Imagine being persecuted, even enslaved based on your cultural background. Your best friend turns on you because of your ideological differences and your mother and sister are imprisoned in such deplorable conditions that they contract leprosy. Once you have endured that kind of suffering and discrimination, how do you show that you are still proud of your heritage and steadfast in your beliefs? If Charlton Heston has anything to say about it you convert to Christianity.
“Ben Hur” is either the most elaborate recruiting tool for finding Jesus or just an extremely overproduced period piece. Don’t get me wrong, the visuals are stunning and the story itself is told very well, I just have a hard time being preached to without getting a little defensive about it.
After a short prologue depicting the birth of Jesus (which includes possibly the hokiest looking Star of Bethlehem ever committed to film) we are introduced to the main antagonist, Messala, a Roman warrior and Judah Ben Hur, a Jewish Prince. The two are old friends and haven’t seen each other in years and Messala has adopted a rather Anti-Semitic view since having become a militant leader. Shortly after Messala’s return and initial dialogue with Ben Hur we are also introduced to Esther, the daughter of one of Ben Hur’s family servants whom he is clearly in love with and vice-versa, despite her impending arranged marriage- more on that dynamic later.
There is some initial tension between the two as they bicker over their views, but it appears that their longstanding friendship still comes first. Messala later reveals his true colors though when he has the opportunity to clear Ben Hur of a made-up charge of attempted assassination of a Roman governor. Instead he allows Ben Hur, his mother and sister to be imprisoned.
After escaping captivity following years on a slave ship, Ben Hur befriends a powerful Sheik who takes note of his keen ability to race his prized Arabian horses. The two devise a plot to not only make an ungodly amount of money, but also for Ben Hur to exact his revenge (and set up the film’s climax); participation in a chariot race. At first he dismisses this idea, as the humiliation of losing to a Jew is not vengeance enough for Ben Hur, until the Sheik reminds him that there are no rules inside the arena of chariot racing; on other words, this would be the only way to kill Messala and get away with it.
”One God, that I can understand; but one wife? That is not civilized” (Sheik Ilderim, “Ben Hur”
The stakes are raised considerably when Ben Hur learns from Esther, who’s arranged marriage has been called off, leaving her free to declare her love for Ben Hur, that his mother and sister died in prison. The truth is that they contracted leprosy and have been banished to “The Valley of the Lepers” but have begged Esther to tell him they died so that he can remember them fondly. Ben Hur is now going into the race thinking that his former friend has killed his family in addition to enslaving him. Time to flip the disc… because the movie is THAT long!
So anyway, now that the race is about to start we see that Messala also has every intention of someone dying today as he has rigged his chariot up with retracted blades on the wheels. The chariot race sequence is packed with symbolism: from Ben Hur’s horses and chariot being all white while Massala’s are red and black, the color shared by all evil things from the Third Reich to the Slipknot logo. Also, Messala mercilessly whips his horses and other competitors; Ben Hur doesn’t even HAVE a whip. The horses Ben Hur has trained jump over the other drivers who have fallen out of their chariots, Messala’s roll right over people and kill them. The dichotomy of Good Vs. Evil is depicted in such cut-and-dry terms during the Chariot Race that it borders on clichéd, but the subtleties are subdued just enough to not make it look like an old west gunfight between a guy in a white hat and a guy in a black hat.
To a lesser but still important extent this part of the film also depicts the complete contradiction in characters between the two. Not just Messala’s cruelty but even when Ben Hur manages to disarm him, it doesn’t even occur on him to turn the whip on Messala. After the race, when Messala has been trampled by several horses on the track, we see genuine concern on Ben Hur’s part. As he lies in a medical tent dying, Messala seems as though he is going to reach out to his former friend, who appears more than ready to reciprocate. Instead, in one last act of spite, he reveals the true location of Ben Hur’s mother and sister before cowardly escaping into death.
It is at this point that the film begins to unravel and the true agenda becomes clear. Ben Hur is reunited with his mother and sister despite their pleas for him to stay away. He recalls a meeting he had while still enslaved with a mysterious carpenter/preacher who saved him from death. He also hears Esther refer to a similar man who gave a sermon on the side of a mountain where he spoke of miracles, forgiveness and righteousness. They go in search of the magical healing man to have him cure the Hur-women’s leprosy. However, they arrive too late as he is being sentenced to death in a public tribunal. It looks as though they may still be able to receive his healing touch as he falls in front of them while carrying a large wooden cross, but he is just out of reach.
Something I was able to appreciate about this section was the fact that the crucifixion is shown rather vaguely but without losing any intensity or sense of the level of brutality. I have a feeling that if this film were shown side-by-side with “The Passion of the Christ” in an effort to convert potential Christians, “Ben-Hur” would be much more successful, if nothing else just for the fact that it doesn’t make you wince or guilt trip you while pushing its agenda on you… it just pushes its agenda on you, though to the film’s credit, they never once refer to the man being killed as Jesus Christ- the closest they come is referring to him as “the young Rabbi from Nazareth.” In doing so they succeed in two simultaneous tasks:
1) They manage to avoid any possible outcry of blasphemy by not saying they are outright depicting the events of the Bible
2) The way the Jesus-character is shown keeps a strong air of mystery about him. There is never a frontal shot, an angle of his face and certainly not a close-up. By doing so they keep the film’s depiction of Jesus as mysterious and ambiguous, thus not necessarily forcing the story on us as truth.
Scenes of Jesus’ blood falling to the ground and flowing into the streams as a first dark, then joyous and sunny cleansing downpour indicate the changes to the world in correlation to the crucifixion of Christ. As Ben Hur rushes home to tell his loved ones about the miracle he has just witnessed he discovers that his mother and sister have been cured of their leprosy and everyone lives happily ever after.
Now, I am not speaking from my personal religious beliefs here, as I believe that even many Christians would take exception to the notion that the sacrifice of Christ somehow cured the world of ALL its ills. “Ben Hur” would have you believe that all the suffering and pain in the world was somehow cleansed following the death of Jesus, which obviously, Christian or not, isn’t the case.
Perhaps the most universally insulting element of “Ben Hur” is the way everyone’s religious faith seems to be loose. Ben Hur has suffered incalculable persecution due to not just his religion and heritage, but his refusal to abandon them, yet converts to Christianity seemingly on a whim. Even the Sheik sweeps the differences between Muslims and Jews under the carpet to form an allegiance seemingly for the benefit of monetary gain. It would be nice to think that the film is attempting to depict people of many faiths and backgrounds bridging their cultural gaps, but the ever-present theme of how good comes to everyone who believes in Christ just make the movie’s objective very clear- therefore I at least can’t fault “Ben Hur” for a lack of transparency.
If you can overlook all that stuff, or if you generally don’t mind being brainwashed, “Ben Hur” is actually a fairly enjoyable film. Cinematically it is practically flawless. The scope of the set designs, particularly in the arena for the chariot race and the depth of detail in the Valley of the Lepers are remarkable and, while ambitious, exceed any and all expectations of people hoping to see a film that is as big as its production cost. Even the performances are exceptional; though Charlton Heston’s constant crying at the drop of a hat makes me feel like I am watching Glenn Beck.
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