Moses was not on the big screen for the first time. Moses was a Hebrew prophet. His life and deeds are mostly recorded in Exodus in the second book of the Old Testament of the Bible. In the book, how he experienced the twists and turns and the grandeur of God's help and help, and finally led God's people out of a hundred years His life as a slave and the adventure of getting out of his colonial home country Egypt is extremely dramatic in itself, and it has long been a subject that Western art creation is willing to quote. Movies are no exception. In 1923 and 1956, a movie named "The Ten Commandments" (The Ten Commandments) came out, both of which were produced by Paramount, and the box office benefited well. Closer to modern movie fans should be the animation "The Prince of Egypt" (The Prince of Egypt) launched by DreamWorks in 1998. This work has an amazing reputation, and it won two Oscar nominations that year. This was an unprecedented move in the twentieth century when the Oscars did not yet have an animation award. The previous box office performance and the outstanding revision afterwards can make the filmmakers and film fans expect Moses to reappear on the screen.
However, the celebrity director Ridley Scott (Ridley Scott) clearly has his ambitions. He is not content to shoot a missionary advertisement that is a photobook, nor does he want to stop at imitating the masterpieces of his predecessors. In "Exodus: Kings of Heaven and Earth", which started filming in 2014, he and up to four screenwriters reshaped the soul of the protagonist Moses. Unlike the image of Moses in the past, in the whole film, Moses has a character that is thoroughly questionable. Moses had the courage to question the gods, and even more questioned himself who tried to believe in God. The prophecies of the Egyptian priests disgusted him, but the supernatural miracles of the Hebrew gods did not make him immediately naturalized. What kind of state of mind did such a suspicious prince Moses experienced, and finally became the prophet Moses who met God? The transformation of faith is exactly where Raleigh Scott considered to be subverted in an Old Testament deed that has been well-known for thousands of years.
I want to subvert the classics, but the subversion is not complete, which is the most embarrassing feeling I feel when watching "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth". The bottom line is that the story did not dare to give Egypt a new reason after all, trying to write a new solution that is different from the classic answer.
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(1)
For the average movie fan, "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth" should be an epic movie with excellent results.
The movie uses the minimalist brother wall as the prologue to spread the whole play. Moses and his brother Ramses were descendants of the Egyptian royal family. They lived a life of youth and frivolous greed, and they were in agreement and cooperating with each other in the hemp government. However, after the Egyptian priest made a prophecy that Moses would become the leader, he laid the groundwork for the future conflict between the two, and only waited for the wave of feeding and growth as the film unfolded, and then gradually emerged on the table. Moses was an Egyptian adopted son of Hebrew slave blood. Ramses was an Egyptian emperor who was born in heaven. They support different nations. The only god of the Hebrew nation, Jehovah, is also a god who is in fashion with Egypt. Belief goes against. When Moses led the Hebrews to break away from the rule of Egypt and become an equal existence, the two religious nations that were already very different were bound to conflict. This big battle between humans and gods constituted the main axis of the whole film, until Moses got rid of the Egyptian army and crossed the Red Sea, and the Hebrew nation got the fruits of victory and came to an end.
The rhythm of the whole film is grand and delicate. The film reproduces the Egyptian country in the first millennium BC. The architecture and the clothes that appear are very particular about the appearance. The actors' manners of entering and exiting and using these props are also convincing, exuding a strong sense of historical facts. The military opera Hiroo in the Egyptian army's campaign, the literary wit of Moses' repeated negotiations with the enemy and us, supplemented by the rendering of other movie elements, such as music, cast and computer special effects, are all in place. Raleigh Scott is worthy of being a veteran who started the epic film for nearly a decade, and he is familiar with this type of theme.
For Christians, "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth" should be a decent biblical fable.
The antecedents and consequences of the plot of the whole film closely follow the meaning of the Old Testament "Exodus" text. We saw that Moses, who was exiled by the Egyptian government, sought a living outside the border, and received the miraculous inspiration of the Hebrew God Jehovah. He returned to Egypt and asked the King of Egypt to be his brother Ramses and free the Hebrews from slavery. . Ramses, a polytheistic believer, laughed at Moses' beliefs. He did not expect that the next natural disasters and misfortunes cast by the Lord would plunge his kingdom into waves of chaos, and even strangle his eldest son. Through the latest computer special effects, the miraculous miracles in the original work, such as the river of blood, hail, and locusts, are all brought to life, echoing the magic power of the Hebrew gods in the story.
