CHARIOTS of fire
The Roman Empire enters the digital age…
Ben-Hur
Starring Jack Huston, Nazanin Boniadi,
Morgan Freeman, Toby Kebbell
Director Timur Bekmambetov ETA 26 August After Noah and Exodus: Gods And Kings, Biblical epics are all the rage right now, so it’s no surprise to see Hollywood again dusting off Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of
The Christ, a story so big it makes all other epics seem titchy.
Previous versions include the supersized 1925 take and, of course, the Charlton Hestonstarring 1959 version that weighed in at almost four hours and garnered 11 Oscars. How do you top those? Well, you can at least try by giving the reins to Russian/Kazakh visionary Timur Bekmambetov ( Night Watch, Wanted) and hurling a Colosseum’s-worth of CGI at the screen.
The story sees Jewish nobleman Judah Ben-Hur ( Jack Huston) falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), an officer of the Roman army, and sold into slavery. Five years later, Ben-Hur and other galley slaves spill into the sea when two ships collide, and our hero survives to set out on a roaring rampage of revenge which culminates in the biggest, baddest chariot race imaginable. Brother on brother, blood on blood.
The chariot race in the 1959 film took five weeks to shoot, on 18 acres of backlot, and employed 15,000 extras. One of the high points of action cinema, it didn’t scare Bekmambetov, who spent six weeks on his version of this iconic set-piece and came at it with a new aesthetic.
“The chariot race today is like Formula 1… with a lot of whip pans and zooming,” he says, admitting that he found inspiration in YouTube videos. “But it’s a real race with 32 horses running in a cloud of dust and the actors love it.”
Huston says he was “incredibly honoured to step into Charlton Heston’s sandals”, and it’s a good job too – he and Kebbell had to train for two-and-a-half months, six days a week, for the chariot race, and the shoot lasted a whopping six months. As with the ‘59 version, much of the action was shot at Rome’s legendary Cinecitta Studios.
But expect key differences: Ben-Hur 2016 will zoom in on the formative relationships of Ben-Hur and Messala, before the Roman Empire took control of Jerusalem, and Jesus will have a prominent role. The actor playing Christ, Rodrigo Santoro, even received the blessing of Pope Francis.
Will Ben-Hur still speak to today’s audiences? Bekmambetov has no doubt. “We share the same values they had 2,000 years ago,” he says, pointing out there will be political machinations as well as somersaulting CG horses. “It’s so relatable, so contemporary and so scary.” Jamie Graham