This outing of the Moses and the Ten Commandments mythology tale offers us a more human Moses than some of the others. He exhibits self-doubt on a number of occasions and wavers a bit here and there, which I suppose will offend the true believers of all faiths that take the Bible and the Quran as the inspired word of "God". For myself, a life-long free thinker and skeptic, the Moses story is an exciting one, but is after all mythology. Most of the old Greek mythology tales are equally exciting, but I don't regard them as fact either.
Ben Kingsley (Moses), Christopher Lee (Ramses), and others of the cast give lively performances which I would describe as satisfying, if not exactly great. My most serious quibble is the uninspired direction and hectic editing, characteristic of most made for TV productions. As to the episodic editing, though, perhaps it isn't reasonable to be too critical. After all, the three hour movie covers about 80 years of "history". You surely are not going to mistake this "Moses" as a made for the theatre production. Wouldn't you really like to see a resurrected C.B.DeMille direct a modern Moses in wide-screen Panavision and full rich Technicolor. The colour process used for this one is not even barely adequate. Don't read any further if you don't want to know the outcome in advance.
I promised you a "spoiler". Guess what. Moses doesn't get to enter the "promised land" after all his 40 years in the wilderness. Are any of you surprised? He attributes this to having struck the rock twice to make it spew forth water. Was that really in the Bible? I don't seem to recall it. Not the rock and the water, the striking twice.
Ben Kingsley (Moses), Christopher Lee (Ramses), and others of the cast give lively performances which I would describe as satisfying, if not exactly great. My most serious quibble is the uninspired direction and hectic editing, characteristic of most made for TV productions. As to the episodic editing, though, perhaps it isn't reasonable to be too critical. After all, the three hour movie covers about 80 years of "history". You surely are not going to mistake this "Moses" as a made for the theatre production. Wouldn't you really like to see a resurrected C.B.DeMille direct a modern Moses in wide-screen Panavision and full rich Technicolor. The colour process used for this one is not even barely adequate. Don't read any further if you don't want to know the outcome in advance.
I promised you a "spoiler". Guess what. Moses doesn't get to enter the "promised land" after all his 40 years in the wilderness. Are any of you surprised? He attributes this to having struck the rock twice to make it spew forth water. Was that really in the Bible? I don't seem to recall it. Not the rock and the water, the striking twice.