In some places, the film is slightly different from the original. These adjustments may be due to the enhancement of details. For example, the reason why Moses was exiled was not the punishment after the murder, but the freezing after the political opponents attacked, which gave Moses a reasonable reason why he lost as a prince for no reason; some adjustments were made behind the scenes of the movie. Consider, for example, the age at which Moses returned to Egypt also rejuvenated from 80 to early 30s and 40s. This is obviously a setting tailored for actor Christian Bale, who is not in doubt. But at the big festival, these ins and outs will not distract the taste of Exodus.
But what about Raleigh Scott?
As mentioned earlier, Raleigh does not want to just satisfy the needs of the public and believers, he wants to create his own needs. Therefore, he photographed himself the third way to watch "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth". It was about how Moses as a man chose his beliefs and beliefs.
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(2) God’s messenger does not believe in God
. Moses in Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth is extremely self-reliant. In one sentence, he is even more stubborn than the audience. But watching the full movie, the audience will know that behind Moses' stubbornness, there is a big question about what his faith is.
Moses was born in Egypt, where many gods existed, but he took an unbelief attitude because when he was young, he dismissed the divination methods of Egyptian priests and thought it was nonsense. The audience can easily understand, because that priest is really a stick, relying on the superstition of the former king to eat and wait to die. Needless to say, the divination oracle is nonsense. But this is just a fake. As the story approaches the end of the first act, Jehovah appears in front of Moses in the form of a child, showing the mysterious phenomenon of burning thorns in his hand. The audience knows that the real product is coming, and the background is not small.
Sure enough, Moses received the oracle and returned to Egypt to sting, and what followed him was a series of supernatural disasters. Ramses did not believe in God at first. His staff endorsed him, indicating that these phenomena were not miracles, but the laws of nature. The staff explained that the Nile River happened to be trapped in the year when Moses returned, which constituted the emergence of the blood river. The fishy smell that caused the frog plague that caused a large number of amphibious young children to land on the shore. These frog damages happened to attract flies all over the sky. As a result, the entire country of Egypt had a nationwide disease, because it was caused by flies. The self-justification is wonderful, and viewers who are familiar with the tone of the Discovery Channel may have been persuaded by this set of rhetoric. However, when the sky began to smash hail, tornadoes ravaged North Africa, which had been rainless for a long time, and locusts came on an expedition to eat rice... At this moment, Ramses had to believe that this was not a phenomenon, but a real miracle. Of course, the same is true for the audience.
This was not the case with Moses. When the Hebrews were always excited and excited when they watched their gods exuding majesty, Moses would walk into the wilderness and complain sadly to God. His cry in the wilderness is to vent and ask questions. He shouted: If God has such a supernatural power, why hasn't it been ignored for four hundred years? Why is the purpose of the miracle to force Ramses to launch a policy of abolition of slavery, but only has the effect of punishing the poor? He witnessed the divine power of God, but he was even more confused. Why was he sent to Egypt? Of course, God was not refuted by him, but he did not stop questioning again and again following the miracle.
The messenger of God did not believe in God! Moses was the only prophet of the Hebrew God at the time, but he was not a believer of God. Moses' position was embarrassing, but he insisted on it. This paradoxical undercurrent in the film is a very different link between this play and the traditional Old Testament text and the movie "Prince of Egypt".
The first is that Moses challenged God. I think that Moses played by Christine Bell is obviously the incarnation of Raleigh Scott. The director used the words of Moses three thousand years ago to say something three thousand years later. Moses' series of "questions" to God is the continuous quality of the modern intricacies of the various sects of believers and non-believers about the meaning of the "Exodus" text.
More importantly, Moses chose not to believe in God, or to be precise, not to claim to be a believer, what motives were behind it. Of course, Moses could choose to be silent on the threats of God to Egypt, and he was also qualified to choose to follow blindly, because he was chosen by God himself. However, he did not make this choice. This is because Moses had a deeper debate about faith, which is the proposition of what faith is.
