Exodus: Gods and Kings focuses on visuals over strong characters. Photo / AP
Leave aside learned theological and historical discussions, but any assessment of the summer 3D epic that doesn't have hobbits in it cannot avoid a few observations about the source text -- the second book of what Christians call the Old Testament and Jews call the Torah.
They make no mention,
for example, of Moses' wading through battlefield gore in the army of Pharaoh Seti I; the prophecy about his saving Seti's son, Ramses II, in battle likewise goes unremarked. Moses' passage from childhood to fugitive (after killing an Egyptian bully) occupies five verses.
So Exodus: Gods and Kings is outrageous hokum on many levels -- including, as it seems to this lay observer, the religious ones. The film's Moses (a gym-toned Christian Bale) is a reluctant, puzzled and often pissed-off observer of God's interventions, rather than the rod-wielding minister of them. And if Scott was keen to avoid the disembodied Darth Vader voice that Cecil B. DeMille employed to speak to Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments in 1956, it remains puzzling that he would incarnate God as a slightly demonic British choirboy with a speech impediment.
Stranger still, it seems odd for the Almighty to get Moses to chisel those commandments himself and ask him to approve them before schlepping them down Mt Sinai to the waiting multitudes.
Enough said. The respect a sword-and-sandals epic accords the foundation story of two religions matters not one bit. This is a film of form, not content, even if the opulent grandeur of Memphis and Abu Simbel looks pretty phoney. Tilting, swooping and soaring, the cameras of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski create dizzying spectacles, mostly made in digital post-production.
