Tales of the Christ

Peter Suderman doesn’t much like the Ben Hur remake, which he describes as purposeless, a lesser film in every way than its 1959 model.

According to Suderman, “The new version bungles the story’s religious aspects. . . . The 1880 Lew Wallace novel was subtitled A Tale of the Christ, and occurs in parallel to the biblical story of Jesus. Previous adaptations have always served as conversion stories pitched to the faithful.”

The remake “muddles the material, portraying Jesus as a kind of hot Mediterranean guru of peace and love. Played by a tanned and buff Rodrigo Santoro, he’s the sort of hunky, hippie male model type you can imagine on a romance novel cover, whose most profound idea is that ‘love is our true nature.’ . . . The character of Jesus is barely an afterthought in this Ben-Hur, and [Director] Bekmambetov’s normally hyperactive direction grows tepid and dull every time he appears onscreen. As a director, Bekmambetov appears unfamiliar with the concept or experience of emotions, and can’t manage to drum up a modicum of sentimentality. He stages Jesus’s crucifixion with all the feeling of a laundry detergent commercial and none of the despair that comes from not being able to remove those blue stains.”

If you’re still looking for a recent Jesus film, you should take in the Coen Brothers’ neglected Hail Caesar, subtitled “A Tale of the Christ.” Its crucifixion scene—a film of a film set—has all you could want in a conversion scene with none of the waffly “love is our nature” piffle. Being a Coen film, the scene can’t help but be deflated by comedy; being a Coen film, the deflation is itself thematically rich.

If nothing else, the film is worth watching just to see James Brolin slap the communism out of George Clooney.