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 To some people, Jesus is a heretic, a political threat, or even a savior. He
is "betrayed and ultimately murdered on a cross." That "terrible fate" isn't
the end of things though. They note that they used 7000 extras to stage the
Sermon on the Mount scene. Jeffrey Hunter is called "charismatic" as Jesus and
they claim that the casts' performance is "real and involving." We are also
told that this was directed by Nicholas Ray, who is best known for making Rebel Without A Cause. They finish up by saying that this is a "powerful retelling of the world's
greatest story." 1961, 171 minutes, Widescreen, VHS
Since I was raised by wolves, any knowledge I have of the Bible comes from
exactly two sources: Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. It should come as no surprise that I grew up thinking that Charlton
Heston occupied the same place in history as Caine, Job, and the rest of
those dudes
with strange names. Having grown up though, I realize that there is probably a
lot more to this Bible than gigantic biblical epics filmed in varying degrees
of widescreen. The Bible though looks about as thick as one of those Stephen
King novels he pukes out onto us about every eight months, so I haven't managed
to get around to reading it (though I did find time to read both versions of The Stand!). After watching King of Kings, the gigantic biblically epic retelling of the rise and re-rise of Jesus
Christ, I wish I had a little more background on these things (this is not an
invitation to e-mail me about your cult, religious movement, or pithy sayings
from the Bible about what a heathen I am). I was watching this with the old
lady (she refuses to watch any Italian gore flicks due to all those boobs that
always seem to be flopping about, but to me a movie is a movie and I'll watch
whatever someone doesn't mind seeing) and she went to Catholic school as a lass
so throughout the three hours of this film, I kept turning to her and asking if
such and such happened in the Bible: Did Judas really hang himself? (Not sure)
Was there really a Roman soldier named Lucious that ended up believing in
Christ? (Don't remember that) Did Jesus really have red hair and blue eyes?
(Probably not). Eventually she disappeared into another room out of earshot,
but demanded that I keep the movie running because she was still watching it.
So I was left to puzzle all these peoples, details, and situations out for
myself. The conclusion I came to was that the Romans were decadent swine, that
Judas punked Jesus, but not because he was really a bad sort, and that Jesus
Christ was someone that preached a lot more tolerance, goodwill, and positivity
than I was lead to believe by self-proclaimed Christians like Pat Robertson and
his ilk.  Prior to the movie, the video tape has a trailer for the movie and it provokes
some unintended laughs when they talk about how they searched for months to
pick just the right guy to play Jesus and settled on Jeffrey Hunter because
among many another qualifications, he was a man of "great personal integrity."
Now, I ain't saying that Jeff wasn't the nicest guy in the biz, I'm just saying
that the idea that someone is going to give you a good performance (and isn't
that what is paramount here?) because they are a decent sort of guy is a bit
silly. There was a lot more bombast in the trailer, but I guess that's what
sold epics back then. Understatement wasn't a prime consideration in this
genre. Once the movie actually gets going, I felt my heart race and my left
arm go numb when the narrator (Orson Welles) intones that the year is 63 B.C.
Maybe I don't know a whole lot about this religious stuff, but I was smart
enough to dope out the fact that we are starting things way before Jesus was
ever immaculately conceived, let alone, bugging Roman slugs. I wondered just
how much pre-game hype I was going to have to sit through, after all, I was
paying to see a film about Christ and his times, not about how crappy everyone
had it, until he showed up. I suppose that just gives everything that followed
context. Before Christ appeared and began preaching, the Jews were once again
enslaved. I recall in The Ten Commandments that the whole point of things seemed to be that the Jews were enslaved by the
Egyptians (or at least Yul Brenner) and that Moses showed up and buried them
all in the Red Sea or something. Now, the Jews were enslaved by the Romans and
were looking for another guy to set them free. I was a bit concerned that what
we
were looking at here was some type of lame re-make masquerading as an
unofficial sequel, but I was pleasantly surprised that they had more up their
sleeve with this one and that the story of Jesus is a little less straight
forward and has some twists and turns not seen in Moses' movie. As Jesus grew
up into his role as the Messiah, you can see that he has a very different take
on how to lead people to his beliefs than Moses did. I think I would call it a
quiet confidence, whereas Moses wasn't shy about busting out the super powers
whenever he needed them.  Once we've seen a few battles between dirtbag Romans and the Jews, we go to
Bethlehem where there's no room at the Inn, but we do have this really sweet
theme-suite out back in the manger. This part of the story I had heard about
through a variety of Christmas cartoons. The three wisemen show up and that's
about it as far as all that stuff goes. Jesus gets born and I was wondering if
they were going to show us anything about his childhood, because my
understanding is that there isn't much info on that in the Bible, but they skip
over that and show him once at about the age of twelve and the next time we see
him, he's about thirty-two and ready to embark on his mission to give testimony
to
the word of God. I don't know what happened to Joseph, but his mother, Mary
seemed very supportive of his calling, more so than probably the mothers of
other
messiahs. While Jesus isn't getting as much screen time as you would expect,
the movie focuses on the Roman power structure that controlled the Jews.
Mainly you get to see Herodias, the man that would rule that part of the Roman
empire for Caesar. Herodias is probably the biggest piece of trash you're
likely to run into and makes a good villain (as does Pilate). Herodias
embodies all the decadence that Jesus stood opposed to. Herodias ascends to
the throne after killing his old man. The movie sometimes sinks to using less
than subtle methods to get its point across, thus you get sensationalistic
scenes like the one where Herodias poisons his old man, then pushes him down
the stairs leading up to his throne. Oh, so this Herodias is a bad person,
thanks for cluing us in. Herodias also has a wife which he apparently stole
from his brother off-screen. There is also a daughter of some type named
Salome that Herodias looks like he's having some type of relationship with.
