“Exodus”: No Spirituality, anywhere – Times Online

Bible bombast of Ridley Scott: The film “Exodus” tells the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt as monstrous epic

25th December 2014 16:42 clock

Joel Edgerton and Christian Bale play Ramses (left) and Moses. | © Fox Film Distribution

Five minutes. How long does Ridley Scott’s new cinematic monumental attack to put the viewer into a catatonic rigidity. How will he defend himself against the bombastic panoramic shots of huge Egyptian statues and endless armies in the desert dust, which have since been bombarded him? As against the Carmina Burana -like choral singing and the Wagnerian symphony sauce, trying einzuposaunen each setting grandeur and is expressed in the ears? One might protest settle the 3D glasses, but that cared only for extra headache.

So then in the following two and a half hours to duck his head and hold out for Ridley Scott left for the rest of the film in his intention the viewer to ill-treat with operatic pathos. What is happening on the screen, is the greatest form of pomp. Maximum external splendor at maximum inner emptiness. Exodus is a narrative, aesthetic and intellectual wasteland, greater than the Negev desert.

And the only tiring endpoint of the director’s concept of perpetual subjugation, the latest Scott Columbus with his epic 1492 (1992) began to implement. Nothing here reminds more of the overwhelming beauty and seething urgency of his debut The Duellists (1977), none of the enormous density and the unattainable secret of his sci-fi classic Alien ( 1979) and Blade Runner (1982).

And rightly Ridley

Scott is celebrated as a theater visionary for these three milestones to date. At the same time he is overrated mercilessly. Never again he has reached this early size, even with popular successes such as Gladiator (2000). Scott’s inclination to put style over substance has, at least make increasingly monstrous vehicles überinszenierten his hubris his historical epics. So

This time it is the Old Testament story of Moses for all sorts of tricky technical exercises. Essentially, Exodus is a remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s classic The Ten Commandments of 1956. Scott waives the history of wicker baskets and bathing Pharaoh’s daughter. His film sets with the adult Moses a (Christian Bale), who goes as a great military leader Prince Ramses II. (Joel Edgerton) on military campaigns. Moses is more intelligent and eloquent as his closest friend who is afraid of him secretly. When Ramses itself is Pharaoh and learns of Moses’ true, namely Hebrew origin, he sends him into exile. Moses is a shepherd, he marries and gets a son. God appears to him on Mount Sinai as a burning bush and tells him to lead the people of Israel to freedom. It was not until ten plagues devastated his country, Ramses can pull the Hebrews. What follows is known: parting of the Red Sea, dance around the golden calf, tablets with the Ten Comman dments

Long exactly was this parting of the Red Sea in the film of 1956 as a trick pioneering technical achievement that even decades later. small television screens still caused astonishment. The scene was created at that time under infinite pains with mechanical and photographic tricks, like shooting themselves were also monumental. At the end of two years were passed and DeMille had suffered a heart attack.

If you have nothing else, so the images referenced by The Ten Commandments but at least on the blood, sweat and tears that went into their production and them something like lent gravitas. DeMille’s film was certainly no great art, but an astonishing, colorful fairy tale with his naive theater thunder.