Let's start out with some heresy on our part, especially for a classic movie lover. With the exception of the two celebrated sequences in William Wyler's 1959 epic - the chariot race and the sea battle - we always found the rest of 'Ben Hur' an excruciatingly sanctimonious slog, paced like a glacier and about as interesting to watch as a slightly animated oil painting. Designed to suck up Academy Awards like a vacuum cleaner, it bore all the heavy-handed hallmarks of Hollywood biblical extravaganzas......lots of red-cloaked Roman soldiers sporting helmets with the red mohawks on top, vast crowds of extras, an artfully hidden Jesus seen only in shadow or from behind accompanied by swelling pious choirs.
If you stayed awake long enough through all this deadening pageantry, the film first rewarded you with a rip roaring sea battle (featuring galley slave Heston giving some stuntman a facial with a burning torch) and then the mighty showstopper, the chariot race (which Wyler actually had nothing to do with, turning direction of it over to Andrew Marton and stunt coordination to the legendary Yakima Canutt). After those sequences it's right back to the to the spinach of film's lugubrious Act III, highlighted by much Hestonian jaw clenching....and by spinach, we don't mean the fresh leafy kind in your salad, we refer to the cooked greenish goo that makes you gag just looking at it.
Particularly hateful to us was MGM's decision to make 'Ben Hur' the primary recipient of its Oscar nominating marketing efforts. So the studio ignored its other big 1959 release (and the BQ's beloved fave) "North By Northwest". We could easily watch Hitchcock's masterful thriller a dozen times every year......as for 'Ben Hur', the only two scenes we could endure? Well.....you know. It amused us no end that novelist and sometime screenwriter Gore Vidal always claimed he sneaked gay sub-text into scenes between Charlton Heston and villain Stephen Boyd. We doubt it, but it's fun to think about.
And now we come to the 2016 remake, which perfectly epitomizes what passes for epic filmmaking today. Yes, there are credited writers and a director.......and two non-entities portraying Ben Hur and his hated adversary Messala. (I won't even bother with their names, they look like two temporary stand-ins for real stars who never showed up) But honestly folks......the only serious creative work involved in a movie like this comes from the myriad of CGI digital artists in the employ of dozens of contracted special effects companies. Furiously toiling away at their keyboards and mousepads, they paint the film with not very realistic architecture, crowds, flaming arrows and horses and chariots that bounce higher than the Road Runner after detonating Acme dynamite. No wonder the listing of all their names feels longer than the entire 212 minute running time of the 1959 film.
Sadly.....and here's the great paradox of the 2016 'Ben Hur' and its ilk.....the meticulous work of all these CGI elves gets promptly chopped, sliced 'n diced up into indecipherable, unwatchable pieces by the director and his so called film editors. Rest assured, they won't let the film out into the world until it looks like it's been pieced together by a team of meth addicts armed with weed whackers.
Another oddity we noticed in this remake, strange for a movie from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, producers of many faith-based projects ......the casual, offhand use of Jesus. Unlike the overly reverent hide-and-seek view of 1950's biblicals He's on full view here, methodically trotted out at key intervals, without much conviction or emotion, like a required prop at a childrens' Sunday School pageant. Even more bizarre is the film's incredible, touchy-feely windup. At least William Wyler understood his 1959 Ben Hur was all about primal stuff.....hate, revenge, the deep bonds of familial love. In the 2016 remake, the bloodless, antiseptic CGI carnage simply leads to a finale suitable for a greeting card.
Other than those two action sequences in the 1959 film, (which you could easily skip directly to on a DVD or Blu-Ray), we'd hurry away from both 'Hur's. For 'Ben Hur' 1959....2 stars (**) .....for the 'Ben Hur' 2016, a chariot with the wheels off....1 star (*)
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