Ben-Hur
(1959)
(SPOILERS) Ben-Hur
has the fairly unchallenged virtue of being a biblical epic that, if not quite
as astounding as its unparalleled 11 Oscars would suggest, is actually really good. The number of kids foisted
into watching it during a Religious Studies class only to be very pleasantly
surprised (I can’t say my response was similar when Pink Floyd: The Wall got an unlikely airing), and its status as a
Bank Holiday weekend fixture, has given it a well-earned reputation, even if
nothing in the rest of its 3 hours 32 minutes comes close to matching the
nine-minute chariot race.
Notably, like Titanic
(which isn’t nearly as good, but also gleaned 11 statuettes), Ben-Hur failed to bag snag the Best
Screenplay, but at least it was nominated in the first place (unlike Jimbo’s doomed
romance). Karl Tunberg took the final credit, but there were a number of cooks
involved, including Gore Vidal, very vocal in later years about how he
persuaded Stephen Boyd to play Messala as the spurned lover of Chuck’s Judah
Ben-Hur. How true this anecdote is is a source of debate, particularly given
Vidal seemed to be (successfully) attempting to wind up Charlton Heston as much
as anything, but there’s no denying the unbridled joy Judah takes in seeing his
old pal again (“We were friends as boys.
We were like brothers”).
Boyd didn’t get nominated, although he deserves credit for
attempting to infuse Messala’s Machiavellian machinations with a touch of
substance beyond mere villainy – he might have been lent more of a hand by the
writers, as in the telling there’s usually too much of the polar opposites to
make the dynamic between Judah and Messala really interesting; we aren’t really
buying Judah being accused by Esther (Haya Harareet) of becoming just like him,
and Heston’s rock of rectitude is a little too impermeable to express anything very
deep, certainly to the extent of deserving the Best Actor Oscar. I mean, he’s
fine, and he does what’s required of him, which is to bring star wattage to an
epic, something that’s no small feat in itself – others have been much more
disparaging, including director William Wyler – but it takes a different class
of actor to add layers to such a basic outline (this may be a thinking person’s
epic, but that only stretches so far). Like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, for instance, which riffs on Ben-Hur shamelessly, and also attained
Oscar glory as a consequence.
As personified by Chuck, Judah is just your everyday, blonde(-ish)
haired, blue-eyed Aryan Jew, and it’s difficult not to see America’s
support of the recently-established State of Israel in his pronouncements and
resistance to Roman rule. There’s also a light veneer of McCarthyism critique during
the early stages (“Tell me the name of
the criminals” demands Messala, asking his old friend to inform on his
countrymen; which is about when Messala is required to start twirling his
moustache – “What do the lives of a few
Jews mean to you?”)
Wyler proudly declared that it took a Jew to make a decent
film about Christ, but I’m not sure it’s quite
that. The Jesus episodes are closer to Forrest
Gump-encounters with Judah, who just happens to stumble by at divine
moments (a cup of water here, a Sermon on the Mount there), and the picture
very significantly reduces the impact of Ben-Hur’s conversion. He never
actually pronounces himself as a Christian, but rather confesses “And I felt his voice take the sword out of
my hand”, much preferable to the cold dead ones Heston intoned to the NRA
that time as well as being an implicit rejection of the wrathful Old Testament
God.
Generally, there’s a sense of stuffiness and earnest, classical
Hollywood reverence to the “Tale of the
Christ” parts, superbly mimicked by the Coen Brothers and George Clooney in
Hail, Caesar!, that has you longing
to get back to a slave galley or the arena. Of the former, jolly Jack Warner does
offer some comparative theology (“Your
God has forsaken you. He has no more power than the images I pray to”). Of
course, Arrius only goes and adopts Judah, putting a spoke in what is turning
into a Job story. Arrius is the exception to the general disdain shown towards
the hissable Romans, which takes in Judah’s audience with Pilate (the superbly
surnamed Frank Thring).
There’s a warm view given to the Arab of the piece,
albeit a blacked-up Arab in the shape of Sheikh Ilderim (Welshman Hugh Griffith, who won
Best Supporting Actor), showing solidarity with the Jew and backing him against
Messala. That scene, as Messala, surrounded by fellow Roman soldiers, insults
him, finds Ilderim in the mode of marvellously casual sarcasm: “Bravely spoken”.
The chariot race needs no commentary. If the Christ passages
are old Hollywood, this is the ushering in of the new; it remains an
enthralling piece of filmmaking, a clear influence on the likes of Spielberg (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Lucas (The Phantom Menace), with Miklos Rozsa’s
otherwise marbled score (John Williams evidently picked up a few cues from him)
dropping away to allow for the furore of hooves and whips and Messala’s death-dealing
“Greek chariot” (presumably all that
nation’s chariots chopped the wheels from under you that season). Wyler really
didn’t like widescreen, finding it next to impossible to fill the expanse of
image, or exclude elements from it, but you wouldn’t know it from his and
cinematographer’s Robert Surtees’ staggering efforts.
The trouble is, after the chariot race is over, and
Messala’s toast (John Le Mesurier can’t save him) there’s still more than forty
minutes to go, and interminable attempt by Chuck to bring relief to his
leprosy-ravaged mother and sister. Very fortunately, it appears everyone within
a twenty-mile radius received healing when Jesus died, something I didn’t read
about in The Bible.
Despite this inflexibility when it counts, Ben-Hur generally makes the whole
sword-and-sandals/ religious epic thing look easy, deceptively so when so much in
the genre is such indigestible stodge that there’s no chance of replicating it
as formula (look what happened to Ridley Scott when he tried to go back to the
well, twice). If you needed convincing, another remake would be along in almost
sixty years to prove the point…
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.