Wednesday 3 August 2005

Pic of the day: The cover of the Norwegian version. I suppose it may look similar in other languages, but who knows?

Solomon movie review

From the same people who gave us "Genesis", the boring low-budget movie reviewed yesterday. Well, actually this one is directed by Roger Young, but they are part of the same series and have a similar look and feel. Luckily, this is a lot less boring.

For some reason the cover says "Salomon", although to the best of my knowledge you English-speakers call him Solomon and we Norwegians call him Salomo. I understand that it is derived from "Shalom", the Hebrew word for peace. (Evidently Arab has an equivalent word "Shalam", I am told, but it doesn't seem like the two of them understand each other in that matter. Perhaps another wise man is needed in the area.)

There are, as you may guess, a whole series of these movies, although they don't seem to cover the entire Bible yet. This was the one that first caught my attention, and I should have stuck with it rather than taking two, if I had wisdom instead of just intelligence. Oh well. Anyway, it is not entirely by accident that this one stood out. I have felt a certain kinship of mind with the poor king since I was young, and I still do.

The movie follows the Bible pretty closely, although it is of course heavily padded. It deviates in the fairly large focus it puts on the Queen of Sheba, who is the focus of the second half of the movie. Here it clearly draws on Coptic / Ethiopian tradition. King Solomon falls in love with her and they live together for a year, during which she bears him a son, who later is to become ruler of her kingdom on the upper Nile. The Bible says no such thing, only marvels at the fact that she would come from that far, and the stuff she brought with her, and how she found the rumors to be only half of the real thing. The traditions about their love story are so widespread though, that I can easily see people expecting this part of the movie.

***

I have long found Solomon to be an interesting person. He was given great wisdom from God just for the asking. No, more than that, God actually told him to ask for any single thing from him. Because he asked for wisdom rather than for riches, a long life or the death of his enemies, God was so happy with his choice that he gave him all those things as well. Through trade and diplomacy (not least his many marriages) he peacefully extended the kingdom his father had forged through war, and made Jerusalem a very rich city. But his story is a tragic one: His wives brought their many foreign gods with them, and they eroded his faith in his old age. He left behind a discontent nation about to fall apart.

The story is a cautionary tale at heart: In the end, knowing what is right is not enough. You have to make tough choices in your own life. And this is why I have so long felt this connection to King Solomon. I too have this inner guidance which almost always lets me know what to do, and often even why. Likewise it lets me give advice to others and explain things that seem murky to them. But they may not want to follow my advice or act on the knowledge, and neither do I. Sometimes it is just so uncomfortable, I prefer to look for an easier way.

This aspect of Solomon, in which he acts as an archetype for some of us, is fairly well preserved in the movie. He is portrayed as a bit more arrogant than I think he was, but of course I too probably come across as arrogant when I believe in my own wisdom. I totally adored it when he was like: "You self-righteous fools! I don't need to believe those gods are true to learn from their religions. I learn from ANYTHING, whether it is true or false!" (Frequent readers will see me sometimes making references to holy books of competing religions as well.)

I am sure there are others who identify with other aspects of him, who will also find their parts preserved in the movie. In the Bible, Solomon is implied to be the source of not only most of the Proverbs, but also both the Song of Songs (an erotic book, to be blunt about it) and the bitingly cynical Ecclesiastes (or The Preacher as we more sensibly call it in Norwegian). This mental wingspan of the man is shown very nicely in the movie, as his playful erotic side comes into view as he courts the Queen of Sheba, and his bitter cynical detachment after their break-up. In truth, he probably held some of each at any one time just as I do. Aren't all men all this at heart? I hope it's not just me, Solomon and Chris de Burgh...

In the end, I found the movie thought-provoking, as well it should be. I am not sure if it would have that effect on people who have never wondered if they were Solomon reborn... but anyway it is a decent production for its obvious low budget. Intrigue, danger, romance and a moral dilemmas, that's pretty good value for a movie as cheap as this one. The preachiness is also as low as you can hope for, from a story based on the Bible, and utterly non-sectarian. There is no guessing whether the producers were Christian, Jewish or possibly even moderate Muslims, although from the crowd of Italian names on the cover my bet would be for Catholic. But if so, you won't notice it at all.