"Ben Hur" And One Of My Favorite Scenes...

Of course, at Easter many of the old classic Biblical movies hit the airways. For years ABC aired The Ten Commandments on Easter Sunday. I noticed it being on another network yesterday. I'm sure if I looked I could have found The Robe playing somewhere. The movie I most wanted to watched aired today on Turner Movie Classics.

The move: Ben Hur.

When they say "they don't make movies like that anymore," they're talking about movies like Ben Hur. It's over 3 and 1/2 hours long. There's even an intermission. There are moments in the film that are painfully slow, by today's standards. They used thousands of extras and film sets they can't afford to construct nowadays. It was the Jurassic World of its day.

There's many reasons why I love Ben Hur. I love the way it begins with Christ's birth. I love the story of Judah's conversion, his inner struggle of revenge, and then redemption. But there's one scene I like most of all. It occurs after the sea battle, after the chariot race, after Judah finds his sister and mother living in the leper colony. Judah, Esther, and Balthaser come upon a gathering on a mountain where Jesus is about to address the gathering people. Esther and Balhaser stay to listen. Judah does not. We see Judah, a lone figure standing by himself, the masses sit to listen. The scene I love is when Judah decides to leave. If you watch Jesus, he follows Judah, tracks him as he walks. To me, it shows that even though all the people are there to listen, Jesus is mindful of the one.

I didn't notice this the first time I saw the saw the scene, but when I did notice it, it changed the entire meeting of the movie for me. I could see myself in Judah--not as a chariot racer or galley slave, but as a failed man fighting the inner demons, at times rejecting the words delivered by the Son of God. And even through all that, He's still mindful of me.

If you can get past the length, the slowness, the intermission, the message is as powerful as any movie ever made. And I hope it airs on Easter every year until the end of time.

"Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ"...A Book Review

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There's a scene in the 1959 movie Ben-Hur that I think I'll never forget. In the movie Judah Ben-Hur is at the Sermon on the Mount while people are gathering to hear from Jesus. Ben-Hur had met Christ before as a slave being led to Rome, but a lot had changed from that time to when the two men were together again. The scene is filmed so we see the back of Christ's head (if I remember, we never actually see Jesus's face in the film...) and as Ben-Hur walks around the outer edge of the gathering crowd, Christ turns, as if he's following Judah as he's leaving.

There's many people on the hill, but Christ focuses on the one man who's leaving. For some reason, the scene was powerful to me. To me, it showed that Christ knows all of us, even when we're walking away from him.

This week I finished the very long audiobook of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. A couple of weeks ago I finished The Robe. I guess I'm prepping for Easter. These are two books I probably should have read years ago. "Better late than ever," as some say. Even though both books center on Christ and his mission, the one begins with Christ's death, the other ends with it.

The book had a few things different from the film. In the book Judah is a teenager when he's accused of trying to kill the Roman representative and he meets Christ on the trail as a young man. Also the Three Wise Men actually arrive when the Baby Jesus is born--on the 25th of December. I'm not a bible scholar by any stretch, but I believe that Christ was born in the spring and I heard that it took years for the Wise Men to find Christ. 

The book expounded on much of why I loved the story. A poor boy is wrongly accused, saves the life of a Roman who adopts him as his own. He enacts revenge against his boyhood friend in the famous chariot race, returns to his home and finds his mother and sister who are lepers. Then, since this is a book about Jesus Christ, Judah witnesses Christ's crucifixion. Judah is us, we see it all through his eyes.

I'm glad I finally read the book. It is a classic. We know the story and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ allows us to live it with him.

* Photo used without permission from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387749.Ben_Hur?from_search=true