Diary entries forBen-Hur
Ben-Hur
So this finishes my best picture watchlist, 100% complete. A good way to end, Ben-Hur is a classic and in many ways feels timeless. The third two thirds of great, culminating in the iconic chariot race which was genuinely incredible. Sadly, everything after the race dragged for me and felt very unnecessary. Sure, seeing the crucifixion was interesting and important, but the whole leprosy thing really went on and on. When they went into the crowd of people I couldn’t help but think how selfish it was knowing they’d infect many innocent people. Strange, but it kind of ruined the film for me. However, a major of it is great and deserves the praise, I hope to one day rewatch everything up to the chariot scene.
Ben-Hur
ACTIONx52(023) (https://letterboxd.com/allbeef/list/actionx52023/) #37 of 52 | Watch a slow-burn action film. Boy oh boy is this movie the very definition of "epic". The shots, the colors, the sets, the action, it's all just perfect. That chariot race scene alone is peak cinema and a top 10 all-time action sequence. Heston is the very definition of "dude" and acts the shit out of this. Personally, I could do without all the Jesus stuff only because it might cause some people to avoid this and pass it off as some nonsense Christian movie. It is so much more than that and hopefully anyone watching can look past that to see what the true messages are.
Ben-Hur
Looked spectacular and loved the chariot race but a bit slow for me. Maybe if I rewatch it I’ll appreciate it more like with Lawrence of Arabia..
Ben-Hur
“Is there anything so sad as unrequited love?” — the moment i knew what BEN-HUR was really about. If you’ve been following me for a while, or if you’ve even just read my bio, you’ll know that I am something of a homoeroticism connoisseur. Not explicitly homosexual activities, homoerotic behavior.It’s an important distinction that not everybody gets—I even made a list (https://boxd.it/gAWBG)(because someone had to). Now that I’ve given you my qualifications allow me to say: this film features one of the most fucked up and compelling homoerotic relationships I’ve ever seen. Am I biased because of how unexpectedly good it was? Perhaps… Often times when it comes to this sort of subtext, it’s more about what they’re notsaying and the context with which they’re speaking. BEN-HUR, in my humble opinion, features a masterclass of this kind of writing. A sentence can be read two ways with two interpretations and the second one won’t be open to you unless you’re in the know. “Unfortunately, the emperor is devoted to his empire. He’s particularly fond of Judea.” Innocuous enough, but when paired with the blocking, the acting, their backstory (a Roman and a Jew who became close “friends” after the former saved the latter’s life), it can mean something else entirely. If you’ve seen the movie you’re probably like “obviously it’s homoerotic ron duh” but I hadn’t. The only Charles Heston biblical film I watched every Easter was The Ten Commandments on ABC. I went into this film just wanting to be swept up in a classic Hollywood epic and was quite surprised with the amount of homo-activity at work. After I paused the movie (sorry, i know some of you are nerds and get mad at this) and did some digging I discovered that the film was intentionally written with Massala and Judah formerly being lovers in mind. It rocked my world and being able to read everything in that light made the rest of so much more entertaining. Perfectly written homoeroticism aside, the film over all is very impressive for the period. The costuming is a bit silly but add to the theatricality of it all. Actions scenes are tense, and well shot, the film’s famous charioteer race being an obvious stand-out. There’s also a surrogate father storyline that I found really endearing, if not underdeveloped. I won’t say the runtime breezes by, because it doesn’t. I definitely made good use of the intermission. However I will say that for me, it was worth it. A good old fashioned motionpictcha.
Ben-Hur
Siguiendo con Semana Santa. Casi siempre las películas que se remontan a esta época son siempre con a Jesús como protagonista pero ¿qué pasa cuando él no lo es pero aún en sus esporádicos y misteriosos momentos es trascendental? Supongo que ese es el mensaje principal de Ben Hur, además de enseñar cómo el deseo de venganza no lleva al final a nada, Ben Hur se encuentra relacionado a Jesús. El hombre que alguna vez tuvo compasión de él y le dio de beber cuando era esclavo, poéticamente le regresa el favor años después sin saberlo, sin saber que ese profeta del que todos hablan el ya lo había conocido en su momento más bajo. William Wyler trajo una obra que no solo destaca por su mensaje religioso sino por también su proeza técnica, quizás de los directores que trajeron el concepto de “cine de dimensiones bíblicas” y que hasta hoy es muy difícil que un director o un estudio se arriesgue demasiado en traer algo así (al menos si tu apellido es Nolan).
