During Holy Week we will be sharing a mix of old and new at Word & Song. And we have an Easter special for you as well: 20% off all upgrades, gift, and new subscriptions through April 15th.
May God bless you all during the coming week and through Eastertide.
“He leadeth me by the still waters,” says the Psalmist. Those are not stagnant pools of brackish water, or the billowing waves that overwhelm the poet in another psalm, but fresh water, gentle, restoring the soul. Yet what would it be like if the world were overwhelmed with a flood of that fresh and restorative water?
In recommending as our Film of the Week the epic Ben-Hur, I’m aware that I’ve got a film that most of our readers will have seen. Why, when I was a boy we watched it at our house every year. So I need only mention the name of the film, or remind you of the human problem that the movie sets up, the problem of a peace-loving Jewish nobleman wrongly accused and sentenced to the galleys, and his mother and sister sent to the disease-ridden dungeons the Roman overlords in Palestine have dug, to have you say, “Yes, I remember.” But sometimes it is good to know what’s going to happen, so that you can pay closer attention to how it is portrayed. This you can do, relying on the intelligence and the taste of the director, if you can trust that he knows what he is doing. And our director William Wyler, one of the very finest who ever told a story in film, certainly knew what he was doing — all the more so, as he had been thinking about Ben-Hur ever since he had been an assistant director for the silent version (1925), itself a remarkable work of art.
So now I am suggesting to you, as you watch Ben-Hur again, pay close attention to the water: to every shot, every dramatic moment, in which water plays any role at all.
Before I say a little bit more about the water, I’d like to suggest that you think of a really great film like Ben-Hur as a unified poem of visual scenes, dialogue, drama, and music, and, since it is unified and it is a poem, you will expect that any important motif will be repeated, in another context, at a different angle, with a new meaning that echoes or shades or deepens our sense of it. So then, when we see the broken body of Messala as he gasps out his last words of vengeance against his old enemy and boyhood friend, Judah Ben-Hur, we may remember that it is not the first time in the film that we have seen the body of a man reduced to infirmity, even about to die, nor will it be the last. Or when we watch the delightfully malicious sheik Ilderith at the Roman bath, egging the Romans on, including Messala, to wager more and more on the horse race to come, appealing to their pride and their insatiable hunger for rule, we may remember that it is not the first scene of Roman appetite we have seen, and we may keep it in mind during the race itself, when it’s not hot springs and towels, or exotic dancers and banqueting, that salts the appetite, but pride and glory and the terrible sense that even a Roman may have, a sense of inadequacy, a fear of being shown up.
And then there is the water. Wyler was born into a Jewish family, and there’s no evidence for his having ever embraced the Christian faith. But I cannot see how any director could have done more than Wyler did to make the faith elemental: to see it as informing every moment of time, every inch of space, and every tiniest particle of matter. Every time we see water in the film, from the little water-stoup into which Judah dips his fingers as he enters his home, to the drink that Jesus — whose face we do not see — gives to Judah, dying of thirst as the Romans drag him off in chains to the galleys, to the ocean welling up through the torn hull of the Roman ship as the oarsmen in the hold, chained to their benches, drown, we are being prepared for the water mingled with blood, running in spate down the hill of the Skull, as Judah’s mother and sister, lepers, look on — but that same rain water washes over them too.
So then, this time when you watch, attend to the motifs; enjoy the rich performances of the character actors Hugh Griffiths (a Welshman, playing an Arab sheik, and playing it to the hilt!) and Finlay Currie (the elderly Balthasar, one of the Magi, who has returned to Palestine to find Jesus now that he has become a man); and trust that not one word, not one look is out of place. He was called “Forty Take Wyler,” a perfectionist who rode his actors hard and made them everlastingly grateful for it. But he rode himself and his writers just the same. I like the novel Ben-Hur a great deal; it deserved to make General Lew Wallace a household name in nineteenth-century America. Here is that rare case, where the film is utterly faithful to the genius of the book, but is greater — much greater. See it with the whole family, too. Let it enter the imaginations of your children. This one is for the ages.
Today’s film is currently free on Amazon Prime, for anyone with access to that service. The trailer below features a famous water scene.
And for those who have never seen the 1925 silent film version, click above.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
Unfortunately, Ben Hur is not free on Amazon Prime, at least not with my subscription. However, the review and comments here have convinced me that I should pony up and spend the $3.99 rental charge to re-watch the movie. ☺️
(Incidentally, The Greatest Story Ever Told is free on Amazon Prime.)
I read the novel “Ben Hur” when I was an adolescent and was immediately absorbed by it. I loved history, too, and thought it was a coincidence that the author shared the name of a Civil War general. My mother set me straight on that. It impressed me that a man who achieved great success in one field could achieve it in another, unrelated one. Decades later in Santa Fe I saw a plaque commemorating his service as Governor of the New Mexico Territory. ‘You again!”, I thought, “and way out here!” I like Wyler’s film very much and will re-watch it. The scene of the women in the leper colony stuck with me even after I forgot which film it was in. The chariot race is superb.