(Spoiler warning) I was rather disappointed in seeing the movie. A grand story was ripped to shreds to provide a vehicle for a theme that has been told a thousand times in a thousand mediocre movies. I had read a string of glowing reviews, but now that only makes me question the motives or judgment of those reviewers.
In sum, given the place of this movie's making, it becomes all too clear that this is a perhaps grand effort on the part of Bollywood (India's movie industry name) to make a film that might have some appeal outside of India. This is not to disrespect Bollywood. I have heard good things about their work ethic and success in India. But it is an industry devoted to and wholly reliant upon love stories with little or no significance. (I admit my low level of information about Bollywood, but seeing what has been done to this story, and connecting it to the place of its making, etc, I can draw only one conclusion.)
The saddest part is that they took one of the best stories in the bible, one where a strong woman character rises to save the entire Jewish race, and they reduced it to a maudlin love story best left for harlequin romances. It is a somewhat short story in the bible, so a film would have to add some elements but this effort goes to ridiculous lengths.
A better telling would be to approach some of the epics of decades ago, for example "the Ten Commandments". There, while many elements were added to make the epic length, the main story remains the heroic effort of Moses to bring the Jews out of Egypt.
The story is one of triumph of a people under domination. There is little about love in the story itself and I found the . The movie creates two love settings, or rather some kind of love triangle, that has no place in a telling of the story of Esther.
There is no character Jesse in the bible story. Haddasah does not have a boyfriend or love interest, and more importantly there is no plan for her to travel to Jerusalem. There is no expressed love between Haddasah/Esther and the King. In the story, the King chooses her for queen simply because "she pleased him". What that means is undetermined.
The rest of the story relates to how after a bit of low level intrigue, Esther is put in a position to be able to save the Jews. Unfortunately, again, here the movie goes to great lengths to create a storyline to put Esther in that position, but it relies on inserted and improbable events, when the bible story provides enough without the help of any average-skilled movie script writers.
That is, the movie is permeated with talk of war, with Greece no less, and that Greece's hated "democracy" and its concept of "all people being created equal" is a reason for killing the Jews since they are "Greece lovers". Holy Frijole, how timely! Boy, isn't it amazing how history repeats itself? The movie writers spend the entire movie alternating between invented love stories or invented references to war and hatred of foreigners. Not a bit of it is in the bible story. Bah, I could go on, but I am afraid I am going to simply sound redundant.
The acting, costumes, and camera work are very good. Sorry they got such short shrift in my review, but unfortunately the way the story was completely ruined in favor of some short-sighted effort to make pablum with broad appeal, it was hard to give credit where it was due.
In sum, given the place of this movie's making, it becomes all too clear that this is a perhaps grand effort on the part of Bollywood (India's movie industry name) to make a film that might have some appeal outside of India. This is not to disrespect Bollywood. I have heard good things about their work ethic and success in India. But it is an industry devoted to and wholly reliant upon love stories with little or no significance. (I admit my low level of information about Bollywood, but seeing what has been done to this story, and connecting it to the place of its making, etc, I can draw only one conclusion.)
The saddest part is that they took one of the best stories in the bible, one where a strong woman character rises to save the entire Jewish race, and they reduced it to a maudlin love story best left for harlequin romances. It is a somewhat short story in the bible, so a film would have to add some elements but this effort goes to ridiculous lengths.
A better telling would be to approach some of the epics of decades ago, for example "the Ten Commandments". There, while many elements were added to make the epic length, the main story remains the heroic effort of Moses to bring the Jews out of Egypt.
The story is one of triumph of a people under domination. There is little about love in the story itself and I found the . The movie creates two love settings, or rather some kind of love triangle, that has no place in a telling of the story of Esther.
There is no character Jesse in the bible story. Haddasah does not have a boyfriend or love interest, and more importantly there is no plan for her to travel to Jerusalem. There is no expressed love between Haddasah/Esther and the King. In the story, the King chooses her for queen simply because "she pleased him". What that means is undetermined.
The rest of the story relates to how after a bit of low level intrigue, Esther is put in a position to be able to save the Jews. Unfortunately, again, here the movie goes to great lengths to create a storyline to put Esther in that position, but it relies on inserted and improbable events, when the bible story provides enough without the help of any average-skilled movie script writers.
That is, the movie is permeated with talk of war, with Greece no less, and that Greece's hated "democracy" and its concept of "all people being created equal" is a reason for killing the Jews since they are "Greece lovers". Holy Frijole, how timely! Boy, isn't it amazing how history repeats itself? The movie writers spend the entire movie alternating between invented love stories or invented references to war and hatred of foreigners. Not a bit of it is in the bible story. Bah, I could go on, but I am afraid I am going to simply sound redundant.
The acting, costumes, and camera work are very good. Sorry they got such short shrift in my review, but unfortunately the way the story was completely ruined in favor of some short-sighted effort to make pablum with broad appeal, it was hard to give credit where it was due.