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(3), in the wilderness to observe faith in the wilderness The
reason why we people choose to believe in our faith, is it because of what faith has brought us, or has faith changed us? For Moses in Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth, the answer must be the latter.
The location of the wilderness where Moses talked with God was very well chosen. While overlooking the movement of the Egyptian capital, he could always look back at the Hebrew refugee cave beyond the back wall. This kind of vision is exactly the portrayal of his position in this battle of faith. He looked at the scene of the wilderness, whether Hebrews, King Rabbis, or spectators outside the theater, these people were subdued by the power of miracles, and they could definitely start to fear or obey the value of this belief. Is stupid. Value theory only exists in the depths of the soul and reason, so it should be the pure imperfection of faith, not the strength of the power, to save the soul. Moses, who possessed a dual identity, understood that if the Chu prisoners believed in the Hebrew people who wept for four centuries because of the fact that Jehovah could bring blood to the sea, instead of Jehovah’s teachings, Hebrews could become good and start. Wisdom, living out of value, there is no essential difference between this belief and the intimidation of the Egyptians.
Moses was very arrogant since he was a child, and believed that man will conquer the sky. Even in the trivial matter of shepherding the sheep, he insisted on his son to do it on his own instead of praying. He is very aware of the fact that his own power is not as good as his divine power. The natural disasters and misfortunes caused by Jehovah are all real, but they are all forces in the external world, not beliefs themselves. The catastrophe that God gave to Egypt can crush the Pharaoh’s illusory court, but it does not mean that the new life God gave him can be better and better than the old soul he gave himself. The old and the new value, which one is wrong, made Moses painful, but it also made Moses not lose his persistence.
Faith does not only exist in religion, there is faith everywhere in life. Extracting the core of the plot of "Exodus: Kings of Heaven and Earth", and abandoning the story of Moses and the position of Christianity, looking at the reality of 2014, you can more or less realize that the pull of belief and power also exists. Between us mediocre people. They all have their own principles, professional stances, political tendencies and ideologies more or less. How we choose the occasions for our own reliance among the many camps, sometimes just because of speculation. For example, at the time of the Sunflower Student Movement, Taiwanese should all feel the climate of seeking change pervading the city. Many people chose to be "awakened citizens" and stood up as anti-government or anti-party attitudes. . However, this awakening is because of the courage to be grateful for how democratic values have cultivated oneself, or the selfishness of wanting to gain an upper hand from a peer or moral standpoint? Worth pondering. Universal dogma is by no means eternally correct, and anti-universal dogma is not without distortion. The intellectual conclusions of repentance are often separated from the perceptual impulse of black and white. The truth is right and wrong, the two are difficult to distinguish, and people have to choose between them.
For some churches, the belief in "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth" is a sharp criticism. Since the value side is the biggest game field in which the soul can accept faith, the rise and fall of external religious groups should be considered in a secondary position. But in reality, many churches are still thinking about the number of miracles as a rough method of mission. Once a few healings and dialects appeared in his church, he shouted for miracles, advertised to Kyushu, emphasized worshiping God to see the truth, and believing in the Holy Spirit to have miracles. This kind of convincing advertisement is the target of criticism of "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth". The core of belief in miracles is to prove the existence of God as a slogan, and in the heart it is fact that incites to question the existence of God. One day, false believers who believe in the power of God more diligent than in the name of God will find stronger power and stay away from the church. It is not that the belief is wrong, but the belief that has not been understood from the beginning. There is no faith at all, how can we talk about it? Without faith in the church, there is no different thief party.
