#100 ‘Ben-Hur’ (1959)
Sandals, Salvation, and the Suffering Olympics for Righteous Men Only
Ben-Hur (1959) is the crown jewel of Biblical epics—1950s Hollywood at its most bloated, sanctimonious, and shirtless. Clocking in at nearly four hours, it’s a Technicolor testament to male pain, divine intervention, and the belief that no amount of human suffering is too much if it results in one slow-motion chariot race and a casual crucifixion. Directed by William Wyler with the solemnity of a papal mass and the budget of a small war, Ben-Hur wants to be both historical drama and spiritual epic. What it mostly is? A dusty, muscular melodrama where women pray and men compete in long, drawn-out trauma parades.
Charlton Heston stars as Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish prince who’s falsely accused of treason by his childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd)—whose betrayal is so emotionally charged you’d be forgiven for thinking this is less about Rome versus Judea and more about the tragic end of a closeted ancient romance. Boyd practically devours the screen with longing; Heston, meanwhile, clenches his jaw like it’s the Ark of the Covenant. Together, they’re an epic in search of a kiss.
The film’s central thrust (besides Messala’s subtle obsession with Judah’s well-being) is vengeance—Judah is enslaved, rowed into oblivion, saved by divine plot armor, and eventually returns to challenge his frenemy in the now-legendary chariot race. And yes, that sequence still slaps. It’s brutal, thrilling, and so well-edited it feels like a film within a film—one that moves faster than the rest of the movie combined.
But once that catharsis is achieved, the film swerves into religious territory so hard it practically gets whiplash. Suddenly it’s about Jesus, forgiveness, and miracles—because nothing says narrative resolution like offscreen crucifixion curing your sister’s leprosy. The final scenes ask us to abandon revenge in favor of spiritual grace, but only after we've spent three and a half hours reveling in vengeance. Convenient.
And the women? Tertiary at best. Esther (Haya Harareet), Judah’s love interest, spends most of the film in devotional mode—either to Judah or to Jesus. Miriam and Tirzah, Judah’s mother and sister, exist mainly to suffer in a leper colony so their miraculous healing can signify the triumph of faith. There’s no agency, no inner life—just purity, pain, and gratitude. It's Biblical Womanhood 101.
Ben-Hur is technically impeccable. The sets are vast, the costumes extravagant, and Miklós Rózsa’s score swells like divine punctuation. But for all its grandeur, it’s still a deeply conservative myth: a story where justice is personal, salvation is passive, and the world is redeemed not through action or solidarity but through silent acceptance and male martyrdom.
3.5 out of 5 golden laurels
(One for the chariot race. One for the unintentional homoeroticism. One for the sheer spectacle. Half a star for Heston’s ability to hold a grudge across multiple continents. The missing stars? Left in the shadow of every woman who wept, suffered, and disappeared so the men could work out their theological trauma in matching robes.)
