The one actor who constantly surprised Ridley Scott: “I expected a lot, and I got more”
Few directors have worked with as many extremely talented actors as Sir Ridley Scott. The British icon has barked orders at some of the best to ever do it. His first film, The Duellists, starred both Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine. This led to jobs alongside Sigourney Weaver (Alien) and Harrison Ford (Blade Runner), as well as more recent collaborations with Joaquin Phoenix (Napoleon) and Denzel Washington (Gladiator II).
In 2014, Scott directed Exodus: Gods and Kings, a cinematic retelling of the story of Moses and how he led the Hebrew people out of Egypt in the Bible. The movie reunited the director with Weaver and also introduced him to Aaron Paul, John Turturro, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley, and his leading man, Christian Bale.
Though Scott had produced Bale’s 2013 movie Out of the Furnace, this was the first time the two had been in a director-actor partnership. According to a conversation with Female.au, the legendary filmmaker was very pleased with his new employee. “He gets right into the character and you are staring at a passionate leader,” he said. “I enjoyed working with Christian Bale as much as I have with anyone; he surprised me every day. I expected a lot, and I got more… Moses is an iconic figure who at the same time has to be played as a real person. He’s the film’s heroic centre and its emotional core.”
Scott was full of praise for the Welsh actor, saying that he had a ‘powerful physical presence on screen” and calling his performance an “inside job.” In Out of the Furnace, Bale plays an ordinary steel mill worker who must track down his army veteran brother after he gets involved in the mafia. This might seem like a million miles away from playing a legendary biblical figure, but not according to Scott. “Moses is much more like a steel worker than a Pharaoh,” he said of the one who brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai. “He’s a modest man with common sense.”
The movie, which cost somewhere in the region of $140-200million to make, appealed to the Dark Knight actor for a number of reasons. “I feel the Exodus story is not only one of the cornerstones of many of the world’s sacred texts, but it is one of the most profound narratives in human history,” Bale explained. “I found that Moses was a complex and reluctant hero. Through his faith he transformed into a freedom fighter who would stop at nothing to further God’s will. That said, he was also a man of contradictions: He was faithful but also argumentative; hesitant but also assertive; a warrior but also a liberator; and he was tempestuous but stoic.”
Despite its hefty price tag, star-studded cast, and passionate support, Exodus: Gods and Kings fell short of expectations. It received mixed reviews from the press – it’s currently got 30% on Rotten Tomatoes – and made just $268million, earning it ‘box office bomb’ status. It also proved to be highly controversial in the Middle East, as both the United Arab Emirates and Egypt banned it.
Perhaps this movie’s disappointing results is the reason Scott and Bale haven’t worked together again since. Still, from a historical point of view, it’s interesting that two titans of their respective fields got the chance to share the same creative space, even if things didn’t quite work out.
