When people ask me why I don’t see “Christian” movies, I usually only tell them half the reason. The half that I don’t tell them, for the sake of avoiding an argument, is that I tend to have huge theological problems with these movies, both in their medium and their message. I think the idea of a “Christian movie” as opposed to a “non-Christian movie” is a fundamentally problematic categorization that suggests that God is only present in things where his name is loudly and aggressively shouted; not to mention the movies’ subjects are always waging war on secular culture by misrepresenting them and then defeating them on the silver screen.
Instead I take the safer route and tell people that I don’t watch “Christian” movies because they are often of poor quality. As a lover of films as an art, it pains me to watch the movies that are labeled as “Christian,” because they tend to have very low production value, poor acting, and difficulty in storytelling. Since Noah came along earlier this year, I defended the right of a competent filmmaker to depict a tale from the Bible in a cinematically and theologically compelling way.
Unfortunately, Exodus: Gods and Kings presents me with a problem. This is not a “Christian movie” but a big-budget, Hollywood spectacle with extremely talented actors and everything it needs to do well. And it was, in about every way I can imagine, a terrible film. I have only left a theatre twice in my lifetime, and had I not been commissioned to write about it for Reel Spirituality, I might have during this one. Exodus: Gods and Kings was an assault, on senses and sensibilities, and moreover, it is without a developed heart. The movie seems to have very little idea of what it wants to say about any of the important themes it develops: slavery, God, calling, a hero’s journey, sibling rivalry. These themes are all presented through dialogue but are never developed. The movie just simply is, and for a story that resonates with millions, this lack of conviction is, to say the least, off-putting.
I’m having a hard time with this film, perhaps because I am distracted and disgruntled by the film’s own depiction of God as a petulant British child. It can be most difficult for people to truly experience God when God is being poorly portrayed. Perhaps this is why idolatry is the gravest of sins. When we misrepresent God, whether with a golden calf or by committing a heinous act in the name of Jesus, we have rendered it almost impossible for all witnesses to experience God properly. God commands us not to use the name of God in vain, perhaps not for the sake of our own integrity but for the sake of God’s. So when a film like this, or a Christian film like the ones I referenced above, depicts God in a way that God truly is not like, it becomes that much harder, especially for non-believers, to ever hope to connect to God at all.
Perhaps the film’s depiction of God was intentional. One could read the Old Testament and find God to be petulant, indecisive, distant and sometimes barbaric. I happen to read the Old Testament a different way, but taken at face value I could see how the filmmakers ended up where he did with this portrayal. But the inconsistency leads me to believe this was not their actual goal, or if it was it was lost in studio interference. If the filmmakers wanted to put the Exodus story and the Judeo-Christian God on trial, there was plenty of scripture in the biblical account that could have accomplished this goal. (God trying to kill Moses, God hardening Pharoah’s heart, etc.) Exodus is a theologically problematic text. This is one of the reasons it is so good!
But instead of these things, we were given a non-stop barrage of images, some of them exceedingly gruesome. Every uncomfortable plague, every family hung, every child dead, and an interpretation of the sea of blood straight out of a Spring-break-horror-film – a visual assault toward an ambiguous end. The film does not practice implication but only dramatization – which perhaps explains why a story like the Exodus narrative, so ripe with symbolism, literary device, and rich in content and meaning flew so far outside this film’s radar.
What Exodus: Gods and Kings draws out of the biblical narrative I can only identify as brutality, masculinity, spectacle, and a God who doesn’t play well with others. I suppose I know some Christians who believe in a Bible like that, but it certainly is not the story in Exodus. Unlike Noah, which took a short Bible story and filled in the blanks for thematic purposes and resonated with Judeo-Christian sensibilities, Exodus: Gods and Kings took a story that is fourteen chapters long, removed everything that didn’t “work” for cinematic purposes, and goes decidedly against the thematic trajectory of the Exodus story in scripture. You won’t see me calling for its removal or leading a protest against it, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t offend me. Theologically and artistically, Exodus: Gods and Kings suffered from an absence of heart and an excess of visual gluttony.
You might also find these reviews of Exodus: Gods and Kings helpful:
1 More Film Blog
Christianity Today
Larsen on Film
Looking Closer
Reel Gospel
Reel World Theology
Sister Rose at the Movies
Think Christian
