# 139 Ben-Hur (1959)

Ben-Hur is a story of the friendship between two boys, one being Jewish, and the other one Roman, who grow up, and become enemies due to the fact that one of them is a Jewish prince, whereas the other has become a commanding officer of the Roman legions in Jerusalem.

This movie kept me focused the whole three and a half hours inspite of being old and long, given that I'm not even a fan of historical epic films. The movie is well paced, at the beginning of the movie I kept thinking it was going to be boring, and that they wouldn't come up with enough events to fill the whole movie with, but I was wrong. There's just so much going on here, so many themes and ideas. No, it's not breathtaking, and it was not very emotional to me, but if I had to use one word to describe it, it would be "interesting". There is a romantic plotline, but, surprisingly, it doesn't ruin the film.

I think one of the things that make this film outstanding is the fact that it doesn't use computer generated graphics for action scenes, such as the chariot race, and still all of the action is of a very high standard. The naval battle was also well done. My favorite part was the scene with the galley slaves rowing in a galley.

Although the tagline of the movie is "A Tale of the Christ", we only see Jesus on the screen for about five minutes throughout the whole film, and his role is so small, that I wouldn't even call him a supporting character. Of course, we understand, that when Christ appears in the movie, it's very special, but the person who is really trying to deliver the message is the daughter of Ben-Hur's slave, Esther. This film is not about forgiveness, it is about mercy though.

Favorite quote: "One God, that I can understand, but one wife? That is not civilized. It is not generous!"

Interesting fact: This is the only one of the three movies who have won 11 Academy Awards (the others being Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)) to have won an Oscar for acting performances.