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| Bondage! |
“This is a film of Hestonian proportions!” –Jake
So, continuing on in the vein of religious-historical-events-that-never-happened, we watched The Ten Commandments and then later I watched The Prince of Egypt while Jake napped. It’s too bad he napped because despite a rather uninspiring score (certainly not worthy of a much more catchy religious musical I hope to watch down the line), I think that The Prince of Egypt was probably better.
That’s not to say that The Ten Commandments isn't fun; it’s both kitsch and majestic all at once. We both remember it fondly from when we were young, which makes me wonder why I would have been interested in watching a three hour movie about the Exodus when I was a kid? Maybe only because mom made buttery stove popcorn during the intermission. The movie does feel long, but also pretty epic. The scenes with thousands of extras and camels and goats and stuff filmed on location in Egypt and Sinai were impressive. I'm pretty sure I saw someone kick a chicken at one point, this must have been before we required no animals to be harmed in the making of films. Yul Brynner manages to be charming even though he’s playing a rather arrogant and dickish Rameses. We laughed every time Charlton Heston (apparently second choice to play Moses after this guy) enunciated the word “Bondage”. I really enjoyed the highly dramatic dialogue and I wonder why no one feels free to write dialogue like that anymore.
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"but when their eyes are seared
red by the sun,
when their cracked lips
bleed with thirst,
when their stomachs
cramp with hunger,
they will curse the name
of Moses and his god"
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I ended up reading some interesting comments on how The Ten Commandments reflects American 1950s sentiment about both the cold war and racism (it was filmed just a few years after Rosa Park decided to sit up front), but I’ll have to wait until later in this movie project for those events to come up. (However, I did realize after flipping through some pictures of Khrushchev that up until now I have imagined all Russian leaders throughout history to look just like Gorbachev.)
The Prince of Egypt was very similar not just because they were both movies about the Exodus, but because it was actually based upon The Ten Commandments. Except that the guys who made The Prince of Egypt actually called up some religious scholars to help them out a bit. Plus, because it’s a cartoon it was not hobbled by the same special effect issues and so all of the plagues are represented rather than only four. I was surprised by how much scarier I found The Prince of Egypt. The only scene in The Ten Commandments that frightened me when I was younger was the golden bull scene, whereas The Prince of Egypt makes the plagues a lot scarier and puts the baby-killing by Rameses right on screen, albeit in a artistic dream sequence that is pretty neat. Moses’ conversation with the Metatron and his parting of the Red (Reed) Sea are really well done and I would have loved to have seen them on the big screen. Val Kilmer plays both Moses and God, which is pretty funny because, well, it’s Val Kilmer (who we forgive everything because of The Saint, right?) It’s actually an amazingly all-star voice cast. Rameses, voiced by
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| Not the Metatron |
While it appears to be generally accepted now among historians and archaeologists that the Exodus didn't happen, I’d call these movies more historically accurate than Noah just because they do give a sense of the grandness of Ancient Egypt. (It strikes me now that after watching Noah we can pretty much watch anything and call it historical.) The director of The Ten Commandments was purportedly interested in historical detail, but those clothes looked very 1950s theatrical to me. At one point Rameses used a neat-looking architectural tool, but I haven’t been able to verify it as something real. However, we do get to see everyone wearing make-up (widely used for medical and ritualistic reasons as well as cosmetic) and riding in chariots pulled by horses (horses were introduced to Egypt around 1700-1550 BCE), and we have amazingly huge temples and obelisks. Rameses II was indeed the son of Seti I.
I was tickled to learn that it was the tendency of ruling pharaohs to delete the names of previous pharaohs and replace it with their own. Because Rameses was such a powerful pharaoh and prolific builder, he ended up being sort of the default name on things such that can now be hard to determine whether he actually did something, or just took credit. So when people do try to pinpoint the Exodus in time, Rameses is only one of a number of pharaoh candidates. He is depicted in the movies as having one son and dying in the Red Sea, but historically he had 96 sons and 60 daughters (!!!) and was buried in the Valley of Kings. I wondered if he was the most prolific man of history, but Jake suggested that that would be Genghis Khan or Henrietta Lacks. Rameses' body is now on display in the Cairo Museum, which I think probably would have pleased him since the Ancient Egyptians were supposed to have been pretty concerned with being remembered after their death. He was issued a passport in 1974 to travel to Paris posthumously. His hair is red. He made the world's first recorded peace treaty (after the largest chariot battle in recorded history).
