The Prince of Egypt 1998

[8.2/10] I don’t tend to think of the Exodus story as a tragedy. Sure, when you get to the wandering for forty years in the desert part, a portion of the tale The Prince of Egypt tastefully elides, things get bleak in places. But in large part, the story of slaves breaking free of their captors is one of triumph, of joy, and as the film reminds us, of deliverance.

What makes The Prince of Egypt so stunning is that it turns that story into one of tragedy -- not the liberation at the center of the Passover story, but what it took to gain it. The cost of that freedom, in lives and in families, means that even the beautiful moments of relief and catharsis come tinged with a certain sadness.

In short, it’s a tack that humanizes one of the oldest and most venerable stories ever told. Even if you didn’t read the Haggadah at Seder every year or, perish the thought, watched The Ten Commandments on an annual basis, chances are you knew the basic outline of the Exodus narrative. Most everyone in the western world does, which means it’s hard to have surprise or novelty in the retelling. The marvel of The Prince of Egypt is that it breathes new life into the story, not just with the incredible craft on display, but in the personal and pathos-ridden lens through which it presents a familiar, but ultimately no less moving tale.

Much of that force comes from the fact that the film leans into the brotherly bond between Moses and Ramses. In the confines of the story, they are not mere rivals, but genuine siblings and friends. They truly love one another, relate to one another, delight in their shared history, which makes it that much more melancholy when divine will and a clash of nations tear them apart.

It’s the best thing in the movie, which is saying something. Val Kilmer and Ralph Fiennes have an easy rapport between them that reads authentically as brotherly playfulness, layered with the complexity of different siblings laboring under different expectations. You buy their dynamic as the chosen older brother freighted with royal obligation, and the more mischievous but kind-hearted younger brother who causes trouble but cares deeply about his big bro. That adds a lived-in humanity to the film’s early scenes, and an earned sense of heartbreak when they’re torn asunder in its later ones.

Much of the heartbreak comes from the fact that this is the most sympathetic Ramses has ever been in the Exodus story. (Surpassing even the malevolent but strangely endearing version played by Yul Brynner.) This is a Pharaoh who genuinely loves his brother, who is warring against his own insecurity about being “the weak link in the chain”, who worries he won’t be able to live up to his father’s legacy and that his kingdom will suffer for his weakness, who is punished for his stubbornness but exudes a sense of great pain at the cost of his sins.

In short he’s more than a bitter antagonist; he’s a fellow human being, with his own understandable if flawed motivations, his own sympathetic attachments, and ultimately, his own recognizable pain when he loses everything. In the end, you feel for Ramses, which is an impressive feat for a character who presides over a slave empire and orders the systematic murder of children.

But you also feel for Moses. Much of the film’s narrative centers on the personal journey of Moses as much as it does the broader sweep of the Lord delivering the Hebrew people from bondage. This is, in many ways, a story as much about one man breaking free of his cultural programming and waking up to the moral ills of the system he took part in unreflectively as it is about his cause of freedom. In that, The Prince of Egypt oddly frames Moses as a Buddha-like figure, a spoiled prince who throws off the golden shackles of his old life when he learns a deeper truth, trading it for a simpler one.

The transformation still has power, in any guise. Moses’ reluctant acceptance of God’s command to lead his people out of bondage comes with the poetry and irony of his telling his own sister, “Be careful, slave!” with disdain when she dares to touch a royal prince. As with fellow cinematic champions no less august than Oskar Schindler from Schindler’s List and Sully from Monsters Inc., it is piercing when someone insulated and comfortable nonetheless realizes the cruelties they’re a part of, particularly when those harms are inflicted on innocent children, and devotes everything they have to rectifying it.

That mission is given scope and form by the tremendous craft on display in the film from beginning to end. The Prince of Egypt is an utterly gorgeous movie to look at. Directors Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells, and their team cook up captivating image after captivating image. The movie is awash in light and color, from the dark shadows of the Pharaoh’s throne room to the bright hues of the path to freedom. The way hair and clothing billows in the wind is impressive. And while the character designs are a bit awkward in their angularness, particularly Moses, the players’ fluid expressions and movements more than carry the day.

In line with the film’s Cecile B. DeMille-helmed predecessor, The Prince of Egypt also isn’t afraid to go big when the moment calls for it. There are a raft of impressive effects and sequences here, from the impressionistic nightmare of Moses’ infant rescue told through hieroglyphics, to the towering dividing of the sea in front of a column of fire, to the harrowing set piece where the mist-like angel of death steals the breath away from the first born sons of Egypt. The visual panache matches the scope and scale of the story, conveying through imagery and song what must be felt rather than told in the tale.

That includes the Jews’ harrowing escape from Egypt. It would be easy for a development told and retold and retold through a dozen avenues to lose all impact on the umpteenth rendition. But something about the mass of parents and children, laborers and their animals, old and young, clambering their way across steps and sand and sea to reach their salvation, moves one anew.

Much of that owes to Stephen Schwartz’s lovely compositions and lyricism. The plaintive cries of “deliver us”, the call and response of “all I’ve ever wanted”, the grim tones that pervade bondage and the inspiring notes of liberation, the paeon to belief that seamlessly transitions into a children’s rendition of the (biblically canonical) song “Mi Chamocha”, all lend this story of freedom both an epic reach and an emotional weight that makes the Hebrew slaves’ deliverance as momentous and cathartic for the audience as it is for the characters.

And yet, it comes laced with a certain sadness, a certain sense of regret of all that it took to reach this divine salvation. Much of that centers on Moses himself. It is tough, to say the least, to make the harbinger of plagues into a sympathetic figure in modern cinema. The canny move from Philip LaZebnik is to cast Moses as an endlessly reluctant figure. Here, he does not only lament the burden of leading a people he fears won’t accept him, but he practically begs Ramses to acquiesce so that they can end all of this. He winces and almost weeps for the horrors inflicted on his Egyptian countrymen.

There is a sense of great regret that it’s come to this, that he can't get through to his brother, that this is what it takes to move the hardened heart of a king. And even when it’s time for the slaying of the first born, it only comes in self-defense, a response to Ramses threatening to finish the decimation his father started, a sense of generational inertia leading a dynasty, a people, and a brotherhood to ruin. Nobody wants this, and even in his moment of greatest glory, Moses looks on at the sibling he’s lost with pain and regret.

That is duly tragic. To gain your freedom is glorious. To gain it at the cost of countless hardships and lives that could have been spared but for one man’s obstinance is sorrowful. To lead your people to liberation is righteous. To do so as a bringer of death and pain to those you once looked upon as countrymen is devastating. To grow up with a sibling you love is wonderful. To see that love shattered on the altar of generational toxicity and divine justice is heartbreaking.

The Exodus story remains a rousing and triumphant one. But in hands like these, it is also one rife with pain on both an epochal and personal level. And somehow, that makes a venerated story all the more human, and beautiful.