Moses went through ups and downs, and it was at the critical moment of life and death in the Red Sea that Moses finally reached a consensus with God. In the end, Moses climbed Mount Sinai alone and carved out the Israeli Ten Commandments one by one on the stone tablets. This is another interesting discrepancy: In the Old Testament "Exodus", Moses' work on the mountain was only to find the slabs, and God himself used his finger to smear the words; in "Exodus: The King of Heaven and Earth" Moses spontaneously carved the stone, and God did nothing. He just boiled the pot on the side to boil the water for Moses to have a rest, and became a tea boy! In contrast between the two sides, Moses became the active agent. He engraved the Ten Commandments to warn the whole people with his own hands, which represented that the value of the Ten Commandments came from his identity, not from the miraculous external force of God again. Moses truly became a believer and accepted the teachings of God. The connection of Hebrew blood became the mind of Hebrew faith. He filled his life with the Holy Spirit of God, and allowed God's value to live in his soul and coexist with himself. In other words, it wasn't until the end of the movie that Moses truly became the messenger of God whom Joshua and the Hebrews admired in the Bible, and he was truly the prophet Moses in the traditional image.
From "Win God", "Suspicious God", and finally to "Welcome God", the wave of thought ripples throughout the film are Moses' self-diagnosis of his beliefs; at the same time, it is also a film that challenges the audience's beliefs.
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(four), unfortunately, the bad place
"Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth" is not a missionary movie.
Even though on the surface it seems that the faith of the Egyptians has been defeated by the seven miracles of Jehovah, and it seems vulnerable, but the film retains a buffer space. Not every heathen is ineffective or falsified, because the prophecy of the Egyptian priests that "Moses will become the leader" is indeed effective. This prophecy affects the feelings of the brothers, and it can be said that it is the beginning of everything. It is no less important than any miracle of the Lord. Although the eldest son of Ramébis, a fish slave, died tragically, he did not completely succumb to Jehovah. Just like his brother Moses, he distinguished the difference between value and power. Although he was defeated again because of his stupid death-chase tactics, he miraculously survived in the red sea, rather than the complete destruction in the Old Testament, which is also an arrangement not to let the story be too one-sided.
However, the crux of the whole film lies in this. Raleigh Scott and the four screenwriters removed the missionary teachings of the Old Testament "Exodus", but did not dare to put a new meaning on their own, causing the whole film "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth" to fall into self Problems with unclear positioning.
God is given humanity in this film. It does not adopt the voice of the sky in the Old Testament to express itself, and chooses to appear before Moses as a human child, which is one of them; instead of the position of absolute master, it uses a kind of between priests and fathers. The authoritative relationship with Moses is the second. Moses talked with God in the wilderness. There was no teaching, and often quarrels. In the eyes of Joshua, a bystander who could not see God, he thought that Moses had become neurotic.
But does the God of this play need humanity? The God of Human Nature is like Morgan Freeman in "Bruce Almighty". He enlightened the life of Jim Carrey with a humorous elder attitude. He also said that he would cause the Black Death on vacation, which is very helpful to the audience. However, what the God of Exodus faces is not the grievances of the promotion of office workers, but the survival issue of how national heroes should save the nation from the sufferings of the nation. We may be able to easily accept a genderless God with boundless powers, and then extinguish the pagan believers in Baal after upholding a religious stand. After all, the thinking of ghosts and gods is far beyond speculation. But a human God with boundless powers only wanted revenge, swiping his sleeves to wash the hundreds of thousands of children in Egypt? Normal people don't think about it, and what is left will only give the intuition of the tyrant. After hearing the Hebrew gods slaughter overnight, Rabysis yelled: "How could there be such a cruel guy!" He spoke very sharply about the gap between the impression of evil gods and wicked people. If God becoming a child is a playwright's trick, and want to make people close to this role, it is obviously a big mistake.
Secondly, Moses boldly spoke to Jehovah in this film, but God did not answer. This also made God's position to lead the Hebrews extremely weak. In the wilderness, God selectively haunted him. Moses asked him endlessly. In response to Moses’s accusation that he had not appeared for four hundred years, he was either secretive or evasive. In the end, he would use the trick of disappearing out of thin air. Moses was forgiven for eating turtles alone in the wilderness. This is simply a move of the mouse generation. In the film, the debates on the trial of faith were revealed, but the opponent and the referee were absent from time to time so that the schedule ended without problems. Moses, who questioned the heavens speechlessly, almost relied on himself to find out the fragments that God occasionally said to comprehend the true meaning of his faith. I can’t help making people wonder, if one had to choose a Hebrew other than Moses (such as Joshua who looks like Jesus) as the prophet of the Exodus, how many people would have the patience and understanding to follow this mine Boy messing up?
