since that time.

 

In many ways, Ben-Hur is a typical Hollywood filming.  It is a movie that proclaims the glory of Christ’s message by presenting a hero who for the most part has nothing in common with Jesus.  Judah Ben-Hur survives because of some very unchristian like personality traits.  He could not have endured three years on a galley ship or been triumphant in the chariot race if he only allowed to come forth the more gentle side of his nature.  He won by becoming ruthless, just like the Romans.  Yet in being able to believe that Judah was capable of such ruthlessness while at the same time capable of great compassion gives the character much more depth than we get in your average movie.  If anything, we are shown in the film that all of us fall far short of the glory of Christ because he created an ideal for us that only the Son of God could ever meet.  Some would even say he delivered a message that was incompatible with our human nature.  If we can believe in the conversion of Judah Ben-Hur, it is likely we can accept the message of the Gospels.  If we cannot (and many people believe that the final minutes of the film are its weakest moments), we may ultimately believe that Messala was right and that Judah was a gigantic fool for at anytime thinking that he could defeat Rome.

 

And so Ben-Hur is not such a simple movie as it may first appear.  Its appeal to popular taste may just be something that a critic like me will have to live with.  Critics are often guilty of their own sin called snobbishness.  It’s impossible to try to say everything and yet at the same time hope to convey the message perfectly.   Charleston Heston as Judah Ben-Hur only slightly overacts, and Stephen Boyd is perfect for the part.  All of the other actors and actresses in the movies are props for the two leads to convey their roles.

 

September 18, 2007 

 © Robert S. Miller 2007