Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - B v S, With One v Too Many

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice picks up where 2013’s Man of Steel left off. Man of Steel’s finale was a battle between Superman and General Zod, with an army of spaceships and futuristic drilling machines (or something), smashing their way through Metropolis for what felt like an hour. Batman v Superman, in a bit of revisionist history, puts Bruce Wayne on the streets of Metropolis while all that smashing was going on, scrambling through the rubble, driving through and around and on top of it, and rushing into the debris of a crumbling building in a (very likely, offensive) homage to 9-11 imagery. It’s not totally clear why he’s there – I thought Wayne was a Gotham guy, but whatever. It’s an interesting scene by itself and sets up the whole point of the movie, or at least its title. A lot of people died and were injured and some of them even worked for one of Wayne’s companies. So Wayne blames Superman and wants him gone. It works as a way to set things up (for a while). But the problem is this is revisionist history outside of the movies as well. Director Zack Snyder was widely criticized for that climactic battle in Man of Steel. It was so over-the-top, so long, and so illogical – no spoilers, but the way it ends could have happened before it began – and Superman fans were outraged: their hero would never have been so careless with innocent lives. Batman v Superman tries to claim that the whole mess was intended, when everyone knows such smashing and chaos is just Snyder’s style. The scene works and he redeems himself for a while, but then outs himself again with all the unnecessary chaos and interminable smashing in the climax of this movie. He even shoehorns in an awkward explanation that this time the battle is in an “uninhabited” area. You’re not fooling us, Zack.

So Batman is mad (and dark and brooding and serious) and as he mentions in the trailer, “He [Superman] has the power to wipe out the human race. And if we think that there’s even a one percent chance that he’s our enemy, we have to treat it as an absolute certainty.” This has to be some of the worst logic and one of the shakiest foundations on which to set two characters against each other (I’m pretty sure that if there’s a 1% chance he’s your enemy that means it’s almost an absolute certainty he’s not). Batman wants to kill Superman because he is powerful and because he smashed up a city in his last fight. It doesn’t matter to him that the city smashing was done to prevent the destruction of the Earth by a supervillain – Superman is the enemy and that’s just that.

Superman, on the other hand, doesn’t even get an explanation for his dislike of the Batman. There’s mention that he doesn’t like vigilante justice, but he doesn’t seem to be able to reflect on himself. They just have to fight, because that would be cool, I guess. It is unclear why anyone is doing anything they do in this movie. Lex Luthor is in it, played by Jesse Eisenberg who is just outrageous, and not in a good way. He’s up to something and he’s bad because, well, Lex Luthor is the bad guy in the Superman stories. Wonder Woman shows up. Lois Lane is running all over the place, needing to be rescued. There’s a big monster to take care of. Other DC heroes are awkwardly introduced for future movies (there’s also a very long dream sequence that makes absolutely no sense unless it’s setting up future movies as well). Parents get involved. It’s almost incomprehensible.

Things play out that way for a while, and then the movie takes a turn for one of the dumbest reasons I’ve ever seen in a serious movie. And make no mistake, this movie goes out of its way to tell you how serious it is. There are repeated ramblings about gods and devils and the forces of good and evil and life and death and the purpose of existence, and it’s all so dark and ominous, desperately craving importance. It’s like reading the poetry of a 15-year-old boy.

But there’s a ton of superhero action, fighting, smashing, flying, explosions, and everything else you would expect from a movie with that title. And if you’ve seen Man of Steel or any of Snyder’s other films (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch) you know what to expect. With such low expectations, it really isn’t that bad (what a compliment). There are a few interesting scenes, some powerful imagery, and some intriguing ideas. Ben Affleck as an aging Batman could work (though for a much better treatment of older Batman, check out the animated Dark Knight Returns movies). 

Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies ushered in an age of dark and serious superhero movies. The problem is that this works for Batman, but it doesn’t work for Superman. Superman is a goofy and uninterestingly powerful hero conceived in the 1930s as a messianic Jesus-type savior who served the popular imagination as a response to the terrors of Fascism and Communism. He’s a mild-mannered clean-cut super Boy Scout. He doesn’t brood. But Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a 2-and-a-half hour orgy of self-serious brooding. 

