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Television In the Beginning
By RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
If I seem less coherent than usual
in this review of NBCs In the Beginning, its because
Ive spent the last two months trying to teach Genesis and Exodus to two
theology classes of college freshmen.
It is a rich opportunity -- with students whose immediate families
are from Latin America, India, the Philippines, and the best and worst of New
Jersey public and Catholic high schools -- to explain how Gods
relationship with a little warrior tribe with an extremely rich literature
became the basis of a universal religion.
I didnt expect them to absorb it without resistance; but I
was not prepared for the enormous variety of responses.
Some had it all in high school, thought they knew it, and skipped
the footnotes in the Oxford Annotated Bible text. Some saw the patriarchs and
their families as shockingly immoral -- adultery, incest, prostitutes. And how
should they react to apparently random killings decreed by God, and to the
Jews, having escaped slavery in Egypt, who keep slaves of their own and decree
the death penalty for a too-long list of comparatively trivial offenses. Some
students simply dont like religion. Period. For others, theres the
unanswerable whine -- Its boring. One student commented at
the end: Id heard of Adam and Eve, but none of those other
people.
But the major problem in teaching the scriptures is to distinguish
between the various forms of literature -- mythic tales, like the Creation and
the Flood; folk history, like Abraham and family; and Moses in Egypt, for which
there is limited archeological evidence -- and the transcendent truth these
stories mean to convey.
Maybe film helps. I used two episodes from Krzsztof
Kieslowskis 1989 masterpiece, The Decalogue, contemporary
dramas for Polish TV on each of the commandments. Partly because the material
was visual rather than print, in spite of the subtitles, these inspired some of
the best class discussions. Nevertheless, I could not assign C.B. DeMille
biblical epics, because I didnt want the DeMille literalist imagination
to come between the student and the word.
Now NBC, with admirable courage and imagination, offers us
In The Beginning, a miniseries from Creation to Moses, to be
broadcast Nov. 12 and 13. Maybe I should just tell my students to watch TV.
And maybe not.
Why is it that there has never been a really great movie about the
Bible? Perhaps because the director must choose between trying to recreate,
with special effects, the mythical elements of the story as if they literally
happened and stripping away the supernatural elements to capture
the human drama behind the smoke and fire.
True, critics have praised Pasolinis stark Gospel
According to St. Matthew, but today it is largely forgotten. The only two
biblical films I could assign to a class are Scorceses controversial
The Last Temptation of Christ, which takes Jesus humanity
seriously, and the lesser-known Jesus of Montreal, in which a group
of Montreal actors put on a revamped Passion Play at the shrine of St. Joseph
and end up, tragically, repeating the Passion in their own lives.
In the Beginning, directed by Kevin Connor and written
by John Goldsmith, who also wrote NBCs Mary, the Mother of
Jesus, does its best to have it both ways. The production notes emphasize
all the trouble they went to in order to bring us the best loved stories
from the largest selling book of all time. Behold 100 speaking roles,
25,000 extras, 350 crewmembers, 40 specially trained camels, 600 goats, sheep,
donkeys and mules. By the time they finished their 13-week shoot, which began
in Morocco in April 2000, the animals had multiplied to 700.
Which is really what Genesis and Exodus are all about --
generativity, family, having children, multiplying in order to survive. They
are also about God -- not the loving Father God we learn about from Jesus, but
more like a tribal chief, a reflection of the primitive nomads he has sworn to
protect.
For the most part, the story moves simply and slowly. It is, like
its source, domestic drama. The childless Abraham (Martin Landau), at his wife
Sarahs (Jacqueline Bisset) insistence, sleeps with the slave girl to
bring forth a son, Ishmael; then, thanks to an angels visit, they have a
son of their own, Isaac. Isaac marries Rebecca (Diana Rigg) and they have Esau
and Jacob. Jacob marries Rachel, and they have 11 sons, the youngest of whom,
Joseph (Eddie Cibrian), is sold by his brothers into Egypt, and so on.
To their credit, the producers have stayed reasonably faithful to
their material, resisting the temptation to capitalize on sensational sex stuff
in the original -- from Noahs daughters sleeping with their father to
whatever happened at Sodom and Gomorrah. And when Joseph refuses to sleep with
his bosss wife, lest he offend his God, it must be the first time a
handsome young man has passed up an opportunity to have sex on TV in the last
20 years.
The storys highest point comes early. How, I asked myself,
would they handle the creation story? Answer: brilliantly. Rather than sit
through the seven days, as if the creationists had held a gun to
the writers head, we see Abraham, marvelously portrayed by Landau, gather
his tribe around the campfire and tell them the story, as they visualize his
words in their imaginations -- which is probably just how all of these stories
evolved.
But the producers shelve simplicity for the crossing of the Red
Sea, determined as they are, with contemporary high-tech special effects, to
outdo C.B. DeMille and Charlton Heston. They add a super-twister to part the
waters; but, for the most part, they mimic rather than outdo DeMille. The
Oxford footnotes explain the crossing as a natural phenomenon, a strong east
wind blowing back the water, allowing the Israelites to cross, and the
Egyptians chariots getting stuck in the mud. But how many viewers with
remote controls in their hands are going to devote four hours over two nights
waiting for that?
Genesis high point is Josephs reconciliation with his
brothers, when the cult of violence and retribution that has run through the
book is reversed. That Cibrian, who comes to the role of Joseph by way of
college football, soap operas, and Baywatch, cannot do justice to
the occasion does not mean the scene doesnt work.
To impose a little continuity that the script might otherwise
lack, the writers improve on the Bible by adding a symbolic staff of
Abraham, which each patriarch passes on, like Excalibur, to his
successor. And when Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt they carry the
coffin of Joseph with them to bury him in the Promised Land.
Im sure this miniseries can be read in the context of
todays headlines as a reinforcement of Israels claims to the Holy
Land. And we cannot watch the box bearing Josephs bones being dragged for
40 years across the desert without cringing at the Page One photo a few weeks
ago of the angry Palestinian mob destroying the Jewish shrine revered as
Josephs Tomb.
But the point of the Joseph story is not merely a validation of
Israel but its universalism -- Josephs ability and willingness to use his
God-given talents as an administrator for the good of both the Jewish and Arab
people, to refuse to be a prisoner of the past.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is the Jesuit community professor
of the humanities at St. Peters College in Jersey City, N.J. His e-mail
address is raymondschroth@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, November 10,
2000
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