Ben-Hur (1959)

MGM's 11-Academy-Award-Winning Ben-Hur (1959) is actually a remake of the silent film, Ben-Hur (1925), also produced by MGM Studios. Both of these movies are based Lew Wallace's historical novel by the same name, which was first published in 1880. According to the novel's introduction in Oxford World's Classics, "[Ben-Hur] was a phenomenal best-seller; it soon surpassed Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) as the best-selling American novel and retained this distinction until the 1936 publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind" (vii).

The story of how the novel came to be is amazing in itself, but our focus here is the 1959 film portrayal of Ben-Hur. The Hollywood epics of the 1950s and 1960s, like Ben-Hur, Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, and Spartacus, were a golden age of historic, epic films. Wide screen, vivid technicolor, gorgeous costuming, orchestral scores, and the creme de la creme of the day's actors--these are what made these Hollywood epics great, and why people like me are still watching them today.

But the significance of Ben-Hur for me is not its epic qualities, but rather is heartfelt, profoundly human story. (I feel the same way about Dr. Zhivago--I will have to write a review on that film as well.) I particularly liked the interaction between Jesus, whose face is never shown on screen, with Ben-Hur. As the story of Jesus as told in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) unfolds in the background, the main action traces Ben-Hur's story.

Ben-Hur's friendship with Messala, a high-ranking Roman Official who put in charge of Ben-Hur's Judean homeland, ends bitterly when Ben-Hur refuses to help Messala "subdue" Judea. In vengenace, Messala seizes an opportunity to have Ben-Hur, his sister, and his mother arrested. Ben-Hur is sentenced to row in the galley; what's come of his mother and sister he does not know.

Here is Ben-Hur's first encounter with Jesus. As he walks, enchained, toward his future of slave labor in the galley, he is faint with thirst. When they arrive at a town, the Roman soldier allows the woman at the well to give drinks to the prisoners--except, "not that one." As Ben-Hur watches other prisoners drink, and feels his own tongue swelling and cracking from thirst, an unfamiliar man takes a cup of water and holds it up to Ben-Hur's lips. "I said, 'not that one!'" the soldier yells. But when the soldier walks over to stare down this unfamiliar man, he is stopped in the tracks. There's an authority about this man that he has never encountered before. The soldier walks away, his tail between his legs.

Through a propitious (and I would say providential) event, Ben-Hur gets on the good side of Roman general Quintus Arrius. A series of events puts Ben-Hur in the position to seek revenge against Messala. His long time love interest, Esther (played by a demure Haya Harareet), is horrified by Ben-Hur's quench for revenge and says to him, "You've become Messala."

Meanwhile, Jesus has given his famous "Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew chs 5-7), and one of the wise men a la Matthew 2:1-12, depicted at the very beginning of the film, runs into Ben-Hur and tells him that Jesus preaches forgiveness. Intsead of seeking revenge against Messala, he encourages Ben-Hur to leave room for God's vengeance.

But Ben-Hur doesn't listen, and seeks to exact vengeance against Messala in the annual chariot race in Rome. In perhaps the most famous scene of the film, Ben-Hur avoids Messala's chariot, which is rigged with wheel-shredding spikes, and defeats him. In the process, Ben-Hur's chariot disrupts Messala's and causes Messala to crash, mortally wounding him. Ben-Hur has vengeance at last! But his soul is left unsatisfied.

The final scenes of the film portray Jesus' crucifixion at Golgotha ("the place of the skull" in Aramaic). Ben-Hur has brought his mother and sister, who had bocame diseased during their long prison confinment, to Jerusaelm in order to ask Jesus to heal them. It is too late. By the time they get there Jesus has been sentenced to death and is carrying the cross up to Golgotha. Ben-Hur sees Jesus' straining under the weight of the cross, and attempts to give him a drink of water; but Roman guards knock Ben-Hur out of the way. Jesus has to bear his suffering alone. As Jesus is crucified, something powerful is happening--the sky goes as dark as moonless night, thunder rumbles, and the earth is shook. Jesus' healing power is unleashed--for Ben-Hur's mother and sister, and for Ben-Hur's heart, which up to this point has been poisoned with hate for Messala. The film ends with a long shot of the empty crosses on Golgotha with a shepherd nearby, tending his sheep.

I guess this is more of a plot summary than a review! But this retelling of the plot highlights the skillful interaction of Ben-Hur's story with the story of Jesus. The way that the gospel of Jesus Christ (which, in a word, is "By his stripes we are healed," Isaiah 53:5) impacts Ben-Hur's life is illustrative for how the gospel impacts our lives today. Perhaps you, like Ben-Hur, have been given living water by Jesus Christ, and have been changed, such that you desire to give back.