Ben-Hur (1959): Shira’s Take

The most pressing order of business: this felt NOTHING like the William Wyler movies we’ve watched so far. Mrs. Miniver and The Best Years of Our Lives both show the painful effects of war, while Ben-Hur is the type of movie to ignore the subtleties and show you the whole war instead. In fact, it wouldn’t just show you the whole war. It would show you the drama building up to the war, then some flashy battle scenes, then more drama, then more flashy battle scenes, etc. until you’re just so completely sick of the characters that you can’t stop looking at the time and wishing those three-and-a-half-plus hours would go by quicker.

Not since Gone with the Wind have I seen a movie that tried so hard and failed so miserably. You would think that a movie this long would somehow find a way to make me interested in the characters or the plots, but you would be completely wrong. Unlike a movie like Gigi, where I’m actually frustrated with the plot, Ben-Hur didn’t keep me invested enough to get frustrated in the first place. I just couldn’t care, no matter how hard I tried, about anything.

Now on to the good stuff. Good performances all around (except Haya Harareet, who was simultaneously the only convincing Israeli and the only nonconvincing human). The chariot race scene lived up to its fame. It was exciting and gorgeous. I actually liked that we never saw Jesus’s face.

In general, I think that Cecil B. DeMille should have been alive to make this movie, and if he had, it would have been no different. Wyler did a good DeMille impression, but it’s still a generic, big, uninteresting DeMille picture. Note to myself: There was soooo much gay subtext between Judah (Heston) and Messala (Boyd). The scene in which Judah says that Messala saved his life and Messala says something like, “It was the best thing I ever did,” and then looks Judah up and down as if picturing him naked is priceless. I said to Eitan early on, “It’s a story of star-crossed lovers!” 5/10

Ben-Hur (1959): Eitan’s Take

The subtitle of Ben-Hur is “A Tale of the Christ,” and it’s difficult to watch the movie without acknowledging the gracious hand of (fictional, narrative-based) Jesus Christ moving the elements of goodness and kindness against the elements of hatred and betrayal. I’m not Christian, but I definitely felt the good will of the original teachings in the Gospels moving the film along, and giving hope and a sense of purpose to Judah Ben-Hur (the magnificent and robust Charlton Heston). But even more than the hand of Christ, I felt the power of Jewish values seeping into every part of the story. It’s a definitively Jewish tale about perseverance, loyalty, hard work, family, faith, and being great at sports. This is why it fits so well in the (unofficial) Charlton-Heston-as-a-beefy-Jew trilogy, which also includes The Ten Commandments and Exodus.

Three times wider than it is tall, the scope of the print itself lends an incredible gravitas to the film. The cinematography, production design, special effects, and costumes allow us to become completely immersed in the grandiose world of Roman Judea. But unlike The Ten Commandments, this story of the Jewish people feels raw and personal. The hurt we feel when Messala watches his childhood friend and his friend’s mother and sister be sent to the dungeon over a false accusation is real. When Judah is unshackled in the galleys, we feel just as confused and determined and awed as he does — that he will survive, and watch his friends die. Usually in big-budget movies (see: Michael Bay), so much gets lost in creating a spectacle that we forget that the spectacle of death, religion, and politics is brutal to those involved. Ben-Hur never lets us forget that these are real people.

People often talk about this movie solely from the perspective of the chariot race, and it’s definitely magnificent in every conceivable way. The wide-wide-wide aspect ratio is our portal into one of the most incredible moments in cinema history. Every second of it feels real and urgent. The spikes on Messala’s chariot glisten with pure evil. The horses gallop round the turns and you feel the intensity in the pit of your stomach. George Lucas tried to mimic this scene in Star Wars Episode I, but watching this today I was only reminded of how miserably stupid that whole sequence is. CGI alien bugs racing around in hovering special effects while Jake Lloyd shouts and hollers in prepubescent glee? It’s no contest. Also, the same narrative elements (betrayal, revenge, Roman tyranny, swords/sandals, and coliseum sports) are used in Gladiator to much, much weaker ends. To even compare the two movies is almost heretical; real movie buffs know which was is up, and know that Gladiator is a pale imitation of Ben-Hur.

Either way, the movie is so much deeper and so much more important than just a single scene, exciting and innovative as it may be. Every scene is finely crafted to blend religious parable and real life drama in such a way that you can’t tell where the plot ends and the inspirational and awe-inspiring subtext begins. At almost three and a half hours, I can honestly say I didn’t want it to end. A truly deserved 10/10. It earned every one of the 11 Oscars it won, a feat matched only by Titanic (which falls victim to its own spectacle) and Return of the King, which is a towering cinematic achievement in very similar respects.