Hark! the herald angels sing: the Bible is mainstream again.
Following on from this year’s good-but-not-great interpretation of the story of Noah comes a good-but-not-great revival of the tale of Moses – and his attempts to free his people, the Israelites, from the slavery imposed on them by their Egyptian rulers.
Christian Bale, playing Moses, faces off against Joel Edgerton’s Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses, while a supporting cast of astonishing stature looks on.
This, in fact, is problem number one with “Exodus: Gods and Kings”. For a long time now, Hollywood has successfully managed to make excellent movies involving foreign lands and ancient stories without employing extremely famous white actors in its primary roles. Now, director Ridley Scott has returned us to the early- and mid-twentieth century, where these famous white actors have been painted a different skin colour and popped into funny-looking clothes in order to sell a film.
We don’t need this anymore. There are plenty of less famous, more authentic actors, who could have played any of the roles on show here. The fact that Scott had to battle accusations of racism in advance of the release of the film says it all.
This leads us onto problem number two. If a director insists on using these high-profile white actors in high-profile films, should they not at least make decent use of them? Sir Ben Kingsley is employed chiefly as a means of exposition, while Sigourney Weaver appears in approximately five scenes and speaks in two, uttering only a few words, none of which add any value to the story. Aaron Paul, beloved by “Breaking Bad” fans, plays the barely audible Joshua, who is seemingly present only to spy on Moses as he talks to God. These immense acting talents are all unforgivably wasted, especially when one thinks that they could have been utilised to push this film beyond a simple good-vs-evil battle between Bale and Edgerton.
The film does, however, deserve credit for its portrayal of the plagues, all of which are magnificently executed onscreen. From the turning of the water of the River Nile into blood, all the way to the deaths of the first born sons of the Egyptians, each plague looks terrific, as does the parting of the Red Sea when its time comes.
However, this seems to be where the core problem of “Exodus” lies: in all its focus on the big moments, the little details were forgotten. The accents are muddled; the supporting actors, underused; the story, displaced.
For those leaning on the religious side of the fence, God is portrayed as a spiteful little shit (in child form), who stood around doing nothing about slavery for 400 years before finally deciding, seemingly on a whim, to get someone else to do something about it. This depiction, surprisingly, works quite well, but may be lost on some of Christianity’s more fanatic followers.
Overall, it’s frustrating to know that something great could have been done here and, despite strong set piece scenes, it wasn’t.
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