The subversion is too subtle to affect the general direction of the Old Testament text. Therefore, although "Exodus: Kings of Heaven and Earth" oscillates another kind of richness between conservative and unconservative scales, it has not become a complete reversal. movie.
Moses still believed in God, the Hebrew slaves were still out of trouble because of miracles, the king of Egypt still suffered heavy losses due to his arrogance, the Ten Commandments were still born, and the free Hebrews still marched to the other side of the cloud and the fire. , Did not escape the fate of another continuous war with the pagan nation after a few decades... Every link of the Old Testament is firmly locked in the plot of the movie. If you want to abandon these, you must reinterpret the causes and consequences of the entire Exodus; if you want to subvert these, you must directly discard the foundation of the Pentateuch, and throw out a new theory that is powerful enough to shake the majesty of God, which is interesting. However, the film is neither willing to discard it nor intends to subvert it. As a result, although the storyteller fills the movie as much as possible, he puts surprising and fresh explanations in every set of plot links, but they are always down. A set of plot links came to an end, and was once again forced back to the context of the Old Testament.
This situation is like an F-1 car driving into the urban area of New Taipei City. No matter how fast the car is on this street, it will eventually be stopped by a red light at the next intersection; the car rushes to a stop and races. The overall speed did not increase much, and the driver in the driver's seat was first dizzy by frequent braking. The hard work of the team behind the helm of "Exodus: Kings of Heaven and Earth" can definitely be seen from the fine-tuning of the body and engine; but the results of the race obviously still only ran a good report card.
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(5), I guessed why it was
a pity that it was incomplete to reverse the case. I don't know whether it should be blamed on Raleigh Scott's improper selection or due to the pressure of public opinion.
Raleigh Scott is not without previous convictions. I remember that in "Robin Hood" (Robin Hood) directed by him in 2010, he had a record of reversing the old book. The Robin Hood script he originally got was quite special. The script intends to let the audience detect Robin Hood as a ruffian from the perspective of King John of England, and indirectly endangers the life order of many innocent civilians. It is an epic reversal. Raleigh Scott believes that this reversal is not enough to convince people. The final "Robin Hood" movie still returns to the typical legend of the hero Robin Hood vs. the tyrant King John, but adds another character similar to the clever words in the Lord of the Rings story. Let the crime of tyranny spread a little bit among the staff of the entire English government, not just John. This time the adaptation of "Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth" is a biblical story. The myth is far more typical than the legend, and the transformation must be more complicated. This may be a cover that Raleigh Scott can't even start.
Or maybe it's just that I think too much, and the reason is simpler, that is, filmmakers are afraid that biblical stories that are too overturned will lose the believer market and increase the box office in disguise. After all, the main audience of the Bible story is walking in North America and Europe. To earn the copper of these complex and changeable religious sects, it is of course the best policy to make conservative and safe adaptations.
In fact, in April of this year, a film that turned the verdict to almost defamation came out, called "Noah" (Noah). This film is adapted from the first book of the Old Testament, "Genesis," which is earlier than the Exodus text and has a stronger deification color. However, the director has drastically processed the Old Testament text, and the result can only be described as unrecognizable; in the second half of the performance, Even laser-sparking monsters swam up from the rim of the Pacific Ocean, and Noah's belief in God was so strange that it was banned by many TV stations. Bold enough, but what about the box office? The global total is less than 120 million U.S. dollars, which is close to losing money. In this case, even if Exodus had planned as early as the year before last, the filmmaker would definitely find a way to pull out the place where the movie might be too exciting. Coincidentally, the actor of "Noah" (Noah) is the old partner Raleigh Scott found in "Robin Hood", namely the actor Russell Crowe
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(6), summary
"Exodus: King of Heaven and Earth" is still a high-quality movie. It is difficult to find flaws in post-production technology, and the ability of directing and editing is still excellent. Today, as the number of epic films is gradually decreasing, it can be regarded as a great movie with big and small flaws.
To talk about what I learned the most from this attempt to reverse the case, I probably feel that the most important thing humans should learn from God should be to change the subject. Having been absent for four hundred years of bad debts, I was very angry and sent Moses away with just one or two sentences. This cut is too clever!
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