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poisoned by Rome, as he tells Pilate: “The deed was not Messala’s. I
knew him – well – before the cruelty of Rome spread in his blood. Rome
destroyed Messala as surely as Rome is destroying my family.” Expressing
the balance between the empire’s ability to do good and its propensity for
mistakes, Pilate underscores the need for care in the exercise of authority:
“Where there is greatness, great government or power, even great feeling
or compassion, error is also great. We progress and mature by fault.” But
Pilate also articulates Roman pragmatism: “Perfect freedom has no existence.
The grown man knows the world he lives in, and for the present, the
world is Rome.” In its cinematic interpretation of the familiar concept
that absolute power leads to corruption, the film seems to offer a discreet
warning about American imperial ambitions as the country entered the
1960s poised between different ideologies of empire.
Although Wyler said that he was mainly interested in the theme of
Jews fighting for their freedom against the Romans, Ben-Hur also suggests
some contemporary political references to Middle Eastern relations in
the scenes that develop the relationship between the Arab Sheik Ilderim
and the Jewish prince Ben-Hur. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, Egyptian
president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, provoking
a military conflict with the allied force of Israel, England, and France,
all of whom had economic interests in the region. The invasion drew
overwhelming international censure from the United Nations and the
two nascent superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, so the
Europeans were forced to withdraw, leaving Israel to negotiate an agreement
with its Arab neighbors. Nasser emerged as a hero in the cause of
secular pan-Arabism, and for a few years the region returned to an uneasy
balance.
In promoting the idea that a Jew and an Arab might work together as
partners, Ben-Hur may be “pleading for a general Middle East solidarity
and an end to foreign interference” (Elley, 131–2). Sheik Ilderim appeals
to Judah’s sense of ethnic pride: “Judah Ben-Hur, my people are praying
for a man who can drive their team to victory over Messala. You could be
that man! You could be the one to stamp this Roman’s arrogance into the
sand of that arena.” The film’s positive portrayal of the Sheik as a skillful
negotiator and a compatriot willing to help Judah implies an optimistic
take on the troubled state of affairs among Middle Eastern nations since
the foundation of Israel in 1948 (Babington and Evans, 201–2). Later
in the bathhouse scene, the Sheik taunts and flatters Messala and the
Romans into wagering huge sums of money in the chariot race, and when
86 BEN-HUR (1959)