#96 - Do the Right Thing (1989) - Spike Lee

A Spike Lee Joint

Do the Right Thing takes place on one long, hot day in one neighborhood in Brooklyn. The day is hotter than usual but it’s otherwise a normal day – people come and go, living their normal lives, doing what they always do. And for the most part, like most people, they don’t do much. They walk around with friends, they take showers, they sit and watch other people, they listen to music, they talk about sports, and they eat pizza. This routine, day-to-day state of things involves some racial tension, but it’s mostly under the surface; it pokes out here and there, but it’s mostly balanced in a state of precarious equilibrium and covered by a blanket of ordinariness. This normalness is the heart of the movie: Do the Right Thing is about the mundanity of racism. In the movie it escalates on an otherwise normal day, as it does in life, and in both cases it’s hard to make sense of.

The pizza place, Sal’s pizzeria, is the centre of the movie, and in many ways, the neighborhood. Sal, an Italian-American (played by Danny Aiello), has been feeding the mostly black neighborhood for generations. He runs the place with his two sons, one of whom is openly racist while the other is timid and accepting. Their delivery boy is Mookie (played by Spike Lee himself), a likeable guy and the place’s outlet into the community. The rest of the neighborhood is filled with interesting characters: there’s Da Mayor, a jolly drunk who knows everybody; Radio Raheem carries a boom box everywhere and only listens to Public Enemy; Mother Sister is a kind of witchy neighborhood matriarch; Buggin’ Out is a wannabe activist, more in line with Malcom X than Martin Luther King Jr; there’s a group of old guys on lawn chairs gossiping and complaining and reminiscing; and a local DJ watching over everything. Everyone is full of life and the neighborhood is vibrant. But a tension is cooking like Sal’s pizzas and everything on the hot street.

The tension eventually boils over. It has something to do with Sal’s “Wall of Fame” that features only Italian-American celebrities. But that doesn’t quite explain it. Radio Raheem also refuses to turn his music down while he’s at Sal’s, and that causes problems. But that’s not exactly what set off the violence either. There are reasons that aren’t reasons, explanations that don’t quite explain, and frustrating and confusing contradictions. The less likable characters do unlikeable things, but they’re sympathetic. And the likeable characters do unlikeable things with little explanation. There are no villains and no heroes. The reasons for the chaos are chaotic themselves. And in the chaos the movie doesn’t try to explain or suggest reasons why racism exists. Though it’s not filled with love, the movie isn’t filled with hate either. it just shows racism in its ordinary setting – in an ordinary neighborhood on an ordinary day – where it lurks just under the surface, ready to emerge for whatever reason, or for no reason at all.

The movie highlights this complicated and beguiling nature of racism that makes it so profoundly painful. And though it knows there is no satisfying explanation for it, it seeks understanding through its complex and dynamic characters. They are all real people and it would be difficult not to feel sympathy for each of them by the end of the movie. Even with the most overtly racist character there is a sense that his attitude has more to do with the negative feelings he has for himself than any feelings he has for anyone else. It’s one of the jobs of a movie to put the viewer in other people’s shoes and Do the Right Thing does this better than any movie I’ve seen. We may not like their reasons for doing what they do – or even understand the reasons – but we feel with them and for them even in the worst moments.

Just as it offers no explanation for racism, the movie also offers no suggestion for how to deal with it. When it was released in 1989 there was some worry it would inspire race riots like the one in the movie. I don’t think that ever happened and the fear was misplaced for a few reasons. When the dust settles at the end, it’s clear the violence accomplished nothing. The movie also ends with quotes from both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The quotes highlight the approaches of both leaders but neither is highlighted over the other. The point isn’t so much about how to deal with the problem, but the fact that it needs to be dealt with.

