Still a wonderful movie – especially for my generation.

Rating: 10/10 (3 March 2010)

A few nights ago, while working in my home office, I was pulled from my concentration to run out and see what my husband was watching on the TV in the family room. My husband had switched the channel and landed on the slave galley scene from Ben-Hur. The sounds of the drum beating as slaves rowed, was instantly recognizable. I immediately told my husband to press "record" on our DVR to capture the remainder of this epic show. From that moment, I was unable to tear myself away and proceeded to watch the story unfold as the rest of my household went to bed. I sat rapt and weeping yet again over this glorious movie.
I remember watching this movie in a movie theater in 1959 with my family when it first came out. I was 3 or 4 years old. I recall that during the extremely intense chariot race I had to cover my eyes and asked my mother to tell me when the scene was over and to tell me "if the good guys won"! That scene, so intense for me then, still caused me to exclaim in trepidation, even now at age 54.
Thinking back, I have identified with this movie each of the three times I have watched it. As a child then, my thoughts were about the cruelty of some, the integrity of others and the wonders of this Christ they spoke about. I remember thinking that I hoped I would grow up and have a brother so heroic that he would come and save me like Juda Ben-Hur did when he came back for his sister and mother and carried them out of the Lepers' colony, and also that there would still be men like Christ for my generation. Later on, in my early twenties, I watched this movie again. I remember wishing then that I could meet a man so honorable and heroic (like Juda) who, if in similar circumstances, would come back and save his family and marry me! Now as an adult and mother to a son and daughter, I wept yet again during my viewing (!) and wondered if my family was in similar circumstances, might my son be so strong and heroic that he could survive such cruelties and still feel such love and devotion that he would be able to come back to save his mother and his younger sister? How the years pass. The movie was and still is fantastic and deserves all the accolades it has received.