So, as mentioned earlier, it is my personal goal to watch all one hundred AFI top movies in reverse order. #100 was Ben-Hur, a three hour and forty five minute epic flick that I watched over the course of two days.
Plot
summary (with spoilers): A
new Roman governor and his second-in-command, Messala, arrive in
Jerusalem to throw a parade in honor of the new Governor's recent
promotion. While there, Massala arranges a meet up with his old
childhood friend, Judah Ben-Hur. The two are overjoyed to see
each other. (Although perhaps Massala is more overjoyed than Ben-Hur.
In the documentary The
Celluloid Closet, which
talks about gay characters in film, Gore Vidal relayed an anecdote
and said that apparently the director and the actor playing Massala
agreed that his character and Ben-Hur were lovers in their youth, and
Massala loved him still. This is very evident
in the actor Stephen Boyd's portrayal. The funny part was, they
both agreed "don't tell Chuck. He'll freak out".
Which is also evident, though one wonders why Heston didn't at
some point say, "why do you keep looking at me like with those
'fuck me' eyes during our scenes?").
They
eagerly talk about old times, laugh, reminise, Massala strokes
Judah's arm about a thousand times, says "I missed you' while
tearing up and then they drink wine from chalets while interlocking
their arms. I mean, seriously, Chuck, you didn't question any
of this? The upshot is, Massala is eager to climb the ranks of
the Roman political scene and become governor one day himself,
perhaps even beyond that. He knows Judah is a Jew and knows
that many Jews oppose the Romans. He asks Judah to spy on other
Jews and find out if any of them are plotting against him. Judah
refuses to do so. This breaks Massala's heart, and they part
company.
The
next day, the governor arrives in town. Judah and his sister
are watching the arrival from their balcony overlooking the road, and
Judah's sister accidently knocks some lose tiles from the roof onto
the road, which startles the governor's horse, causing it to buck.
The governor is injured in the fall, and Judah, his sister, and
mother are blamed for a deliberate assisnation attempt. They
are all three arrested. Judah begs Massala for mercy, saying he
should know they would never do such a thing. Massala says he
knows very well Judah would never do this, but an example must be
made of them anyway. Judah saysn, "please, I'm begging
you!" and Massala screams at the top of his fucking lungs, "WHAT
ABOUT ME?! I BEGGED YOU!" This makes zero sense
without the context mentioned above, but for some reason, Chuck
doesn't question it. Anyway, Judah is chained up and is made to
walk across the desert for probably a long time. While Judah is
dying of thirst, a strange man whose face we don't see gives Judah
water. Judah is shocked by the man's compassion, and wonders
who it is. (It's totally Jesus). Then Judah is put on a
slave ship and his sister and mother are sent to prison.
On
the slave ship, the captain (Arrius) sees that Judah is the strongest
rower and decides he will take him off the ship and make him ride in
chariot races. Before this happens, the ship is attacked
by...some other country that also has ships, like three of them or
so, and they ram the ship Judah is in. The slaves are all
chained up and panic, realizing they will drown. Judah manages
to choke out a guard, steal the key and swim to safety, clinging to a
piece of the boat. He soon discovers Arrius struggling to keep
from drowning, and he pulls him onto his little makeshift raft
thingy. They float for an indeterminate amount of time until
they are rescued by a Roman ship passing by. Arrius is so
grateful, he pardons Judah and grants him his freedom, though asks
him to hang around still and race with his horses in order to make
enough money to get back home to Jerusalem. Judah agrees.
After four years, Judah has made enough money racing chariots
for Arrius--and a white guy with brown facepaint who calls himself
Sheik Ilderi--in order to get back home. He vows revenge on
Massala. Some other dude who is friends with the "Sheik"
cautions Judah about the futility and evil of hate and advises him to
forgive Massala. Judah fears he cannot do that.
He
gets back to Jerusalem and discovers his former home, which is half
torn apart and in shambles. Living there is a hot girl named
Esther and her father. I forgot to mention he met Esther in the
beginning of the movie, and they were all schmoopy with each other.
Esther tells Judah that his mother and sister are dead. Judah
is sad and is more determined than ever to kill Massala. To
that end, a big chariot race is coming up that weekend, and Massala
is one of the racers. Judah enters the race. Massala's
chariot wheels have big pointy spikes on them, which should totally
be against the rules. During the race, Massala rams the other
chariots with his total cheater spike wheels, causing them to crash,
and creating an urban legend about dead stuntmen to manifest two
thousand years into the future. (Look on snopes, it never
happened, and I didn't realize until just today). Massala tries
to ram Judah's chariot, but he avoids him. He starts whipping
Judah with his whip for the horses. Judah manages to grab the
whip and yank Massala off his chariott. He is then dragged
along the track and then run over by other horses. Judah FTW!
In
the next scene, they've dragged Massala back to his house so he can
die in private. Judah visits him. Massala thinks he's
come to make amends, but Judah wants to know where his sister and
mother are. (Oh yeah, Esther's father let it slip that they're
actually still alive, but he doesn't know where they are). Massala
says they're in the third cave on the right, but "you won't
recognize them". Then he dies, while, I shit you not,
while clutching and stroking Judah's arm. Judah pushes he dead
hand away and makes tracks to the cave. Esther intercepts him
and says that she knew all along his family was still alive, but they
don't want to see him. They have leprosy, and have been
banished to the caves. Esther says they are too ashamed to have
Judah ever see them like that. Judah goes anyway, and tries to
take them back home. They're upset, but agree to go. In
the main village, people throw rocks at them and shit, because that's
what you do with lepers. All of a sudden, a parade comes marching
down the main road. No, it's not a parade, it's a crucifiction.
Someone (Jesus) is being crucified right now. He's
carrying his own cross up the road, right past Judah and this family.
Judah recognizes him (Jesus) as the guy who gave him water
(Jesus). The mysterious man (Jesus) falls down. Judah
rushes forward with a cup of water, practically going "remember
the water? In the desert, you gave me water? Now I'm
giving you water! Crazy, huh?!" The man whose face
we don't see (Jesus) whispers in Judah's ear and then keeps walking.
Esther
asks Judah what the strange man (Jesus) said. He said "forgive
them father, for they know not what they do". Who the fuck
knows why he said this to Judah. Though it seemed to have an
affect on him. Later that night, when Jesus is buried, suddenly
sister and mother are magically healed! Hurray!
Stars: Three
out of five.
Review: I
was absolutely dreading this, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I
feared. The story is quite strong, and the set pieces and
design are epic and grand. The ship battle and the chariot race
were especially amazing. You'll never again see a another movie
that has real ships lobbing real flaming arrows at each other, not
when CGI is so cheap. There's something viscerally satisfying
knowing it's really up there on the screen and not being drawn by
some nerd with a Mac. The acting is uniformly great except for
the awful Heston, of course. And most of the dialogue is good too.
Weirdly, even though the Arab character is obviously a white
guy, he's still as a character treated respectfully and
non-sterotpyically and his friendship with the Jewish Judah is pretty
surprising. The first two thirds of this movie were very
watchable. It definitely falls apart in the third act, though.
Massala's death should be the end of the movie, as that was
what we and Judah were working towards all along. The
leper/Jesus stuff is a good forty five minutes and completely
anti-climatic. There were also other trims here and there that
were needed. All in all, though, I don't regret seeing it,
which surprises me.
No comments:
Post a Comment