Timur Bekmambetov’s period epic Ben-Hur gives the BC era the AD treatment. The latest adaptation of Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ has the crisp, flattening finish of the contemporary digital production, secular treatment of the original’s text’s explicitly religious themes, and excision of sexually suggestive subtext. The barely disguised homoerotic tensions between the fictional Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur and his friend-turned foe Massala in William Wyler’s acclaimed 1959 adaptation have been replaced by less intense emotions. Even Jesus Christ helpfully speaks in Biblical cliches, so that nobody could possibly mistake the bearded carpenter wandering through Roman-occupied Jerusalem as a very early hipster.
The opening scene presages the movie’s highlight. Ben-Hur (Jack Huston) and Messala (Tony Kebbell) face each off in the arena moments before they will race each other to death, and it appears that Bemkambetov is going to run the familiar story in reverse. A smooth transition sets the plot back on the path of linearity. The prosperous Jewish nobleman Ben-Hur and his family enjoy cordial ties with the Roman conquerors in pre-Christianity Jerusalem. Ben-Hur is both sympathetic to and distant towards the growing rebellion among the oppressed underclass. Although Messala is Ben-Hur’s adopted Roman brother, his second-class status is made painfully obvious by Ben-Hur’s contemptuous mother. Messala leaves to join the Roman Army and returns as a successful garrison commander, and he is the one who strips Ben-Hur of his status after an attempted assassination attempt and sends his former friend to the slave galleys. An attack on the fleet by the Greeks, seen from the point of view of the chained slaves in the bottom deck, delivers Ben-Hur to freedom and the patronage of Sheik Ilderim (Morgan Freeman). The Nubian impresario trains Ben-Hur to race chariots, setting up the film’s thrillingly shot climactic battle between the half-brothers.
Although the movie is handsomely mounted, its hand-held camerawork and ground-view of events shrinks the stature of its characters. The strapping masculinity of Heston’s Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd’s Messala has given way to actors who look more quotidian and unimpressive. Jack Huston’s clean-cut appearance and vacant eyes make him an unlikely hero, while Tony Kebbell’s six o’clock shadow-haunted visage raises questions of the Roman Army’s discipline levels. Kebbell, the better performer among the two main characters, does leave traces of Messala’s emotional turmoil, but both actors are easily shoved into the shade by Freeman’s Ilderim.
The chariot race is shot with modern-day cameras that allow perspectives missing in previous versions. Bemkambetov’s Ben-Hur is an adequate spectacle for viewers unaware of the existence of Wyler’s version, and the director’s impersonal approach to the charged material works fine until the moment of Ben-Hur’s encounter with Jesus Christ. The hurried ending seems tacked on to the real climax in the dust-laden arena, where men and horses shed blood for their beliefs.
