Reviews

Chaos-rampant from Greece wrote a very fine review that set me thinking that he doesn't appreciate the epilogue with the older Mattie enough. He appreciates it, certainly, and everything he says is true. But in addition it ties-off one of the novel's great themes, rarely noticed by viewers and readers alike amid the laughter and excitement.

The story, in cliché terms, is that of a young girl who sets out on the vengeance trail for the robber who murdered her father. At the end she is damaged goods because of it. Note her physical disability in the epilogue. She remains a spinster as well. People all through the film keep telling her that what she's doing is not fit for a woman. The truth is that an obsession with vengeance is not a good thing for anyone, male or female, but she persists to the point where she drops into a hell of snakes only to be rescued by the most improbable of God's angels, so to speak.

Head and shoulders better film than the 1969 film, more serious, just as funny, and very thoughtful.

2 major battle scenes, brilliant acting, historical realism on a scale seldom seen. An intelligent script which requires that the audience actually remember things said over an hour ago. This may qualify as a spoiler, maybe not: One critic missed the point completely, when he thought--what a wonderfully convenient thing that the enemy the captain (Crowe) was supposed to be searching for, just happened to show up while he dawdled allowing his best-friend and ship's doctor (Betany), to recover from serious injury on an island. Had the critic paid just a little attention to the fact that the island Captain Aubrey had chosen for the surgery and recovery also happened to have the only source for drinking water in god knows how many miles, he might have put two and two together and realized Aubrey was making the best of two problems : his ships need for a doctor (along with his personal need to keep his friend alive) and choosing the only spot where his French opponent sooner or later would need to drop anchor for water. Consequently his waiting there while Steven recovers could not reasonably be criticized as dilatory. As for boring-- that is in the brain of the beholder. I first saw it at a Sunday matinée in Phoenix with an audience largely male but primarily 10-twenty something and NOBODY got raucous or seemed restless, laughed when they should have and heard generally favorable comments walking out. I think a large number of the unbelievably low scores of one star out of ten it gets when when you search lowest scores to highest here at IMDb result from expectations of a swash-buckler a la Pirates of the Caribbean. It is a high- adventure movie AND a serious drama about duty and friendship which makes it a rare bird these days. Not really a date move, but a surprising number of women I know have enjoyed it. Not as many as loved Gladiator enough to see it twice in its theatrical run, but quite a few; none I have talked to thought of it as a typical male-bonding flick. Well worth more than one look if you are looking for entertainment that doesn't insult your intelligence.

I'll leave the plot summary to the others who've done it well, so far. But a plot summary doesn't begin to show how this one differs from the other Biblical epics of it's time. The difference lies in a script that wonderfully reflects the double-edged attitudes of Par Lagerkvist's powerfully brilliant short philosophical novel. Unimaginitive believers can see what the plot summaries indicate. But underneath it all, the adapter-screenwriter Christopher Fry, and the director, Richard Fleischer, manage to successfully walk an ironic tightrope , in which the "too-good" Christians and the ordinary sinful Barabbas are constantly contrasted during conversations long and short. Barabbas thinks Christianity all bosh, the world is not what Christians believe it is, but then why can't he die or be killed? As the King of Siam would say, the fact does make a puzzlement.

I must apologize for the following spoiler, but how anybody who is thinking at all can blithely assume that Barabbas is beyond doubt "saved" into the fold of the blessed is way beyond me. Even as a kid in the days of BARABBAS's first release I knew that something unusual was going on as soon as I heard Barabbas" final words from the cross: "Darkness...I give myself up to your keeping... It is Barabbas." I haven't left anything out; the dots just indicate pauses in Quinn's delivery. Prior to this line Barabbas has complained that he can't tell whether it is night or day and asks what time it is and remembers that it was at the sixth hour that....

I love this film as wonderful dramatic exploration of the modern dilemma of faith. I expect I'm biased in loving it because it helped develop my abiding interest in philosophy; But I don't think that that bias has pushed me into a mistake when I call BARABBAS one of the most thoughtful and intelligent movies of its time, in spite of its being a sword and sandal epic.