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©2006 |
Television Review -
Not a Perfect 10
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By Alex Carrier
What’s this you say? Another version
of the Ten Commandments? One without Charlton Hesston Okay, stop right there. For those non-baby boomers, our Ten Commandments was the first (not including, of course, the original). You may not know it but we have spent our lives thrilling to Charlton Heston holding forth his staff (can you say “pry it from my cold dead hands) as he parted the Red Sea. As far as Cecile B. DeMille goes – well, for your newbies think Steven Spielberg only way bigger. DeMille is the director that put the color in Technicolor, the grand in grandeur – you get the picture. So, it was with no little bias and prejudice that I sat down to watch ABC’s mini-series The Ten Commandments. (Note: Moses did not even rate a “made-for-television movie” – Cecile must be spinning.) Fifty years have made a big difference. Now is a time with more reality (at least visually) in movies and television and that realism showed up on the small screen. Gone were the eye-popping colors of the movie. This version was as gritty, dusty and as dry as the Sahara. After half an hour, I was positively parched and glad for a commercial so I could get a nice, cold drink. To be honest, I liked the realism depicted in the new version. While the pharaoh’s palace was cool, soothing almost lush with brightness; the Hebrew slaves’ lives were ground to darkness by their burden and their lives bleached by unrelenting oppression as intense as the sun. Another obvious difference was in the two antagonists: Moses and Ramses. Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as the pharaoh Rameses were two larger than life actors who brought their intense personalities to their roles. As the opposing forces in this movie, Heston and Brynner were like two bull elephants unable to draw back from battle. Even when Brynner as Rameses capitulates to God’s will, he is defiant. In this television version, the two antagonists are less rigidly defined. Rameses is aptly described as a weak ruler more dangerous because of his weakness. The television Moses is less patriarch and more person. He chafes under the burden God has given him and even remarks churlishly that God can be very demanding. The reality even extends to the special effects – if that can be logically reasonable. This may be the DeMille trademark. He as much told you as showed you that his effects were remarkably grand. In the mini-series, the plagues present as much a psychological terror to the Egyptians as they do a physical torture. The true test of effects is the parting of the Red Sea. In the movie, this is a moment of clarity as the Hebrews flee down a dry, almost sunny path that has opened up across the bed of the parted waters. In the mini-series, the water parts but the way is still slippery and uneven. Even the waters seem more dark and menacing, more what I would expect the bottom of a sea to look like if one could slice through it. I could not choose one over the other. DeMille’s movie will still be my choice when I want to be awed. Director Robert Dornhelm’s vision of the Ten Commandments is one that leads me to look deeper into the truths inside the people. Not a perfect 10? Well, as one friend commented on the mini-series. “They still have a Hebrew Moses with blue eyes.” She has a point. Return to the Reviews Site Page
©2006 Virginia Greene
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