Salome is of course corrupted beyond all belief by this environment (it's
called "boundaries" Herodias) and controls Herodias with her dirty dancing
(could they be any more decadent?). It's through this dancing that she makes
Herodias give her anything she wants. In this case, she demands the head of
John the Baptist. John the who? What happened to Jesus? Okay, a funny thing
about this movie is that Jesus seems to disappear from the script for vast
amounts of time, leaving things in the hands of such secondary characters as
this John guy and another dude named Barabbas. Barabbas? Yeah, he actually
got his own biblical epic starring Anthony Quinn, but in this film he's played
by a guy I never heard of. The movie tries to have this sweeping scope, but it
sacrifices any kind of focus by doing that. 
The movie goes on to detail John the Baptist's efforts to preach the coming of
the Messiah. Once Jesus shows up, John recognizes him as the Messiah and these
two have some nice scenes together. John baptizing Christ and Christ coming to
see John who has been imprisoned by the Romans for pretty much calling them out
for the sick, twisted freaks they are, give this movie a much needed sense of
humanity. It allows us to watch Christ interact with a believer and to see the
effect he has on that man. Before John gets his head whacked off, he hears the
voice of Jesus and is satisfied that Christ has admitted that he is who he says
he is (John never doubted Jesus' identity, he just wanted him to own up to it).
As Jesus' notoriety grows, it is all played out against the backdrop of
unrest, where Barabbas is fomenting some type of revolt. His buddy Judas has
decided that Jesus is the way to go and has left Barabbas to be among Jesus'
disciples (I think all of us know how this turns out). Before it all does
though, one of the great moments of the film is the rendering of Jesus' Sermon
on the Mount. Here he delivers his message to an audience of thousands and
walks among the assembled people answering their questions and addressing their
doubts. This was very well done and resembled a town meeting or something. I
found myself recognizing a number of sayings when Jesus spoke (It turns out
that this Bible is the basis for a lot of Western culture!) and the beauty of
if all was that he never spoke an ill word or preached violence or anything
other than understanding and looking at the foibles you yourself have before
whining about how crappy everyone else is. These pukes on TV that are supposedly
preaching the word of God need to figure out that they should be worried about
themselves and not the fact that I like to crank up a little Motley Crue when
I'm down at the gay bar or something. Jesus is also doing some miracles around
town (the movie kind of downplays this aspect of things) and the Romans get all
pissy, because he's giving hope to the hopeless (that's never a good thing for
the ruling class). Judas eventually punks Jesus and rats him out to the
Romans, but it seemed to me that he didn't do it because he wanted them to
destroy Jesus, so much as because he thought that once Jesus was jailed, he
would use his powers to wipe out the Romans. In essence he was just trying to
force Jesus' hand to do something for his followers. What he ends up doing is
setting in motion the events that would ultimately form the basis for one of
the world's major religions. Way to go Judas! For a movie that wanted to make all these events a spectacle, they play
Christ's crucifixion and his resurrection with pretty good restraint though
these things seem to be a bit abbreviated considering all the time that was
spent on stuff like Barabbas getting his army together and John haranguing
Salome. The time on the cross, his appearance to Magdalene, and his final
appearance to his disciples fills the last five minutes of the movie. Even
Jesus dragging the cross through the streets seems underdeveloped, his journey
taking about 20 steps before they cut to the crucifixion. I understand that
its an artistic choice about what you want to emphasize and if you want to
concentrate on his life, that's fine, but this is a person who's very death is
central to the story and it seems a bit abrupt to concentrate on all these
crappy Romans and battles and then when it comes time to see the pay-off,
everything is over before you know it. They didn't give the audience time to
be moved by those events. I would think that whatever beliefs you have, the
idea of someone sacrificing himself for everyone else, having doubts about it,
resolving those doubts, dying, and then transforming into something beyond
life, would be quite the story. Mel Gibson understood this in Braveheart when he did his own Christ-like demise and milked William Wallace's death for
all it was worth. I'm not saying that they should've wallowed in things (its
ultimately supposed to be uplifting anyway), but give us a taste of the emotion
of the moment. As far as he was allowed to, Jeffrey Hunter did a good job of
bringing the role of Jesus to the big screen. His Jesus is probably about a
bit too close to a male model lookswise, but there is an authority in his
portrayal
that you see in scenes like the one where he is on trial for his life and he
refuses to respond to Pilate's questions and demands, keeping his eyes closed,
as if this pagan's corrupt legal system simply didn't exist. Whenever he's on
screen, he's magnetic in his calmness and wisdom, but he simply isn't on screen
enough. Characters like John the Baptist and Barabbas came off like refugees
from a Hercules movie and did little but gum up the works and slow things
down. The movie looks good, there's a cast of thousands and the locations are
nice (though the print on the videotape I was watching was pretty bad - visual
artifacts abounded and this was a brand new tape - a cleaned up print for a
DVD release would be appropriate). The movie wants to be about the King of
Kings, but the flabby script makes it more about the King of Kings and all his
friends, enemies, associates and every other historical character (real or made
up) that they could stick in there. The story of Jesus could make a powerful
and moving motion picture and this one does have its moments, but too often it
veers off course and pushes lame characters to the forefront (like Lucious)
leaving Jesus missing in action.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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