"The Ten Commandments" Is A Strange And Brilliant Movie

A few years ago, I went to see "The Ten Commandments" in theatres for Easter. I had only seen it once as a kid, but the name gives you a pretty strong idea of what it's about. In many respects, this is exactly what you would expect a movie about Exodus would be about. Yet, as I watched this movie, I couldn't shake the feeling that this movie wasn't really about the Bible at all, despite all the biblical references.

Is That In The Bible wrote an excellent article on how cultural depictions of biblical stories differ from the stories themselves. He focused on the nativity story in his article, but the same idea is true for the Exodus narrative. For example, nowhere in the Bible does Moses actually ask the pharaoh to free the slaves. Instead, the Bible says that Moses only asked to let the Israelites go into the desert to worship, with no mention of being allowed to permanently leave Egypt. Despite this, common depictions of the Exodus narrative usually emphasize a broader anti-slavery theme that isn't present in Exodus. It was this cultural depiction that led to anti-slavery advocates in America to use Exodus as a rallying call for freedom. Yet, there was always an underlying tension between the idea that Exodus advocates for their freedom and the reality that the Bible doesn't actually condemn slavery. Similarly to the anti-slavery advocates, The Ten Commandments is strongly opposed to slavery, and uses the Exodus narrative to communicate that. With that in mind, how does the movie navigate this tension?

In the first 2 hours of the movie (it's a really long movie), Moses doesn't know that he's the prophesized deliverer of the Israelites who will free them from slavery. Instead, he opposes slavery and treats the Israelites with compassion purely for moral reasons, not because he feels compelled to. All the while, the B-plot for the first hour centres around an attempt to keep him from finding out that he's also an Israelite. The characters in the movie make it clear that being an Israelite is meant to be a horrible, embarrassing revelation, but Moses treats the issue with remarkable ambivience. Upon finding out, he merely remarks that it doesn't matter what race he is. For a movie made in the 50s, this is a striking moment. There were movie theatres that were still segregated that played this movie when it came out. Later on, we get a more powerful denouncement of racism. Upon revealing himself as an Israelite to the pharaoh, Moses says that if there is a god, He would not want for men to be enslaved for being a different race. This is an obvious allusion to American chattel slavery. While it's a powerful condemnation of racism and slavery, it does raise a major question that can be missed at first glance: Why is Moses an agnostic?

Up until this point in the movie, every character has taken it for granted that the god of the Israelites is real, even the Egyptians themselves. Moses is the first one to raise the possibility that there aren't any gods to begin with. Later on, it's revealed that Rameses is also an atheist, but it's not surprising that the villain of a Bible movie wouldn't believe in God. Portraying a prophet as a disbeliever is such a deeply odd choice to make, it might actually be unprecendented. It quickly becomes apparent that the reason for this odd choice was because it gives Moses the freedom to criticize God without conflicting with the movie's Biblical setting.

After leaving Egypt, Moses meets Zipporah and speaks with her a bit about God. When she refers to God as "the god of Abraham", Moses shoots this idea down and says that there can't be a god that isn't a god for every race. This contradicts the nationalist portrayal of God within the Exodus narrative, but Moses is free to contradict the Bible as he pleases in this phase of the movie. Thereafter, he says that if God is real, he will confront God about his failure to bring an end to slavery. This comes off as arrogant, and one suspects that Moses will be humbled once he actually meets God. However, that never happens.

When he meets God, Moses is awestruck, but he goes through with his plan to ask why God hasn't done anything to help the slaves. Rather than condemn him for questioning a divine plan, God simply gives Moses the mission to go and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. From there, God fades from the story, only showing up one more time at the end. The impression the viewer gets from this scene is not that God is the driving force of the movie, it's that God is a narrative device meant to enable Moses to act on his own dream.

From that point on, the movie progresses as you would expect, with Moses demanding the end of slavery while the pharoah refuses. However, something interesting happens during the final plague. After learning of God's plan to kill the firstborn infants of Egypt, Moses reacts with horror and fear, a rare moment of tension between him and God. He is powerless to stop what's to come, but when his adoptive Egyptian mother comes to him, we see him subvert God's will. Despite explicit instruction to only save the Israelites, he lets both his adoptive mother and her black servants shelter with them. In other words, he ignores a divine order to segregate himself from other races because his own moral code doesn't allow himself to do that.

The last noteworthy scene is when the Ten Commandments are given to Moses. Despite being the titular event, it's an odd scene that doesn't really fit well into the movie. After so much of the movie has been spent on the themes of freedom and anti-slavery, suddenly we spend the last few minutes of the movie on a scene that doesn't have anything to do with those themes. It's only at the very last minute of the movie that we see why this scene was included in the first place. In the Bible, the Israelites are forced to wander the desert for 40 years because they doubted God's command to invade and conquer the land of Canaan. In the movie, it's strongly implied to be because they built the golden calf, and no mention is made of the war that they're supposed to be gearing up for. Rhetorically, this scene allows the movie to perserve its themes of freedom and anti-slavery while working with material that these themes don't apply to.

In the end, the movie deviates from the source material in a strong, measured way. The Ten Commandments deviates from the Exodus narrative because it has a story to tell, and it doesn't mind if it needs to change things up from the source material to do so. Unlike most Biblical movies, which attempt to be more-or-less loyal to the source material, The Ten Commandments is comfortable with treating Exodus as mythology. I mean that in the true academic definition of the word, not as "thing that didn't happen", but as "a set of symbols and narratives used to explain the world around us". Every Biblical movie inevitably does this, as both the directors and audiences are more familiar with the cultural depiction of Biblical stories than the stories themselves, but it's not normally done to promote a totally different story. By breaking the mold, The Ten Commandments is able to tell one of the most beautiful stories in history. An idea that would have been too controversial for American audiences was able to be conveyed through symbols and narratives that audiences were already familiar with. At the same time, it didn't fall into the trap where it tries to navigate the tension between the anti-slavery message it wants to tell with Exodus and the slavery present within Exodus. Instead, it told the viewers what is right and refused to compromise on that, and isn't that such an interesting thing?