AllBeef

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.

werdna

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..

ron

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.

Enrique Maldonado

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).