Ennio Morricone for Easter

It is Easter in less than an hour, and I thought I would give some unusual Easter music, from a little known gem of Biblical movie. I am referring to the score of Moses the Lawgiver, which was composed by Ennio Morricone. The script of the movie/miniseries was written by Anthony Burgess and, since it is the 100th anniversary of Burgess' birth, it is another good reason to share it. The production of Moses was a troubled one and it has its flaws, often due to shoddy cutting (the film has many different versions of different length). But I daresay that it is far superior to any other Moses movie. Great dialogues, provocative deconstruction and rationalization of the Exodus, it is an iconoclastic, skeptical, sometimes blasphemous Biblical story. And there is the music. This piece could be the Israeli anthem.

Holy and Blasphemous fiction

First, an announcement for my readers who live in or near Manchester, if there are any: there is a film festival organized with the collaboration of the Anthony Burgess Foundation: Christianity, Controversy, Cinema. I learned it from their blog. I don't like the title much, I think it should have been called Holy and Blasphemous Cinema, or something of the sort. When one speaks about religion and gathers controversy, it is either because it is devout or blasphemous. The first movie is of course Jesus of Nazareth. Not a controversial cinematic account of the Gospels in any way, but a beautiful movie all the same, and with plenty of Burgess' witticism. That said, I tend to put my favorite writer among the iconoclasts and the blasphemers. Because his Jesus was more Zeffirelli's Jesus, for one, and because what I would call his "Biblical trilogy" (the three novels and films he wrote about the Exodus, the life of Jesus and the early days of Christianity) question, of not completely challenges, the claims at the heart of Christianity. In Man of Nazareth, the novel he wrote alongside the movie, the sacred mixes with profane details and Rabelaisian vulgarity. I recently rewatched Moses the Lawgiver, a brilliant, underrated movie, far superior to the bombastic but far more famous Cecil B de Mille's movie. While the latter was a devout Biblical spectacle, Moses is a complete deconstruction/demythification of the Exodus, where God could merely be a manifestation of Moses' madness. Read a full review on this blog. It surprised me to read online devout Christians praising it: the movie is everything but a piece of Christian propaganda. But Burgess was blasphemous in other ways. Literature, as it is said at the beginning of The Kingdom of the Wicked for instance, has no interest in moral. It does, however, has interest in truth, and in this novel, Christian claims to truth, whether it is historical or spiritual, are smashed to pieces. The promises of eternal life is crushed by the certainty of death. Fiction has little value if it is not blasphemous.

Ennio Morricone for a Good Friday

I was wondering what music to upload on a Good Friday. Then I thought of my recent post about Ennio Morricone, and it reminded me that he wrote the soundtrack of Moses the Lawgiver. It is a little known movie, that was always shadowed by the far inferior, Hollywoodian Biblical epic The Ten Commandments. I saw Moses first, it was shown around Easter when Jesus of Nazareth (made by the same team) was not aired. The film is flawed, it has a very low budget for a Biblical movie, which sometimes weakens the movie. But it has a very intelligent script, written by, yes, you guessed it, Anthony Burgess. This movie is brilliant as it is a deconstruction of the Exodus myth, as well as an exploration of existentialist themes. And, well, Ennio Morricone wrote the music. And it is a beautiful and haunting music (it's Morricone so it has to be haunting and beautiful).So I uploaded the main theme here.