#100. Ben-Hur

100. Ben-Hur - 1959

Directed by: William Wyler
Written by: Lew Wallace (novel) and Karl Tunberg (screenplay)

Starring: Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet and Jack Hawkins

Previous viewing status: Unwatched except a clip of the chariot race.


The thing about Ben-Hur is that it is a film based on religion. The thing about me is that I'm hard-pressed to find anything appealing in film of a religious nature. I suppose cinematically it was an achievement. The massive sets and backgrounds created for the film; the dynamic shots that helped influence the intensity of characters predicaments. The real frustrating bit about the religousness of the film is that it comes in as a magic wand to fix a scene that would otherwise need more explanation. Instead of that, we just get the back of Jesus's head and a reaction of the person looking at him as if they have suddenly forgotten how to blink and close their mouths. There's no emotion or anything in the way they look at him, it's actually incredibly disturbing. It plays off as bad acting, but really it's just bad direction. It makes the film feel as if there is no soul in these parts, more like it's an infomercial for Jesus than a feature film with a plot, characters and entertainment value. As soon as those bits are over, the story starts back up and this is where I can really get into the heart and core of the film: man crushes.

It's evident from the very first time we meet Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) that he has quite the enamoring effect on other men. He first meets up with his childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd) whose fire and anxious passion flickering in his eyes is almost disturbing because Judah seems to not even notice this in his close-friend's overly warm greeting. There are multiple other instances throughout the film that play to this same strange affect that Ben-Hur has on other men.

By far, the most homo-erotic scene in the film is when the Consul, Quintus Arrius, a man in his late 40s or early 50s, is on the Roman military ship that Judah Ben-Hur is a slave of for rowing. He picks Ben-Hur out of all the slaves and whips him after asking how long he's been on the ship. Soon after this, he has a chair to sit in and watch the mostly naked men rowing and rowing while sweat drips down their glistening muscles. He then tells the drummaster to up the pace to Battle, Attack and so on, working the men harder and harder and harder and ooh! Oh! YES YES YES! That's it! Don't stop! Don't stop! DON'T STOP!! Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh yeaaaaaaaaaaaah...... And they all slump over when he finally releases... erm, relieves them of the drummaster's beat. Arrius then retires to his private quarters. The next scene is Ben-Hur entering his quarters (take that phrase as you wish). It only elevates from there, including bondage, ring-giving and riding bitch on a chariot.

Aside from all the man crushes everyone seems to get on Judah, there is also this strange lapsing in time. It's not portrayed well at all. We're constantly jumping forward in time and not realizing it happened until someone says, "Oh it's been three years and twenty-nine days!" And then we're just left to make up what happened in the missed years, when it sounded like there was some pretty exciting stuff going for the characters then, like Ben-Hur somehow becoming some super-star in the chariot races at the Roman Circus (not like the modern circus, but similar in that it was for entertainment, often with mortal reprecussions). And who cares if he said he hated the Romans, and that he left his mother and sister to rot in a prison dungeon in Judea? He was pimpin' now, though he felt bad in his heart about it. I would have liked to have seen this change in character instead of just be left out of the loop in what made him stay in Rome and so readily become one of them.

All in all, it wasn't a terrible film (aside from the white actor with his face painted to look Arab, which was humiliating to watch). The pace of the film was done well and everything that happened to Judah was something I wanted to see through to the end. The chariot race scene lives up to its hype as an amazing piece of film, and that is possibly the reason it is so well-loved. The mutilated Messala's death is also quite poignant and masterfully acted. There is also a lot to be said of the lepers and their role in bringing around Judah's peaceful side again (since he was "corrupted" in Rome to be vengeful and angry). But of course in the end, when the film has taken a turn to la-la-land and we're for some reason focusing on Jesus's death, the lepers are instantly cured of their disfiguring disease. And that concludes a film with an odd and ambiguous ending to which all I can say is:

"Jesus is magic!"