Perhaps too epic for its own good

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2010)

We begin with the birth of Jesus. And then we leave Jesus behind as we spend three and a half hours following the story of Judah Ben-Hur. Subtitle notwithstanding this is not "A Tale of the Christ". Oh Jesus pops up now and again for a few brief moments. But this is a tale of Ben-Hur. So who is this Ben-Hur fellow? Well he's a man whose life's journey goes something along the lines of wealthy Jew in Jerusalem turned galley slave turned adopted son of Roman nobleman turned champion chariot racer. Well that certainly sounds like an exciting life. But the way the story is presented doesn't make for a particularly exciting movie. This movie is quite a slog. 212 long, long, long minutes. And the sad reality is it didn't have to be this way. The movie could have so easily been streamlined to great effect. So many scenes that go on so much longer than they have to. So much time utterly wasted. This movie could have clocked in at two and a half hours without losing anything important. Instead what we get is a potentially fascinating story which, in the way it is told, ends up being somewhat monotonous. There are good reasons nobody makes three-plus hour biblical epics anymore.
This is a movie which has its moments but there is a lot of tedium along the way. The most famous sequence is of course the undeniably exciting chariot race. But even that scene serves as an example of the ways in which the movie goes wrong. The race itself is a little long but we can forgive that as by this point in the story we're looking for all the excitement we can get. But the wait for the race to actually start is interminable. The buildup as we wait for the chariots to get to the starting line goes on forever and a day. Just the most obvious example of a sequence which serves no purpose other than to bring the film's momentum to an abrupt halt. Honestly, was director William Wyler being paid by the minute? This movie screams out for an editor with the freedom to slice and dice this thing down to size. But alas that was not to be.
I suppose one has to make allowances for the time in which a movie is made. Ben-Hur clearly is a film with a style which plays much better in 1959 than it does today. It's big and grand and epic. But in so many ways too big and grand and epic for its own good. It certainly looks spectacular, making it easy to see how awards for cinematography, costume design and set decoration were among the slew of Oscars which came this film's way. It's understandable that Charlton Heston would get an Oscar for his challenging task of carrying the film over it's endless running time. I'm still trying to figure out what Hugh Griffith did to get a supporting actor Oscar though. You can see how the pieces were there to make a potentially great film. And you can see why upon its initial release it was in fact lauded as a great film. But it's not 1959 anymore. Time has been less kind to this "great film" than others of its period. In the end the movie suffers because it refuses to end. On and on and on it goes. Brief moments of excitement, long stretches of boredom. Even after the great climax of the chariot race the movie just won't stop. We get a good old-fashioned leprosy storyline which is about as appealing and entertaining as you would imagine it to be. And finally, and I do mean finally, Jesus shows up again to bookend the proceedings. No prizes for guessing how the Jesus story turns out. As for the Ben-Hur story it's one which had the potential to entertain and inspire. But the story's impact is dulled by the way in which it was told. It's a self-important epic which is too darned epic.