Ridley Scott and the biblical epic seem like an intriguing proposition, but Exodus: Gods and Kings, the latest take on the story of Moses, proves to be a vacuous and curiously empty spectacle. The film may spend most of its running time trying to get the Hebrew people out of Egypt, but in dramatic terms, it’s just wandering in the wilderness.
Scott, a filmmaker who can often paint stunning visions on a wide canvas and still delve around the narrow, detailed corners of a story, gets lost in a production that’s every bit as grand and massive as either of Cecil B. DeMille’s versions of The Ten Commandments. Matching the stagey, overheated gleam of Old Hollywood excess, Scott puts all of the studio money up onscreen, starting with a hit-the-ground-running assault by the Egyptian army on a Hittite base camp that harkens back to the chariot races of Ben-Hur, and blatantly references Lawrence of Arabia’s most famous tracking shot. Later there are the usual highlights associated with the Exodus story, including a fearsome rendering of the biblical plagues and the climactic parting of the Red Sea.
Those action scenes are not the centerpiece of the film, but window-dressing for an intended character piece that focuses on Moses (Christian Bale), a Hebrew raised as an Egyptian, and his cousin and surrogate brother, Ramses (Joel Edgerton). Borrowing much of its dynamic from 1998’s The Prince of Egypt, also dealing heavily with the kinship between Moses and Ramses, Exodus hones in on the dichotomy and tension inherent in Moses’ predicament; he’s a regarded member of a great dynasty, but his heritage lies with the people whose backs are being broken to build that dynasty.
In the early going Scott follows the lead of previous iterations, relying upon the script by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian to establish Moses as part of Egypt’s ruling class, and to define the tense but devoted relationship that Moses and Ramses share. The opening battle scene is standard fare for Scott, but then so are the slower segments that follow, mirroring in many ways the first half of Gladiator. Moses learns of his true birthright from a secret group of Jewish rebels, led by Ben Kingsley, who can still make clandestine portents sing with implied wisdom. At the same time, he’s favored by Seti, who ends up being one of the film’s better contradictions, a Bronx-accented Jewish Pharaoh who comes off as a weary, genteel aristocrat in the hands of John Turturro.
Once a spurned viceroy (Ben Mendelsohn, in a performance more bemused than anything else) ousts Moses, he’s banished from the kingdom and settling down in a form of domestic bliss with wife Zipporah (María Valverde ), an interlude that Scott elegantly and sensitively captures. One night, on a rain-soaked mountain, Moses encounters that iconic burning bush and with it, a vision of the God of the Hebrew people. It’s here that Scott threatens to put his own spin on the material, with a young, war-like child standing in for usual representations of the almighty. Calling Moses his ‘general,’ expressing petulant rage at the plight of the captive Hebrews, and constantly fidgeting with a pair of dice, this manifestation feels more like brain-damage or internal delusion than supernatural deity. That of course is intended, and this subversion plays out in the way that Scott tries to rationalize and naturalize the effects of the God-motivated plagues that show up later; even the Red Sea is glimpsed as capable of being parted well before the grand finale.
Unfortunately, this stylistic choice feels more like a red herring or a half measure—something Scott has done simply because he’s bored or frustrated with the material—and it ultimately carves a hole in the film because of the way it subverts the real focus of the story, which has always been the Hebrew nation themselves. By reducing their God to a potential figment of guilty Moses imagination, it creates another layer of disconnect between Moses and the heritage he is supposedly reclaiming. Charlton Heston bellowed ‘Let my people go!’ every chance he could, but this Moses doesn’t even fully acknowledge he has a people until nearly the end credits, doing so in a manner not so different from Bruce Wayne vowing to wear fetish gear as his evening attire at the close of Batman Begins. Characters like Aaron Paul’s Joshua and Kingsley’s Nun are unfortunately overshadowed after their initial introductions.
If Scott were actually committed to his more grounded, skeptical rendition of Moses, and had he successfully built a believable and tangible bond between Moses, Ramses and the Egyptian people, then the film could have still retained a dramatic focal point. Instead, he’s either constantly relenting or glibly throwing the rest of the audience a bone in the form of some unquestionably miraculous occurrence. It’s amusing to watch the Egyptian priests and priestesses try and explain away the plagues (although, coyly, the info they impart is clearly Scott’s take on the situation) but by the time we reach the Passover and the death of the first born, he’s simultaneously citing superhero-style touchstone moments (the lambs get their big scene) and embracing the otherworldly nature of the events. This creates a central confusion in the material that neither Bale nor Edgerton can overcome through their performances; the result is an epic that keeps trying to hide behind its effects, sets and grandeur when the script keeps wanting to push its characters forward.
Bale goes for intensity and a certain regal humility in the first half, but he’s less sure what to do when he has to effectively internalize Moses’ own trepidation and reluctance to see his mission through to the end, particularly when it means watching people he cares about on both sides terribly suffer. Much of this seems to fall on Scott, who expertly frames the tug-of-war between Moses and Ramses, complete with lines like “This is bigger than either of us,” without truly believing it. He’s reduced all of the surrounding elements of the story—which very well could be considered the meat—in favor of these two rather generic characters, and ironically he’s actually made the scope and intent smaller and more insubstantial despite the sweeping, epic gloss he’s applied everywhere else.
Edgerton is one of my favorite up-and-coming actors to watch, and he’s very capable of finding a way to slip humanity into any role he’s taken. Much like the work he did in last year’s Gatsby, Edgerton builds some plausible and sympathetic frailty into his Ramses. This is never more evident than in a grueling scene where he’s helplessly holding his son’s lifeless, prostrate corpse out in front of him, like an offering to gods who did not help, or as a rebuff to the one who’s cursed him. It’s a powerful moment that has no equal elsewhere in this largely shallow and emotionless jamboree. At every turn, the people are swallowed by the scenery and the pageantry, and while Scott’s idiosyncratic attention to detail previously grounded many of his other efforts, he keeps bouncing off the edges of this one, unsure or unwilling to really embrace or challenge it.
By the time we arrive at the Red Sea, most of the good-will that the production’s scale earned it has unfortunately dried up, and even this big moment isn’t about deliverance of a people as much as it is, Moses vs. Ramses, racing towards each other amidst swirling CGI. There are hints here or there that Scott could have done something special with this, but his heart simply isn’t in it. Many may have overlooked or dismissed Darren Aronofsky’s Noah earlier this year, but it stubbornly insisted on telling its story in a way that treated the hero and his faith as something serious and worthy of discussion, regardless of where you fall regarding religion. Little discussion is likely to spring from Exodus, not least because few will be able to talk over the blaring noise of a film that can’t get out of its own way.
Exodus: Gods and Kings is now playing in wide release.