Ben-Hur
Volviendo a ver esta película me hizo dar de cuenta el por qué Ben Hur es una película religiosa y su importancia de Jesús aunque su aparición es breve. Ben Hur, el príncipe judío que vivía de riquezas que el imperio le arrebató todo volviéndose en un hombre lleno de odio y con sed de venganza. Ahí entra la participación de Jesús, donde ese paralelismo en como al principio un hombre le da de beber a Ben Hur, y que años después Ben Hur, de manera sorpresiva, le devuelve ese favor ahora que sufre al cargar su cruz. Todo esto elevado a la epopeya bíblica que pocas películas en el mundo pueden hacer. Sin duda, Ben Hur de las mejores películas dentro del subgénero del cristianismo. ——— 14/250 TOP 250 IMDb
Ben-Hur
No había tenido el tiempo y el ánimo de dedicarle tiempo a esta película y vaya que me he perdido de una de las aventuras más épicas del cine. Ben Hur, para su época, es una hazaña histórica porque no es una historia de venganza que sucede en épocas de Cristo. Es esa epopeya en la que un principe lucha en medio de sus creencias y un gran imperio. Ben Hur se ciega en el coraje y el resentimiento solo con el propósito de ver en vida a su familia lo que está por consumirlo sino fuera porque aquel hombre que alguna vez le dió de beber cuando fue prisionero, le volvió su fe con solo una mirada. Merecido todo el reconocimiento que tiene junto a las más épicas historias galardonadas de los Oscar: Titanic y El Retorno del Rey.
Ben-Hur
Picks up right back where it started from but it has lost its charm to what feels like a TV movie. This time the rats want the whole city. It's good fun seeing large groups of people run away from large groups of rats. The single song in here alone is fantastic, and the joy and charm of the boy forming a relationship with his only friend in the world is honorable, and doesn't let up, as it did in the first...and we all know how that ended up. Moral of the story, choose your friends wisely. chu chu~
Ben-Hur
Turning in your lepers at 11:59 and professor jesus still curing them from his laptop in the city of death🥀🥀🥀🥀 just straight up rotted like, he is clearly busy 🙄🙄 -should have been gayer... I was promised something homoerotic and all i got was the awkward / unsafe vibes u get from reconnecting with that old friend from middle school after they have fallen down the right wing pipeline... -could have used some more melanin too...like damn American Christians sure do love them some white jesus. plus judah ben-hur is white af for being born in biblical Judea that's all im saying... Like if ur gonna make a Bible oc at least try to give him a tan... This dude white as they come, 6'3, and has blue eyes like GET UR ASS ON BOY (and take ur lepers with u) 😭😭💔 -also holy shit the black face and orientalism is out of control in this bitch... Ultimently, despite trying to portay a vison of unity, depicting Arabic people as an exotic other with tired tropes and offensive costuming and set dressing. Puting them in sharp contrast to both the whitewashed depictions of Jewish people and the sleek glamourus authoritarianism of the romans. Plus they must have really hated casting any person of color in a leading role back then to the point they had the shoe polish on standby, resorting to black face for the only arab character with dialogue.. just really odd and racist and uncomfortable to watch -also 1880 is WAYYYY too late to be coming up with new influential bible fanfiction ✌️😴 pack it up brauh ur not dante...(and if u are gonna write it at least make jesus x judas happen and/or make ur female characters full human beings) -the chariot race was cool tho i will give it that 🐎🐎🐎🐎
Ben-Hur
Lavishly crafted, gorgeously constructed. The scale strains to be bigger yet the story demands to be smaller, Judah v Messala is the engine of the entire film, and Wyler begins to lose sight of that as soon as Ben-Hur is sent to the galley. You sense that the Jesus aspect is forced in, and it’s extremely clunky. Lucas took a lot of this for the prequel trilogy—not just the chariot race, but Judah as Obi-Wan and Messala as Anakin. The chariot race is enormously influential of course, and SPEED RACER’s Grand Prix takes from it in smaller ways, but the rest of the film is just as interesting, even if the story gets lost in the scale. That happens with epics, of course, but you really get the sense that this would be best served if Jesus Christ never existed—the final 30 minutes are Jesus fanfic instead of what should be, if at all: a man reckoning with his bittersweet “victory” and how it affects his culture. My thoughts are a bit scrambled from sickness but I grew up Christian, read the book when I was young, and have seen most of the biblical epics by this point—the movie should have ended shortly after the chariot race, or gone in a different direction as detailed above. I’m just not sure how you’d wrap it up without another hour or becoming Life of Brian esque.
