PG | 1 h 39 min | Animation, Family, Drama | 1998
With an impressive cast of voices, this animated retelling of the Bible’s Book of Exodus articulates an idea of freedom founded on embracing truth.
Pharaoh Seti (Patrick Stewart) builds astounding architectural symbols of ancient Egypt’s power on the backs of Hebrew slaves. So, fearing an uprising, he orders the killing of Hebrew babies. Why not crush the faintest prospect of rebellion before it becomes a full-blown revolution? But a Hebrew woman Yocheved (Ofra Haza) and her children, Miriam (Sandra Bullock) and Aaron (Jeff Goldblum) send her newborn baby out into the Nile River in a basket. Perhaps he’ll live to become their long-foretold deliverer?
The Nile carries the basket to Seti’s queen. Believing the baby is a gift from the gods, she adopts and raises him as Moses (Val Kilmer), alongside her son, Rameses (Ralph Fiennes). The princes grow close as brothers, but pampered and drunk with power.
Smitten by a Hebrew captive, Tzipporah (Michelle Pfeiffer), Moses enables her escape, then pursues her into a village. There, from Miriam, he stumbles upon the truth of his Hebrew heritage and, later, the Egyptian brutality he’s complicit in. Enraged at seeing a Hebrew in pain, Moses kills an Egyptian slave driver, then flees the kingdom despite the royal family’s promise of protection and pardon.
In the desert for years, Moses marries Tzipporah, and embraces a new life as a shepherd. It’s no spoiler to say that God has other plans. He anoints Moses as the deliverer, and imbues his shepherd’s staff with powers that eventually wrest the Hebrews from Egypt’s stranglehold.
A stunning mix of extreme long-shots and closeups depict Moses’s introspection. He discovers that standing on “holy ground” isn’t merely about confronting a bush that’s afire but doesn’t burn. It’s a disposition of humility and courage that can accompany him anywhere, helping him face and embrace the truth.
An Animated Classic
Over four years, hundreds of graphic artists, story-boarders, animators, and painters worked on this epic drama with the theme displayed on promo-clips: “A lie made them brothers. The truth will separate them forever.”
The film marked the first use of a revolutionary software called “the exposure tool,” allowing animators to position 2-D hand-drawn characters into a 3-D CGI world, giving cameras unprecedented flexibility in between, around, above and beneath characters. One superb flashback-dream sequence uses Egypt’s hieroglyphs to depict Moses looking back at Seti’s and ahead at Rameses’s infanticidal edict.
Low-angle and high-angle shots show Egypt’s power expressed in mighty statues, columns, and halls, some sprawling enough to hold a Super Bowl stadium or two. You can almost smell the incense and feel the alabaster and limestone. You can hear the weary clanking of metal in the quiet desert night, as horses are rested, and camels watered, beside mountainous dunes.
Hans Zimmer’s scintillating score features Ms. Pfeiffer’s character singing the sweeping track, “When You Believe,” with vocalist Sally Dworsky; it’s also a duet by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Amy Grant sings “River Lullaby.” And Stephen Schwartz’s lyrics, largely, advance the story, instead of being set piece songs.
Audiences may be familiar with images of Moses walking up (a mountain) to the burning bush in the live-action feature, “The Ten Commandments” (1956). Here, Moses walks down (a cave) to the bush. Boldly, screenwriter Philip LaZebnik portrays truth-seeking as an exodus of self-discovery before it becomes a miraculous revelation. He presents a call to Moses’s conscience from Miriam, as the first trigger of his change of heart, well before any desert spectacle.
The filmmakers suggest that the human conscience is a sign of an eternal truth that lies within, a life-giving spiritual heartbeat. Some are deaf to it, as Seti is, and later, Rameses. They become, or stay, callous toward life. Others are alert to its whisperings as Moses is, and Miriam before him. They turn, or remain, respectful of life and grateful for it. Tellingly, Moses implores Rameses, “Let go of your contempt for life before it destroys everything you hold dear.”
