One of those classics that had ended up on the Netflix queue and finally made it into the DVD player :) This one took a while to find time to watch, purely because of its length! But, at long last, here you go: Exodus.
Plot: The movie is really in two parts, but both revolving around the founding of the state of Israel. The first part takes place in Cyprus, where a boatload of Jewish immigrants bound for Palestine is being offloaded. The action follows a Jewish officer in the British army who brings this boatload from the holding camp back on board, in an effort to travel to Palestine. The officers and immigrants must negotiate through a standoff with the British blockade of the harbor before finally reaching Palestine. The second part of the film follows several of the immigrants as they work in Palestine toward the formation of a Jewish nation, both before and after independence is actually declared.
I don't know how I felt about this one, honestly. I liked it, but I didn't. Dunno.
The acting was well done, but inconsistent. It's hard to describe. The acting individually was good, but it didn't mesh well somehow. Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint in the leads are OK, but there's little chemistry between them. They both have done other roles that I liked much, much better. Newman does well with Ari Ben Canaan's hostility and drive and passion, but doesn't ever open up and become warmer, as events in the movie seem to imply that he should (falling in love and all). I guess that's why the love scenes are so awkward. They really seemed more forced than anything else.
The music was very well done. If I'm humming a classical piece in my head, it's definitely memorable. Not stuck-in-your-head-driving-you-nuts like the zither music from The Third Man (which I still liked), but just memorable in a good way.
I think what really hurt this movie's rating from me the most was the direction. It was just soooo long! The pacing is just so slow and rather, well, talky. If you're going to have a movie over 3 hours long, it has to keep you pulled in, and there were a lot of parts where it just seemed to drag on and on. They seemed to focus on more awkward things (like Ari and Kitty's romance, which I already mentioned seemed forced) but could have really developed some of the political issues, like the differences in the two factions focused on in the movie There were to brothers, separated by their views on the methods of achieving the new nation - the more extremist and the more 'political' methods of working toward the same goal. It was never really delved into, and could have been very well.
Part of what made the movie so interesting, though, was looking at it 50 years after it was made. The movie made the whole problem seem so simple, like there would be the vote, a small amount of fighting, and then there would be a whole new nation - tada! It's been another 50 years down the road, now, and they are still fighting over that area of the world. In a DVD version of the movie, I'd love to see it paired with a History Channel retrospective (or something similar), looking at how things progressed after the actual formation of the new nation.
Visually, the movie is very well done. Lots of beautiful scenery (well, as beautiful as a desert is) and old cities and so forth. But it's like gloss over an empty surface, nothing underneath (I realize I'm probably mangling the metaphors, but you get what I'm saying, right?) Without characters that you really warm to or a driving plot, pretty visuals only take you so far.
Overall: 3.5 of 5. Well done, but not epic, which you need to be at this length. Good acting, with a few stand-out performances, but still inconsistent. Very interesting history and story, which is really a large part of what drew me to the movie in the first place. Glad I watched it, but not shelf-worthy.
I don't know how I felt about this one, honestly. I liked it, but I didn't. Dunno.
The acting was well done, but inconsistent. It's hard to describe. The acting individually was good, but it didn't mesh well somehow. Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint in the leads are OK, but there's little chemistry between them. They both have done other roles that I liked much, much better. Newman does well with Ari Ben Canaan's hostility and drive and passion, but doesn't ever open up and become warmer, as events in the movie seem to imply that he should (falling in love and all). I guess that's why the love scenes are so awkward. They really seemed more forced than anything else.
The music was very well done. If I'm humming a classical piece in my head, it's definitely memorable. Not stuck-in-your-head-driving-you-nuts like the zither music from The Third Man (which I still liked), but just memorable in a good way.
I think what really hurt this movie's rating from me the most was the direction. It was just soooo long! The pacing is just so slow and rather, well, talky. If you're going to have a movie over 3 hours long, it has to keep you pulled in, and there were a lot of parts where it just seemed to drag on and on. They seemed to focus on more awkward things (like Ari and Kitty's romance, which I already mentioned seemed forced) but could have really developed some of the political issues, like the differences in the two factions focused on in the movie There were to brothers, separated by their views on the methods of achieving the new nation - the more extremist and the more 'political' methods of working toward the same goal. It was never really delved into, and could have been very well.
Part of what made the movie so interesting, though, was looking at it 50 years after it was made. The movie made the whole problem seem so simple, like there would be the vote, a small amount of fighting, and then there would be a whole new nation - tada! It's been another 50 years down the road, now, and they are still fighting over that area of the world. In a DVD version of the movie, I'd love to see it paired with a History Channel retrospective (or something similar), looking at how things progressed after the actual formation of the new nation.
Visually, the movie is very well done. Lots of beautiful scenery (well, as beautiful as a desert is) and old cities and so forth. But it's like gloss over an empty surface, nothing underneath (I realize I'm probably mangling the metaphors, but you get what I'm saying, right?) Without characters that you really warm to or a driving plot, pretty visuals only take you so far.
Overall: 3.5 of 5. Well done, but not epic, which you need to be at this length. Good acting, with a few stand-out performances, but still inconsistent. Very interesting history and story, which is really a large part of what drew me to the movie in the first place. Glad I watched it, but not shelf-worthy.
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