Do the Right Thing is an excellent movie. It is entertaining, funny, and sad, and full of very human and rich performances. Even without its complicated message it would be well worth watching. But the message is what makes it important (and the film remains important without becoming self-important, which is a difficult balance to achieve). And it would be cliché to say that a movie that involves racially-motivated riots, bigotry, suspicion, fear, and violence is timely and pertinent now as it was in 1989. But that cliché is the point of the movie. Racism is there. It’s not always visible, there are many reasons for it but those reasons are hard to comprehend, it makes no sense even while almost making sense, and there are no easy answers for it. Everyone is responsible or no one is. But it lives on, under the surface or above it, quietly bubbling behind our backs or blowing up in our faces. 

Follow me on Letterboxd to see my ratings.

#97 - Blade Runner (1982) - Ridley Scott

Blade Runner tells the story of a young Harrison Ford wandering around in the rain at night in a future Tokyo-L.A. mashup looking for robot people and trying to get rid of them. Young Harrison plays Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner (which blades are being run is never made clear), tasked with hunting down four Replicants who wreaked havoc somewhere up in space but are now back in town running amok (though the type of havoc and amok are also unclear). This is all explained in text at the beginning of the movie and when it disappears so do the stakes it should establish: the problem is vague and far away and so is any urgency. We don’t know what they did or what they’re doing and can’t we just leave them alone?

The Replicants are androids, robots that look like humans and seem like humans. The only way to identify one is to administer a test using the Voight-Kampff analyzer that detects physical changes as the subject is put through a series of questions designed to elicit an emotional response. The escaped Replicants, however, are more advanced and may have developed emotions. This is why they were given four-year lifespans. But like any conscious emotional beings, the Replicants would like to live longer than four years and the clock is ticking.

Blade Runner is famous for its production design. Flying cars, skyscraper-sized video advertisements, searchlights, neon neon neon everywhere, bleak, black, dark corporations spewing out fire, artificial animals. There’s a sunset in one scene, but the sun stays set and the rain falls. The world is rendered in detail and is a contrast to the opening scrawl; the world explains itself and there is little need for further exposition or explanation to understand the nightmare world of the future, teetering as it is on the precipice of a kind of corporate hell. The movie isn’t a case of style over substance, but style as substance. The film uses the world itself to ask its interesting questions. If it is unclear why the Replicants are being hunted, it is enough that the world says they are to be hunted. The world of Blade Runner is the kind of place where Replicants can’t be.

The vagueness of the Replicant’s crimes creates a lack of urgency as we watch Deckard deal with each of them. But that vagueness is also the main point of the movie. In the opening scene one of the Replicants kills a man who’s doing the Voight-Kampff test on him. The Replicant doesn’t seem like a pleasant guy, but he doesn’t seem evil either. He kills not in cold blood, but in self-defence, or at least self-preservation, and that urge to live and delay mortality is a uniquely human trait (humans being the only species aware of its mortality). The lines are blurred between human and non-human and the movie is really about where that line is. And if that question – what does it mean to be human – seems clichéd, at least Blade Runner asks it in interesting ways. In a world where life can be created, who gets to determine what is genuine and what is not?  

Blade Runner is a neo-noir detective story. Deckard has a job to do and has to find a way to do it. It’s a big one, we’re told at the beginning. And yet he seems to succeed easily, wandering from clue to clue and bumping into Replicants on the street, finding them at work and at home, looking at photos and knowing exactly where they are and killing them off the first chance he gets. Even recruiting him out of retirement is a breeze. He doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore, but then, what the hell, he’s doing it again anyway. Without knowing his motivation, each kill is anticlimactic. Part of that is necessary as we’re left to wonder whether a Replicant making an honest living as a performer really needs to be shot down in her underwear in a crowded street. But Deckard broods through the rain from job to job with animalistic efficiency and no tension. I won’t spoil the ending (I don’t go for the line of thinking that says that since a movie came out in 1982 spoilers are fair game – if you haven’t seen it you haven’t seen it) but it uses Deckard’s mechanical performance to interesting effect. It just isn’t that fun to watch in the meantime.

