Here is a balanced appraisal of the new Moses movie playing in theaters this Christmas by Al Mohler:
Moses Without the Supernatural — Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings”
Timed for a Christmas season release, director Ridley Scott’s intended blockbuster, Exodus: Gods and Kings hit the big screens this past weekend. On its opening weekend the movie shot to the top of the box office charts, displacing the latest Hunger Games movie, but falling considerably short of expected receipts.
The best single line analysis of the movie and its failure to garner either critical acclaim or more viewers was offered by Eric D. Snider of GeekNation: “This big dud isn’t blasphemous enough to be outrageous, emotional enough to be inspiring, or interesting enough to be good.”
Well, I partly agree with the first two points of criticism, but I did find the movie interesting. Indeed, I even liked much of the movie, and I would not argue that mature and thoughtful Christians should not see it, even if the concerns about it are major. And make no mistake, the concerns are major.
Earlier this year, director Darren Aronofsky offended the faithful with his distorted depiction of Noah. Aronofsky’s Noah offered a portrait of Noah as a crazed homicidal maniac who hallucinated God’s will after drinking a potion given to him by Methuselah. Humanity itself is depicted as a blight upon the earth and the director himself bragged that his movie was “the least Biblical biblical film ever made.”
Ridley Scott’s Moses is not in the same category, largely because there are so many details of the Exodus narrative in the Bible with which the director simply had to deal. There are no Transformer-like invented creatures in Moses, and many of the film’s scenes and details are explicitly true to the biblical text. Indeed, Scott’s presentation of the ten plagues God brought against Egypt is spellbinding — far more moving than the same scenes as depicted in Cecil B. DeMille’s famed The Ten Commandments. The last plague, the death of first-born sons, is absolutely riveting and deeply emotional.
Critics are piling on. Film critics tend to be rather eccentric sorts and some of them seem almost impossible to please. As a general rule, critical acclaim and popularity with the public are not directly related. Some of the concerns are quite legitimate, however. Public Radio International published a review noting that “Hollywood Has a Race Problem.” Virtually all of the leading roles are played by white actors, even though the ancient Egyptians were certainly not caucasian. As PRI noted, “Ramses, the Egyptian pharaoh who enslaved the Jews in the Old Testament, is played by a white actor. In fact, the entire lead cast of ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ is white. Moses is white. Moses’ mother is white. The Egyptian prince is white. The African queen is white, too.”
Not only are they all white, the central characters speak as though they were educated at Oxford or Cambridge. This is rather typical of Ridley Scott’s films, with gravitas presumably added by a British accent. Needless to say, the skin tones and accents do not match the actual story.
But that fact points to an even more troubling dimension of the movie. The entire narrative does not match the actual story. It fails as a whole even more than it fails in its parts.
What is missing is the very point of the Exodus in biblical history and theology. What is missing is the truth that God acted in history in faithfulness to the covenant he had made with Abraham, rescuing Israel from captivity in Egypt. In Ridley Scott’s version, God is actually hidden from view, along with his purposes, motivations, and character. In his place we see an 11 year old boy who appears to Moses as a theophany, or divine appearance. God’s presumed words flow from the mouth of a small boy, who appears as something of an unmoved Mover in the film’s narrative.
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