Watched Exodus, the 1960 Hollywood blockbuster based on Leon Uris’ book by the same name (I remember reading it long ago; quite the tome it was) on Amazon Prime.
It tells the story of Ari Ben Cannan (played by Paul Newman), a member of the Haganah and his Zionist activities, at around the time when the British Mandate for Palestine came to an end in 1948 as the UN voted in favour of the two-state solution. It is shot on location (in present-day Israel and Cyrpus). It was shot at a time, long long ago when this group of nations and what they had to say mattered to the Israelis and Americans. Or at least that’s what they told the world.
I would like to note that the movie has aged like Rambo III. Remember that movie? In which an American Vietnam veteran goes off and fights alongside the poor, under-armed but passionate and noble underdog rebels, giving a bloody nose to the mighty Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan with a little help from this American GI? Do you remember the name of those rebels? Yep. The Mujahideen! And even then, Rambo III feels like a genuine mistake when compared to Exodus.
Anyway, about Exodus: Every single thing in that movie is so full of shit that it would not survive even the most basic cross-examination (not of historical truth, but of morality). The propaganda is so blatant that a rational person like me (who laughs off conspiracies about World Jewry and Rothschilds running the world) found myself momentarily wondering just how deep Jewish money ran (runs?) in Hollywood. The film makes being on the wrong side of history look like a mere clerical error, especially since it was made to prove that the Zionists and the Americans were on the right side. Just. Wow.
Some of the dialogue left me open-mouthed. How were they this tone-deaf? Or has the world changed so much in the past eight-and-some decades that our moral zeitgeist no longer even faintly resembles what we pretended it to be then? Or is it just me? Is it even possible to know?
On another note, Paul Newman is the kind of hot that could make even me, a red-blooded straight man, question my choices. My dog. That man was a walking hubba-hubba. Also, if I ever were to be tempted to take up the cancer stuck again (after having quit some 6 years ago after smoking for 28 long years), it would be Paul Newman’s fault. His and Dev Anand’s.
Okthanxbye.
