Movies and Mystery: Making sense of Moses on the Big ScreenAndy Freeman - 15 Jan 2015

It wasn’t necessarily my No.1 idea of a good night out...

I had an evening to go to the Movies but had agreed to go and watch Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings to write a review for this website.  Since then I’ve spend nearly a fortnight trying to know what to write – and failing often. 

You see Scott’s view of God – more a playground bully than the God I know – and of Moses – more freedom fighter than leader of God’s people – troubled me a lot.  Then there is the story of Israel’s escape from Egypt tripping into something that felt more like Michael Bay’s Transformers than anything else.  I sat in my seat pining for the animated Prince of Egypt and something that touched my soul a little more.

But over time I’ve realised this disconnection between my faith and the film is part of the plot.  Here presented is someone’s view of events in the Bible.  How I respond to them is part of the nature of the film.  God is mysterious and sometimes he’s hard to understand.

How do we make sense of the God of the Old Testament?  How do we reconcile plagues and dying children with the love of Christ we see in the gospels and many of us understand in our own lives?  How do I explain all this to my friends who’ve gone to see the film too? 

Central to Ridley Scott’s epic and the earlier animated Prince of Egypt films is the relationship between Moses (adopted son in the royal court) and Ramases (heir to the throne and Pharaoh of Egypt).  The friendship, rivalry and conflict spread from their relationship to the whole of the country and the struggles of the Israelites.  But is this the real Moses?  

I find myself fascinated by the journey of Moses in the book of Exodus.  He spends his first thirty years in the royal court, maybe being someone he is not.  Then he spends his next thirty years in the wilderness, feeling like a nobody but beginning to understand who he really is.  Then lastly his final 30 years are being the person he is made to be – deliverer of the Israelites through the power of God...  

Yet none of those first 60 years were wasted.  In the royal court he learnt the way to speak to Pharaoh and the workings of Egypt.  That would come to help in that final part of his live.  In the desert he learnt survival and community and that became crucial as Israel lived in the desert for many years at the birth of their nation.  

Far from being an action hero or freedom fighter, Moses is a broken, fragile man who God calls and leads and for whom all those seemingly wasted moments all come together to make who he is.  

That sounds a little like our story.

And what about God?  Petulant?  Vindictive?  Sending plagues and fire.  The funny thing is that’s not what Israel remembers.  Israel’s central story is one of deliverance.  God saves them from slavery.  Here is God intervening on their behalf.  

That sounds a little like our story too. Throughout the mystery of Exodus the movie there are little hints to the real Moses and to this delivering God...

That’s a conversation I’d love to have with my friends...
 

And if you want to go deeper... check out these free community resources from our friends at The Damaris Trust for the film, which you can find here -
 
                        

All images are used by permission in accordance with commons copyright license terms: Feature image is a derivative of the images 'Exodus_12' by Revista Televitos  and 'DF-04525' and 'DF-02915_2917R' by Ma_Co2013