The Saga of Judah Ben-Hur

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 2017)

On the surface, the classic "Ben-Hur" is remembered for the dazzling chariot race featuring the grimacing Charlton Heston at the reins. But on a deeper level, this leisurely paced and nearly four-hour big-budget film is a great Christian tale.
Based on the bestselling novel of Civil War general Lew Wallace and first published in 1880, "Ben-Hur"is set in Judea at the time of Christ. Judah Ben-Hur is a patrician Jew, who comes into conflict with his childhood chum Messala, who becomes the Roman Tribune of Judea. An accident that kills a Roman consul implicates Judah, his mother, and his sister, leading to the imprisonment of the women and to the sentence of Judah as a galley slave.
After Judah saves the life of another consul, Quintus Arrius, on the Roman ship, he is adopted as a Roman citizen. He becomes a skilled charioteer who figures in the famous chariot race in which Messala cheats during the race and is eventually trampled under the horses' hooves when he falls from his chariot. Of course, Judah is the winner.
The film has an overt homoerotic level in the interactions of Messala and Judah. But it is Jack Hawkins as Quintus Arrius who steals the show, especially when he is gawking at the manly muscles of the galley slaves during their rowing exercises.
The plot summary above fails to convey the principal mission of the film to tell the story of the Crucifixion. At a critical moment of his life, Judah Ben-Hur was befriended by a stranger who gave him water when he was near death. The stranger touches the life of Judah in a way that will promote love and healing in his family. Of course, the stranger is Jesus of Nazareth.
Much of the Lew Wallace narrative is clumsy, especially the sequence when Judah's mother and sister become lepers and the love of Judah's life, Esther, refuses to reveal the truth to him. It is only the power of Jesus that eventually produces the miracle that will place love, instead of revenge, in the heart of Judah Ben-Hur.