That isn’t to say it’s not worth watching. Blade Runner is a sci-fi pioneer and a cult classic. Its visuals hold up – its 1980s vision of a grim future on the verge of dystopia is darkly beautiful. And its predictions for the year 2019 are interesting both for what they get right and wrong. But what keeps people coming back (besides it being re-released so many times - I watched the “Final Cut”, which is the last of the movie’s 4 or 5 different versions) is its soft touch amidst its dark and hardened world. The subtlety is the highlight. But it cuts two ways, making the movie both very interesting in the questions it asks and a little boring in the time it takes to ask them.

#98 - Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) - Michael Curtiz

Yankee Doodle Dandy takes us back to a time when there were movies called Yankee Doodle Dandy. It’s hard to imagine that title being released in the last few decades. These days the story of entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and producer George M. Cohan would likely be called The and any one of those words. We’re serious about our titles these days – there are no more Dandies or Doodles or the gee-wiz, backslapping attitude that goes along with them. The difference in titles reflects the difference in times. The movie was filmed only a few years after the time period it depicts and both the filmmaking and the subject-matter reflect a bygone era of cheerful patriotism and innocent hope for the American dream.

The movie begins with Cohan being summoned to the White House, afraid he might be in trouble for the way he was impersonating the president in his current show. He walks there in the rain, knocks on the door, and heads up to oval office, easy as pie. He then sits down with the back of FDR’s head – who isn’t upset but is happy to see him – and begins reciting his life story. It’s a fairly absurd way to frame the biopic, but the implausibility has a good-spirited innocence to it that echoes throughout the movie. It’s the age when visitors spoke to one security guard on their way to meet the president.

Cohan was born on stage. Not quite, but his parents and sister were performers and the family formed a touring show when the kids were very young. The film traces the group’s rise and progress across the still fresh-faced United States. Such a career path took plenty of dedication and perseverance from the parents, but it was the young George who had the most confidence, energy, and charisma, and it was only a matter of time before that fire would be channeled.

Most of the movie follows Cohan’s rise to fame – his pursuit of the American dream, pursued as it was on the back of feel-good patriotism and good-natured American pride. Cohan musicals with names like The Governor’s Son, Running for Office, You’re a Grand Old Flag, George Washington Jr., The Yankee Prince, and The American Idea stoked the flames of national pride and made Cohan a Broadway star. This was the age before patriotism and nationalism had a bad name. Whatever gave them their bad name – whether it was the World Wars, the Cold War, the Vietnam or Korean Wars, or the War on Terrorism – American patriotism has a different flavor now than it did then. Cohan’s America was bright-eyed and positive, and both his songs and the time period that gave rise to them reflect a more modest kind of patriotism – a pride in the country, but also a sturdy appreciation for all it provides. History has shown the ugly side of patriotism and it’s now left in an awkward position. Yankee Doodle Dandy shows a simpler time – a time when a man could tap-dance his way to the White House.

James Cagney plays Cohan with up-beat earnestness and cheerful self-confidence. He’s a charismatic rascal, full of gumption and energy. But he’s so likeable you just want to put him in a headlock and give him a noogie. Cagney’s apparently accurate way of half-singing half-speaking all Cohan’s songs seems like it should be irritating but actually makes him more endearing. And being a movie about the Song-and-Dance Man, Yankee Doodle Dandy has plenty of songs and dances. The songs are hokey but catchy and memorable. Most of the movie is a highlight reel of Cagney productions; the film is not so much a musical by choice but by accident. Some of the performances are longer than they need to be, but their production value is high and can be entertaining the way they would be on stage. It’s like Broadway on the screen.

Yankee Doodle Dandy is a positive movie about an era of hopeful positivity. It shows that with enough American spirit anyone can achieve the American dream. With hard work, perseverance, and old-fashioned family values, the son of Irish immigrants can become one of the biggest stars in the country. But all the flag-waving and parading that goes along with this message can become a little too much. The movie’s structure is also conventional and only surprising for its straightforwardness – it takes no turns and may actually be too positive. Cohan seems to have had few bad days and made few missteps, except for that time his father spanked him as a child. Maybe the real Cohan’s life was that smooth – if he had all the zest and energy that Cagney gives him it is possible. But despite its flaws and cheesiness, Yankee Doodle Dandy’s positivity remains contagious and genuinely uplifting and fun.

