It’s hard to keep a long movie interesting. After all, some movies that are only 90 minutes long struggle to hold my attention, so when a movie goes over two and a half hours, that’s risky. (It is, however, understandable in many cases, because the length must be determined by what the story requires.) While I’ve never been able to make it all the way through any of the Lord of the Rings movies, I did enjoy the 1996 Hamlet, which has a running time of 242 minutes – about four hours. Little did I know when I picked up The Ten Commandments that it was almost as long, or that the experience I had yet to face would take days to complete.
Was it worth sitting through the whole thing? Yes. Unlike some movies I know, this film actually filled its long running time with many interesting characters expressing very intriguing drama, so it’s easy to get through a lot of the film in one sitting. Based on what I knew of DeMille’s work before I watched the film, I was already expecting the gorgeous visuals to keep my eyes glued to the screen, but I had no idea that my ears would be enticed as well by the absolutely excellent dialogue throughout. This is the kind of writing that inspires me. (I should mention that my ears were also listening for the epic score by Elmer Bernstein.)
So, in the end, while I’m not sure the story itself is my kind of story, and the film may suffer a little from a lack of focus, it is an excellent masterpiece that I cannot help but respect. While I think of Egypt and the dessert to be visually bland settings for a movie (since I like colorful, theatrical visuals, rather than tan, brown, or sandy visuals) this movie has some of the best and most cinematic shots I have ever seen. It finds a way to make a nearly-four-hour biography into a dramatic experience that I could never forget.