After watching the movies I was thinking about how that whole era seems ripe for interesting historical fiction and was excited to see it again soon with Cleopatra, but it turns out she doesn't show up for nearly another 1200 years. The civilization of Ancient Egypt is considered to have started in about 3100 BCE and ended with Cleopatra in 30 BCE (which makes Canada seem very young). Ancient Egypt was one of the first civilizations, and I've found this nifty map for going on with:
Notably, Ancient Egypt had gender parity and a number of successful female rulers.
What else was going on when Rameses was making buildings and babies in ancient Egypt? Shalmaneser I is king in Assyria. Hercules' mythical birth was happening around this time. The Trojan War is beginning, which will bring us to our next movie...
Notes from Jake
It’s
funny how memory works. When I watched this movie again I found myself
remembering the most bizarre instances from my childhood. Snowy days and frost
on the windows, wool socks and snowsuits, and gingerly giggled nights full of
softly falling snow. The first time I watched The Ten Commandments was back in
the late 80’s, and of course it was the night before Christmas. I had been so
impressed with it that the experience had completely amplified the surrounding
context.
I’m watching Moses float down the river and I can actually smell the clove-studded tangerines my mother would stew in hot water, that exotic fragrance wafting through the house-high evening.
I suppose from one point of view, the whole exodus story is rooted in the imperative to remember. To remember the plight of the Israelites, to remember the ultimate folly of human bondage and, for some, to remember the promise kept by the God of Abraham to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt. Just thought I’d plant that seed…
The Movie
Cecil B. DeMille really outdid himself with this one. The ultra-ambitious scope of the film befits the vintage of the story and I really admire DeMille for reaching beyond his grasp on this one. Every aspect of this movie is epic, from the actors (both quantity and quality) to the music to the unbelievable special effects. No, I’m not being sarcastic. For 1956, the special effects on this movie were downright supernatural. The parting of the Red Sea may seem hokey now, but it took VistaVision six months and a gigantic u-shaped pool to pull that off. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and an army of stage hands. It was totally worth it; the parting of the Red Sea is nearly as awesome as Heston’s screen presence.
Speaking of which, this brings me nicely to my next nod to the Ten Commandments. I can only think of a handful of actors who could ever eclipse Yul Brynner on the Silver screen: Wayne, Gable, Newman, Quinn, and Bogart.
But the asterisk here is Heston. Charlton Heston. The man’s man’s man. A mighty man whose rumbling murmur can unravel the hearts of lesser men. A man whose steely stare can clip an angel’s wings.
No one but Heston could have played this role. Perhaps not one of the greatest actors of all time, but he certainly had a peerless screen presence. His massive personality radiates through every scene, and I swear to God every time he says bondage it resonates in my soul like a wistful long lost-love.
Having said that, all the other actors performed their roles masterfully, particularly Brynner. It takes a craftsman to manage to be excellent in your role while subtly deferring the spotlight to another man, especially when you’re both accustomed to holding the biggest staff in the room.
The History
Despite being a top-shelf film, it was somewhat lacking in the hard-core history department. It did have several moments of historical accuracy, namely the wardrobe choices and the set. That’s about as far as I’m willing to go.
Rameses sure looked fantastic on screen, with his eyeliner and his gold and his silk fabrics, but it turns out that he was an incredibly prodigious breeder, having fathered over ninety sons and several dozen daughters. So let’s be clear: a historically accurate movie would have no screen time for the Pharoh as he was likely indisposed for the vast majority of his day. And night. How he found the time, I’m not completely sure. In any case, it’s a good thing the Egypt of Rameses had no comprehensive idea of alimony as far as I can tell.
There is no evidence to suggest an exodus of Canaanites out of Egypt with the numbers reported in the Book of Exodus, which incidentally was likely written in a post-exilic period around 600 or 800 B.C.E. Many reputed Archeologists have in fact abandoned the search, calling it a fruitless pursuit.
Also, it is more likely that the people who build the pyramids were contracted, outsourced employees. The evidence points to an influx of workers from far beyond the cradle of the Nile Delta, all of whom had been employed, not enslaved by the Egyptian royalty. They even had bread and mead in jugs to accompany them to the afterlife.
The fact that evidence of the exodus out of Egypt might be unrecoverable or otherwise lost to the sands of time bears no real relevance to most scholars of the Torah. These stories, like all in the Pentateuch, or the Bible, or indeed in any Holy Book are perhaps meant to be metaphorical. The usefulness of the metaphor doesn’t require a scientific uncovering of the reality of the events. That’s simply my opinion, of course, but in an abstract way I find it similar to my own experience of the film: I happen to be an atheist, but my enjoyment of the richness of the story doesn’t require that I believe it actually happened. And I could only believe it if I had evidence, but that’s not the movie’s fault.
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