BEFORE: Since I happen to know that Jesus appears as a character in "Ben-Hur" (the not-so-subtle subtitle of the original book is "A Tale of the Christ", I seem to recall) that made it very easy to program this one next, to follow "The Young Messiah". I was convinced after checking the cast lists that no actors carried over, but apparently I was wrong. One actor, Jarreth J. Merz, appears in both films. He also had a small role in "The Passion of the Christ", so now I regret shoe-horning that film into a Richard Burton-centric chain last year just to mark the Easter holiday. If I had saved that film for this year, I could have watched THREE Jesus-themed films in a row, with all of them sharing one actor. Oh, well, hindsight is always 20/20, I have to make the best linking choices that are available to me at any given moment.
THE PLOT: Judah Ben-Hur, a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother, an officer in the Roman army, returns to his homeland after years at sea to seek revenge, but finds redemption.
AFTER: When you get right down to it, there are no such things as coincidence in the Bible - once you insert that Hand of God, then (supposedly) everything happens for a reason. Joseph has a dream that tells him to take his family to Egypt, shortly before King Herod kills all the children of a certain age. It's like it was meant to be. That kind of serendipity runs throughout the Bible - Noah builds an ark and finishes just as the rainclouds start to gather. What I want to know is, how many people built their arks a few years too early, and then grew tired of waiting for the flood to start?
It also extends to the Biblical epic "Ben-Hur", which was written as a novel in 1880 - but it FEELS like it could have been part of the Bible, only it wasn't. It's Bible-adjacent, with Roman soldiers pushing their weight around in Judea, and a certain peaceful carpenter hanging around in the background, dispensing advice as necessary. When Judah Ben-Hur is falsely accused of allowing an assassination attempt on Pontius Pilate's life, Jesus is there to offer him some water as he's taken into custody and beaten.
Years later, as Jesus is dragging his cross through the streets and is being beaten and tortured, Ben-Hur offers him some water in a nice bit of symmetry. And that's when I realized that their stories are like mirror images of each other, they both represent the sacrifices they're willing to make to save their loved ones. For Ben-Hur, that means taking the rap, even though it was the young zealot Ditmas who shot the arrow at Pilate, the Romans are threatening to punish his sister and mother if he doesn't "tell the truth", which really means telling them exactly what they want to hear. It's the Roman version of extreme rendition.
Psych! April Fool's! The Romans were going to crucify his sister and mother anyway, no matter what, but Judah's confession gets him a nice long sea voyage, as a galley slave and oarsman on a Roman ship. This means being shackled in place, 24/7 and rowing as necessary, but the good news is that after 5 years of rowing, he's really in good physical shape. Do you know how many people these days would pay to be part of a tough exercise regimen like that?
Serendipity strikes again when the Roman ship sinks, and Judah Ben-Hur is believed to have gone down with the ship (because he was chained in, duh) but instead was able to free himself, and he washes ashore very close to the tent of the ONE MAN in that territory, Sheik Ilderim, who happens to be a chariot racer, and who happens to believe his story about being falsely accused, and who happens to be registered for the big chariot race coming up in Rome next month, which gives Ben-Hur just enough time to get his strength back, help cure the horses of their ailments, and learn how to competitively drive a chariot. Right.
And of COURSE the guy that Ben-Hur has to beat in the chariot race is his ex-adopted brother, of COURSE it is. Because he was in the Roman army under Pilate, and his association with Ben-Hur got him kicked off the expeditionary forces, so of COURSE the only way he can advance through the ranks now is to compete in chariot races, which are often quite deadly. (Serendipity/coincidence like this continues for pretty much the whole picture - Judah just HAPPENS to bump into his wife on the streets, he just HAPPENS to know the Roman soldier who knows that his sister and mother are still alive. But if this stuff didn't go down like this, the film would otherwise be about 5 hours long...)
Let's be clear about this, though - we all came here for the chariot race, didn't we? So in the end, who cares about exactly how we get there, how many little coincidences lead to the chariot race, let's get to some racing! There's a newly-built circus (no, not the kind with clowns - a round racing arena, like a hippodrome) with all the fancy bells and whistles, so let's "Shake and bake"! (because some of those chariots are shaky, and Jerusalem's quite hot, hence the "bake"...) Really, this is kind of like NASCAR at the start of the C.E.
The best advice that Ilderim gives Judah is to hang at the back of the chariot pack - because this will give the chariots in the lead ample time to take each other out. So the best strategy is a form of "drafting", staying behind the other drivers until it's time to make his move. OK, it may work, but it's a real pussy way to win a chariot race. But the first man across the finish line is also the last one to die.
Say what you will about the 1959 version of "Ben-Hur", the one with Charlton Heston - it may have won the Best Picture Oscar, but it didn't spend one-tenth the money that people are willing to spend these days on special effects. By comparison, the 2016 chariot race is light-years ahead of the one in the 1959 film, yet that picture is well-respected, and this one is generally considered a bomb. Go figure. But this film held my attention for two hours and change, while the Heston version is nearly three and a half hours long. So if I had to watch one of them over again, I'd go with the 2016 remake.
Also starring Jack Huston (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Toby Kebbell (last seen in "A Monster Calls"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Going in Style"), Nazanin Boniadi (last seen in "Passengers"), Rodrigo Santoro (last seen in "I Love You Phillip Morris"), Sofia Black D'Elia, Ayelet Zurer (last seen in "Vantage Point") Haluk Bilginer (last seen in "Ishtar"), Moises Arias (last seen in "Nacho Libre"), Pilou Asbaek (last seen in "Lucy"), Marwan Kenzari, James Cosmo (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), David Walsmley, Yasen Atour, Francesco Scianna, Gabriel Lo Giudice, Stefano Scherini, Alessandro Giuggioli, Maurice Lee.
RATING: 7 out of 10 lepers
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