Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

The appearances of Jesus are few and handled with great delicacy and
dignity: since the camera never shows his face directly or in close-up,
the viewers must imagine him through the facial expressions of other
characters as they look at him. In the Nazareth scene, the audience sees
the soothing hands of Jesus giving water to the slave Judah as he falls in
distress. This unexpected touch of human kindness fortifies Judah. It gives
him the will to achieve his vengeance against Messala, which leaves him
empty and embittered, but more importantly, it saves him for the personal
transformation that will be realized through his bonds with the
people he loves, with Arrius, Esther, and his long-lost family. When Judah,
still angry and skeptical, recognizes the condemned man carrying the cross
as the same man who helped him in the desert, Judah is drawn to him and
tries to offer him water. Yet Judah’s conversion is slow in coming and
only indirectly suggested by the storm sequence at the end of the film,
where his hostility is miraculously dissolved as he hears Jesus utter his
famous prayer from the cross to forgive his enemies. Judah, the man who
scoffed “I don’t believe in miracles,” finally accepts the ultimate mystery
of love, hope, and healing.
Judah’s transformation is made more persuasive in cinematic terms
because of Wyler’s careful use of visual symbolism to augment and extend
the narrative, especially in scenes without dialogue. The two rings worn by
Judah underscore both his crucial human contacts and the formation of
his own identity. When Esther gives Judah her slave ring as a love-token,
he wears it constantly on his left hand like a wedding ring, signifying his
romantic bond to her. Wearing her ring also implies a promise to return,
and will remind Judah of his Judaean roots. Judah wears the family ring of
adoption bestowed by Arrius on his right hand, the hand of strength and
action. The signet is carved in dark red carnelian stone, an emblem of
wealth, nobility, and courage, and the ring identifies Judah with one of
Rome’s most elite and powerful families. Both rings are evident in the
scenes when Judah arrives back in Palestine, and he gazes fondly at them
as he rests under a palm tree. Although Judah uses Arrius’ ring to gain
advantage over Messala, after the chariot race he returns the Roman symbol
to Pilate and reasserts his Judaean identity: “I am Judah Ben-Hur.”
Throughout the film, Wyler employs the more obvious symbolism of
water “as an agent of renewal” (Elley, 134) to suggest Judah’s progress
towards self-restoration. The motif links the two redemptive figures of
Jesus and Arrius, in scenes that emphasize the cleansing and life-giving
properties of water: the young carpenter gives Judah water to drink in
the desert on his way to the slave galley, and Arrius offers Judah a cup
82 BEN-HUR (1959)