As President Roosevelt reminds Cohan, a man can give his life for his country in many different ways. And so as Cohan sings, send the word that the Yanks are coming, and it’s Yankee Doodle do or die. 

10 Cloverfield Lane - Dan Trachtenberg

10 Cloverfield Lane is a loud movie in a small body. It’s not loud like a large-scale action movie, and it’s loud in ways most confined psychological thrillers aren’t. It uses loud noises in small spaces to create almost overbearing tension, and then keeps poking at that tension with every bang, slam, crack, and crash. It’s like having a balloon next to your ear while someone stabs at it with a plastic knife: you flinch every time and you know it’s eventually going to pop. Not every loud noise in the movie makes you jump – though many do (I jumped enough at one point that I felt embarrassed) – but each one adds to the claustrophobic pressure until you’re stressed and strained and ready to burst.

The movie starts with a bang – a really loud one. A woman, we later learn is named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), leaves her house in a hurry but soon gets into a brutal car accident in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of the loudest – and most shocking – car accidents I’ve seen on film. It’s shot only from inside the car – it’s the first of many moments of claustrophobic chaos and you feel like flinching to keep from hitting your head against your seat. The director (first timer Dan Trachtenberg) uses it to frame the credits in quick and silent cutaways from the crash. Quiet and loud, like the movie itself.

Michelle wakes to find herself chained to a wall with an IV in her arm in a drab room in a bunker. And this tension between good (the IV) and bad (the chain) sets up the tension of the whole movie. She soon meets Howard (John Goodman) who tells her he saved her – and is keeping her safe – from the outside world, which has been affected by a widespread chemical attack. Michelle soon meets Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) who helped build the bunker and injured himself trying to get in. But the bunker – and the movie – belongs to Goodman’s Howard.

With a name that includes the word Cloverfield you know what to expect. 2008’s Cloverfield was a giant monster movie shot on handheld video camera. 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t a sequel, but you know going in that the two are somehow related. And so it’s a testament to Cloverfield Lane that it manages to squeeze in so much tension and mystery even with those expectations. It achieves that mostly because of John Goodman. He plays Howard with incredible subtlety and precision. You spend the movie with Michelle thinking he’s probably crazy, but then maybe he was right all along, but then maybe he’s not what he seems, but then maybe he’s just a simple kook whose preparations paid off, but then... He’s terrifying one moment and sympathetic the next – equal parts Satan and Santa Clause.

There is already talk about Goodman’s Oscar candidacy. There’s nothing wrong with that, as Oscar season theoretically runs all year, though it’s usually heavily back-loaded in fall and winter. But there are a few performances and movies early in the year that stand out until nomination time. 10 Cloverfield Lane has a lot in common with another tense, sci-fi chamber piece thriller released early last year that ended up on many year-end top movies lists (and won an Oscar): Ex Machina was praised for its unique vision and the excellent performances of Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander. 10 Cloverfield Lane could be this year’s Ex Machina. Goodman is not alone in his greatness, as Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Michelle continues the trend from last year of strong and tough female leading roles.

There are a few acts in this movie and one of them is more connected to Cloverfield than the others. That one will likely divide people. But the movie’s tagline makes it work: “Monsters Come in Many Forms”. 

#99 - Toy Story (1995) - John Lasseter

 

Original concept art, from Time's story from the movie's 20th anniversary.

I have a special guest for this post. We watched Toy Story as a family and he wanted to help me do my work on it. So, presenting the boy himself: Harrison the 4-year-old. I interviewed him and typed his answers exactly as he gave them.

Why do you like Toy Story?

Because ... umm … umm ... cus it’s … cus I like shows … and movies.

What was your favorite part?

The very end. The end of it.

Why?

Because they, Buzz Lightyear was flying … with that rocket. That rocket dangerous thing.

