The Prince of Egypt (1998)

Directed by: Brenda Chapnick, Steve Hicker and Simon Wells Written by: Phillip LaZebnik

The Prince of Egypt begins with a disclaimer. The text explains that the film took some narrative liberties, but was committed to honoring the spirit of its source: the biblical story of Moses in the book of Exodus. This disclaimer made me wonder what the film would have looked like if it hadn’t honored its source material. Was there a different, more radical film the writers or animators had wanted to make, that management had shut down out of fear of antagonizing religious purists? 

I’ve been told time and time again that the Bible is full of great stories that are foundational to the western literary canon. I’ve never understood this.

While I can accept that ideas like building an arc or getting swallowed by a whale are great sources for inspiration, the Bible’s stories as whole have as always struck me as anti-climatic. Why? Because the aim of the Bible is to promote belief in a single, all-powerful being, God. As such, every Bible story rewards those who show faith in God, and punishes those who sun him. Such a formula hardly allows for suspenseful, mysterious drama.

In an alternative universe, a version of The Prince of Egypt was made in which Moses does not get his orders from a burning bush, and does not win his people’s freedom through reliance on divinely imposed terror. This is not that world. It would seem Dream Works decided that taking God out of Exodus would be going too far. As a result of this constraint, The Prince of Egypt takes on an interesting narrative structure. While the film nominally reaches its climax when, after a rapid burst of plagues, God splits the red sea, the film truly peaks far earlier.

The Prince of Egypt’s main dramatic innovation is portraying Moses (Val Kilmer) not just as the adopted son of Pharaoh Seti (Patrick Stewart), but as the brother of a Pharaoh to-be. Moses and his brother Ramses (Ralph Fiennes) engage in princely, mischief. And in their father’s eyes it is Ramses alone who must be sternly rebuked for this folly, as Ramses has an image to maintain as heir to the throne. Nonetheless, Ramses loves his brother and doesn’t blame him for his father’s strictness. 

But fate pulls the brothers apart. When an encounter with his biological siblings Miriam and Aaron (Sandra Bullock and Jeff Goldblum)  alerts Moses to the fact that he is Jewish, he begins to question the morality of slavery. And when another event drives him into exile, he is ingrained more and more in his Jewish identity. 

From a religious perspective, Moses becomes a hero because he hears God and follows His word. To secular observers this can seem a little hollow. Shouldn’t someone do the right thing (ie oppose slavery), because of an internal sense of right and wrong, and not out of loyalty to a deity? 

But The Prince of Egypt’s innovation is to acknowledge that whether or not faith is in the picture, the distinction between hero and villain can be the matter of following a few well placed instructions. When Moses thinks he is an Egyptian-Prince, he accepts slavery. He comes across as kind and reltable, unlike Pharaoh Seti, but then again, so does young Ramses. It is once Moses is informed that he is Jewish, however, that his mind can be reoriented. In this framing, one can entirely substitute Judaism the religion for Judaism the ethnicity. The end result is the same. 

The Prince of Egypt is a beautifully animated film, a great example of the 3-D tinted, 2-D animation of the late 90s and early 2000s. Storywise, it hits various highs and not-so-highs. Following a Disney-esque formula, the film features two high priests (Steve Martin and Martin Short) as villain-sidekicks. The pair resemble the comical Pain and Panic from Hercules, but end up seeming more twisted than Ramses, singing a weird song called “You’re With the Big Boys Now.” It as if the film wanted the type of characters who could be voiced by Martin and Short, but had no ideas what to do with them. The Prince of Egypt desperately wants to be nuanced and perhaps even funny, but achieving such ends when you are afraid to modify your morally-simplistic source is a daunting challenge.

But while the films end is a tad too familiar, its beginning and middle are striking. It cynically postulates about the limited conditions under which heroes can emerge. It tortures viewers with the question of what if the story had been different, and Ramses too had been awoken to the injustice of his family’s rule. He and Moses had been close. Why did one have to end up the hero and one the villain? That is a question that the bible itself does not dare to pose (that task would fall years later on a secular-Jewish prophet by the name of Phil Ochs), and is the reason why The Prince of Egypt cannot just be dismissed as a mere cautious retelling.

Mother! (2017)

Written and directed by: Darren Aronofsky

There are indie films that challenge you to take pleasure in raw sound effects, awkward human interactions and mundanely beautiful settings. There are big budget action films replete with explosions and chaos. Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is an overwhelming blend of both. The film has earned praise and scorn alike, yet if viewed in a vacuum one can appreciate it as a work that unites audiences: its subtlety and melodrama are so smoothly connected that viewers who come to see one level of intensity can leave having appreciated another.

 

Mother! admittedly did not win me over right away. The film makes use of handheld cameras, and “Mother” (Jennifer Lawrence)’s constant walks up spiral staircases can be dizzying. The initial appearance of Mother’s husband, “Him” (Javier Bardem) is also off-putting. The character seems under-acted: he is calm compared to the regularly anxious Mother, and normal compared to the quirky houseguests they soon come to deal with. Him does not come across as a mild-mannered person, but as someone out-of-step with the realism of the piece: like a rookie-actor reading lines. Bardem, of course, is no rookie. Without giving away too much, it should be said that his disconcerting performance is in fact praiseworthy, for his character indeed has a different relationship to realism than that of his fellow characters.

 

The indie-realist side of Mother! is essential to its disjointed, narrative structure. The film is slow to develop a clear plot trajectory. I ts story develops as, slowly at first, various strangers show up and decide to reside at Mother and Him’s house. The first guest (Ed Harris) is a somewhat peculiar, dying man. He is later joined by his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), who’s eccentricness is far more obnoxious and threatening than Harris’. Were the film to end after the seemingly final confrontation between Mother, Him and this couple, it would be a passable, stand alone work. Pfeiffer is a compelling antagonist, and her lack-of-boundaries in contrast to Mother’s decency foreshadows the drama that follows.

 

It is after Pfeiffer’s departure, however, that the film becomes truly compelling. Mother!’s story proceeds to explore issues from celebrity, to artistry, to late capitalism and borders, becoming more and more disturbing as it proceeds. While it is certainly not pleasant to watch, the film’s strength is that it never reaches a point where it runs out of ideas: there is always a new twist, always a new tragedy. Kristen Wiig, for example, is introduced as a striking recurring character as the film nears its conclusion, illustrating the film’s tireless plotline.

 

Mother!’s grandiosity has led some critics to write it off as pretentious and self-centred, with some claiming that it is Aronofsky’s arrogant attempt to portray the challenge of a writer (Bardem) working with his muse (Lawrence). This critique misses the obvious fact, that Mother! is, for the most part, Mother’s story, not Him’s. While Bardem’s character ultimately has power over Lawrence’s, it is of a god-like nature: he exists on a different level, and his morality operates on a different time scale. Him’s divine status is what shapes Bardem’s portrayal of him as a distant figure: sure he is powerful, but his power is precisely what means the story is not his, but that of his wife.

 

Mother! is an imaginative work, but is effective because it appeals to audiences on a baser level. I left the cinema mouth agape: how did it have the audacity to go in that direction, I asked myself? If gore and handheld cameras do not put you off, worry not about the pretentiousness and give Mother! a try.