Tara Ison - Reeling Through Life - How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies

MOSES

For me, there will be no peace of spirit until I hear the word of God! From God Himself!

Which is either pretty darn cocky or maybe the start of a common sense, empirically based, scientific-method attitude. He climbs the mountain, finds a burning bush, all orange-glowing and chatty:

MOSES

God, I am here! Lord, why do you not hear the cries of the children in the bondage of Egypt?

GOD

(I guess, or THE BUSH)

I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and I have heard their cries. . for I know their sorrows. Therefore, I will send thee, Moses, unto them that thou mayest bring thy people out of Egypt!

It’s about time. Moses finally accepts the existence of this God and that he must really be the Deliverer; all doubts resolved, he descends from the mountain now with a wild Wolfman Jack pompadour and a dazed gleam in his eye — the gleam of the true believer, I suppose, although to me he just looks a little demonic, possessed. He returns to Egypt and confronts Rameses (now Pharaoh):

MOSES

Thus sayest the God of Israel: let my people go!

Rameses refuses, of course, so Moses warns him God isn’t going to like it — in fact, He is going to smite the Egyptians and visit all sorts of plagues upon the land: The Nile turns to blood (but looks very much like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river), and flies, frogs, boils, and so on, none of which we get to see, which is disappointing.

Moses threatens that God will kill all the first-born sons of Egypt, because “It’s the Lord who executes judgment” (so this wonderful true God of Israel has no problem serving as a war-mongering executioner of how many people. .? This kind of hypersensitive, quick-trigger deity will turn on you in a heartbeat), so Rameses decides to kill all the first-born sons of the Hebrews. This eye-for-an-eye pissing contest could go on forever: Well, now God will kill the second- born! So now Rameses will kill the third-born! Now God’ll kill first cousins! (And what about the first-born daughters , I wonder? Apparently, they are not a threat.)

When the Hebrew slaves go around swiping lambs’ blood on their front doors, so God, or the Angel of Death sent on God’s behalf, will “pass over” their houses and instead wreak vengeance on the Egyptians, I finally get it: A-ha, this is all a set-up for the story of Passover ! This is what the last three hours, and all those endless Seders, have been about, the lamb shank and bitter herbs and talk of plagues! Meanwhile, God/Death Angel, represented by dirty-looking gray-green smoke, is crawling around Egypt smite-killing first-born Egyptian males. We see them drop like flies, we hear the screams.

MOSES’S SISTER MIRIAM

Death is all around us!

MOSES’S BROTHER AARON

But it passes those who believe in the Lord!

Which is illogical and confusing: Why would God/Death Angel need that gross-out signal of the lambs’ blood smeared on front doors? Wouldn’t He know who believes in Him or not, isn’t that the whole point to this one true God? And wouldn’t He, like an omniscient real estate agent, know who lived where, be able to tell the good Children of Israel homes from the bad unbelieving Egyptian ones?

Pharaoh’s own son dies, and he cracks, announces the Hebrews are bondage-free; they all take off to the Land of Milk and Honey with their unleavened bread (matzoh!), in a crazed exodus sequence of packing and camels and caravans and flocks of geese, babies being born on the road and thousands of extras in dark body makeup. But then Pharaoh changes his mind, and his troops race after the fleeing Unbondaged Israelites, backing them up against the coast of the Red Sea. Moses assures everyone the Lord will save them: Roiling black clouds, churning sea, a glowing orange pillar of fire swoops in and opens up the water so everyone can run across the ocean floor (including a really panicked goose, who seems to have a good grip on his motivation), and even pre-CGI, it’s a nifty effect. Pharaoh’s troops are all drowned. Moses leads everyone safely to the foot of Mount Sinai, then climbs up for another klatch with the Burning Bush, where he receives a tidy To Do and Not To Do list scribbled by bolts of gold fire on mountain stone: Thou shalt not steal or commit adultery or bear false witness or take my name in vain or covet your neighbor’s stuff, Thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy, Thou shalt honor your mother and father, and so on, all ten of them boomed in God’s booming voice (actually Charlton Heston’s voice, though uncredited).

Moses carries these stone tablets down the mountain to share these obvious and common sense “do unto others” lessons with his people, but while his back was turned, the Hebrew Unenslaved had decided to hold a desert rave. Music, dancing, the liquor cabinet raided. Moses, like any dad who comes home too early/unexpectedly, is royally pissed off:

MOSES

Woe unto thee, O, Israel! You have sinned. . you are not worthy to receive the Ten Commandments!

But we’re free now! the Partying Kids of Israel protest.

MOSES

There is no freedom without the law! Who is on the Lord’s side, let him come to me! Those who will not live by the law shall die by the law!

So, those who believe in the Talking Burning Bush and Gold Sharpies of Fire are fine; everyone else is screwed. Apparently this passive-aggressive God is still pissed off with the believers, too, and makes them wander in the desert for forty years, until Moses, now all Santa Claus’d with his white beard and hair, sends everyone off to cross the River Jordan while he does some final wandering by himself, for some reason. He waves good-bye, as crystalline beams of light beam down from heaven, a beaming, approving God, now, and it’s the end, The End, THE END.

Thus concludes the history of how the Hebrews (Jews) were delivered from bondage, yes, I get that, but the emotional core of the story is Moses accepting his role as Deliverer, and all his doubts magically resolved, his religious faith and destiny made cinematically manifest. His doubts are resolved, but mine are created, raised, clarified , by this movie: My nine-year-old Godlessness is made equally manifest, confirmed. And while I have a clearer understanding of the story of Passover, and how dramatic narrative can be more stickily instructive than a dry, sermony Haggadah, I do not identify with these Children of Israel or their spiteful, manipulative God at all. This story has no resonance for me as a history of “my people.”

But is it “history” or just a good story? There is a paradox, here; if I accept this tale as history, if I credit that word with factual, empirically based knowledge, supported by documentary evidence, then I am still being asked to take a leap of faith re: the miraculousness of it all, the Burning Bush and parting Red Sea and the very existence of those “Ten Commandments” tablets. A made-up story is actually easier to “accept” at face value. Entertain me, illuminate me, even, slip in a tidy moral or two; I won’t question provenance. I won’t ask for footnotes. This story of Pharaoh and Deliverer works just fine for me as another fairy tale, as impersonal epic, a spectacle of bombast and unrelatable, laughably histrionic victims and villains. Tell me that story. It’s good fun. I will happily watch that story, year after year after year on network television. Just don’t ask me to believe it or accept it as fact.