Who do you like better, Buzz or Woody and why?

Buzz because he can fly.

What did you think of the animation?

What’s animation?

The way it looks

I like the colours. Every single colour.

What else do you like about Toy Story?

That’s about all.

You can’t think of anything else you like about it?

It was scary.

What was scary about it?

The part that the dog was chasing them.

But they got away right?

Yeah. Dad! Can we do that again tonight? Watch a movie and set up a blanket and have popcorn and watch a movie? Please please please please dad … again tonight?

Tell me some more things about Toy Story. What do you think of Woody?

Umm good.

What about him though?

His hat. Cus it has that stuff all around it… that edgy stuff, that stuff, you know?

What’s better Toy Story or Curious George and why?

George. Cus George has black hair and black body.

No he doesn’t!

Yeah he does. He does.

It’s brown.

No. Black. Black, dad. Oh there’s where my dinosaur went! I was looking for this dinosaur for all day!! Roar!! My dinosaur cave!! Roar!! [Harrison trails off talking to and for the dinosaur].

So there you have it. He really did like the dog chase scene – he pulled himself into a ball and clenched his teeth and his whole body until the danger passed. And what more can be said about Woody’s hat?

Harry has seen the movie a few times and I’ve seen it a few more. I don’t remember the first time I saw it. I would have been about 10 years old and I probably assumed it was another Disney movie like all my favorites. It was the first of Pixar’s films and the first full-length computer animated movie ever released, which was a big deal but not to me or any other kid. And apparently not to the reviewers and awards voters. We all loved it not because of its animation style, but in spite of it.

It may have pioneered a way of making movies, but it isn’t difficult to appreciate the way some pioneers are. Sometimes looking back on the firsts of their kind can be underwhelming – their techniques and innovations have been developed and refined, and the original looks crude by comparison. But it doesn’t take much effort to love Toy Story. It’s a warm, inventive comedy full of witty jokes, and clever in ways many animated movies were not. And so it’s the same for a 10-year-old seeing it for the first time, a 30-year-old seeing it for the 100^th time, and a 4-year-old who just ‘likes shows and movies’. By exploring issues that anyone can relate to – friendship, our place in the world, wanting to be loved – Toy Story transcends generations and escapes the difficulty of being appreciated as a trend-setter. It may have created a new form of story-telling, but the story it tells is what we remember.

Toy Story pioneered not just a film-making technique but a new kind of movie. Pixar movies have become a genre by themselves and we now expect to be moved and warmed and touched by any movie the company puts out. Toy Story started that. And like most pioneers, Toy Story’s innovations have been surpassed by other advancements and developments. The animation it pioneered has come a long way and its style looks crude by today’s standards. The toys still look good – they chose to do a movie about toys largely because the animation of the time made everything look plastic. But they managed to turn plastic into living, emotional, and unforgettable characters. The animation in today’s movies may have surpassed the animation in Toy Story, but modern movies are still trying to live up to the high standard of story-telling set by Buzz, Woody, and the gang.

And even if some of the animation’s age is showing, like Harrison, we can always appreciate the colours. Every single one.

#100 - Ben-Hur (1959) - William Wyler

I didn’t know Jesus was in this movie (which is something I don’t think I’ve ever said before) – and here we are with Ben-Hur and the opening scene is Luke chapter 2 and the subtitle of the film is “a Tale of the Christ.” The movie begins ‘when all the world was to be taxed’, with Caesar Augustus and everyone returning home for a census, with a pregnant woman on a donkey headed for Bethlehem, with a guy named John dunking people in the wilderness, and with other details familiar to anyone who attended Sunday school. But all that quickly fades into the background as we’re introduced to Mr. Ben-Hur himself.

Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) is a Jewish prince who used to be in charge before the Romans showed up. The new boss in town turns out to be Judah’s childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd and his cleft chin). As the two catch up it quickly becomes clear that they do not see eye-to-eye about the destiny of the Jewish people, and the jovial backslapping turns into aggressive stare-downs and a rivalry is born. Messala quickly gets the upper hand thanks to some lucky timing, a parade, a passing governor, a rooftop lookout, and a loose tile. He frames the falling tile as an assassination attempt and Judah and his mother and sister are locked up and out of the way. The rest of the movie follows Judah’s life as a slave and his efforts to return home, exact his revenge, and see about his family. But it’s at its most interesting when dealing in these coincidences and chances of timing.

For much of the movie, Jesus remains a background figure, a whisper in the winds of Judean gossip, something special that might be happening. And the characters cross paths with him and his message in subtle and powerful ways. A stranger gives Judah some water when he needs it most. A man confuses Judah for a preacher he’s been looking for. This man introduces Judah to his friend in the chariot racing business. The chariot race involves Messala. All these connections may seem far-fetched, but the subtlety works as a gentle Christian (or Jewish) message that there’s a plan out there and someone behind it. But towards the end of the movie this subtlety is lost and replaced with heavy-handedness.

When leprosy shows up you know where things are headed – if you’re going to get healed by Jesus leprosy is the disease to get.  The climax is never in doubt. And there are some obvious and clichéd speeches about the futility of revenge, turning the other cheek, selflessness, and forgiveness and quotations of Bible verses and it gets to be too much. The movie turns from a gentle Sunday school teacher into a bossy nun. With a subtitle like that it has every right to, but the soft touch was much more effective.

At its roots Ben-Hur is Christian movie. But it spends the majority of its 3 hours and 40 minutes as an epic about one man and his quest through the Middle East, through slavery, in ships, on mountains, in chariots, up the ranks of Roman society, and back home. It is long and tedious. But there are some highlights, the most notable being the famous chariot race scene.

It is one of the most well-known action sequences in movie history. And the fact that it remains genuinely thrilling more than 50 years later is a testament to its effectiveness and is illustrative of some of the problems in today’s CGI-driven action landscape. Mark Harris, formerly of Grantland (may it rest in peace) wrote about this issue by comparing the newest Avengers movie and Mad Max Fury Road. Watching a supervillain rip out a chunk of a city and float it into the air while computer-animated robots do battle with stunt doubles is too cut off from reality. There are no real stakes involved and it’s hard to be invested when you know the problem can be solved with a few keystrokes by a CGI artist. Fury Road, on the other hand, was incredibly effective for its now-famous (and Oscar awarded) use of ‘practical effects’. This means that in Fury Road when cars flip and crash and burn, there were actually real cars somewhere in real space that flipped and crashed and burned. They drove in the desert and people were really on and in them, and the CGI was used to enhance things that were really there and filmed by a camera. The whole thing feels alive and seems to have real consequences attached.

The chariot race in Ben-Hur, of course, was shot using real people, real chariots, real horses, and a real crowd. And all this realness produces a sense of real danger (the urban legend that a stuntman died on camera doesn’t hurt either). You feel the strain on the racers’ bodies, you see the tension in their eyes. They sweat. Some fall out and are crushed. Some are dragged by the reins when their chariots crumble. You really don’t want that scumbag Messala to win and you wouldn’t mind if something bad were to happen to him along the way. You’re invested in it. It is a stark contrast, not just to modern computer-generated action, but to another scene in the movie. At one point Judah finds himself as an oarsman on a war ship. A battle breaks out and it is filmed in the 1950s version of CGI. The whole thing is shot – very obviously – using miniatures. The tiny boats – supposedly filled with hundreds of rowers – bump into each other over and over from the same camera angle and nothing about it is real. You know they could just be picked up and put out of each other’s way and the whole thing could be avoided. The chariot race feels real because, even though it’s still part of a movie, in the most important way it is real.

Ben-Hur is a spectacle in scope and scale – huge in every way. But with that size comes weight and its huge ambitions ultimately weigh it down. It navigates its message with precision and subtlety for much of its run-time, but eventually succumbs to heavy-handedness and uneven melodrama. For all its virtues – and there are quite a few – such a behemoth can only remain nimble for so long.


***
Join Letterboxd and follow me on it