It’s testament to the latest version of Ben-Hur that, at a running time of 123 minutes, it somehow feels twice as long as the 212 minute 1959 version. It neither improves nor adds any depth to the original story (the 1880 novel by Lew Wallace, which also spawned a 1925 epic silent film directed by Fred Niblo), rather mangling the grand tale into a goofy morality yarn that neither educates nor entertains on any meaningful level.
For those of you who have never turned a television on at Christmas time, it’s the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman in Roman-occupied Jerusalem around the time old JC was still knocking up tables and chairs. After being falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala, a rising officer in the Roman army, he is forced into slavery aboard a Roman galley ship. From there, he manages to work his way to a position of challenging Messala to a chariot race for his freedom.
While I appreciate that the old sword-and-sandal epics can look a bit crummy now, with their wobbling swords, uninspired extras and beer-bellied leading men, I would joyfully choose them in all their flawed grandeur over their CGI-filled, flaccid modern contemporaries. Although Gladiator briefly threatened to restore the historical epic to its former glory, Ben-Hur is probably the tenth film in the last three years that I’ve heralded as the final nail in the coffin of the once great genre.
Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Ben-Hur would be to say that it wasn’t bad enough to be funny (see Hercules, Dragon Blade, Pompeii etc.), which, for me at least, might even be its biggest downfall. If you compare it to the 1959 Charlton Heston version, to other films released this year, or to other historical epics released in recent years, it’s a cake that, no matter way you slice it, tastes like shit. Jack Huston and Toby Kebbell, two actors who are usually excellent in their own right, are reduced to bland, two-dimensional characters that make no sense, and seem to arbitrarily change to facilitate the by-numbers progression of a lazy, dull script.
Visually, it’s pandering to an audience used to immediate satisfaction and (at least in the IMAX version that I saw) the viewer is reduced to the status of a dog constantly being thrown tennis balls by an owner too lazy to take it for a proper walk. It felt like someone had taken all the dramatic cutaways from Call of Duty: Antiquity and cobbled them together to make a feature film. Just a series of uninspired vignettes, one after another, before Jesus gets mercifully nailed to the cross and we’re all released bleary-eyed into the sunlight, wondering if the decade-spanning epic we’d just witnessed had been shown in real time.
And enough of Morgan fucking Freeman. One of the biggest setbacks of The Shawshank Redemption being the world’s favourite film is that he has incessantly been cast as the same sage old asshole, hackneyed narration and all, in roughly 95% of films released since. His presence represents everything that’s wrong with Ben-Hur; each creative choice is an obvious one, indulging the lowest common denominator at every chance, and finishing up with a film with the subtlety of a hammered nail through your hand.
The Heston Ben-Hur is hardly an esoteric powerhouse, but it knows what it is, and delivers on that promise beautifully. It’s packed full of real excitement, charm and a sincere sense of drama, all with a wonderful supporting cast. In this version, James Cosmo is given the impossible job of filling Jack Hawkins’ boots as Quintus, the suicidal galley captain whose life is saved by Ben-Hur when they become shipwrecked together. Fortunately, we are spared the potential entertainment of that unlikely odd couple, as Cosmo is killed off after about 30 seconds of screen time.
I don’t understand why these films have to exist. Well, I do, in that bigger studios don’t trust increasingly stupid audiences with anything other than familiar franchises, remakes and sequels. But the act of taking one of the greatest historical epics ever made, cutting its running time in half, and hoping that by adding enough CGI, a more aesthetically pleasing cast and an extra helping of Jesus, people will be happy enough. But critics have panned it, and audiences have so far stayed away.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this means that studios will try harder to make more ambitious historical films (which, considering the phenomenal Embrace of the Serpent made roughly 86p at the box office, is hardly surprising), but they’ll just die another death and stop being made altogether. Ah well, at least we’ll always have the Western. Who else is looking forward to The Magnificent Seven remake?
Ben-Hur is on general release now.
Ben-Hur Trailer
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