Liam Kenny’s review published on Letterboxd:
Exodus is a mass misunderstanding of space where characters consistently pave over what is before them. In Sal Mineo’s key scene, he is humiliated by the Irgun when he lies about his complicity in Nazi concentration camps. He then joins the Irgun, continuing to aid the Nazi ideology that has caused him so much strife. Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint disagree over coexistence at Mount Tabor, claiming what they call the Valley of Jezreel (Marj Ibn Amir) for the Zionist colonizers and never taking seriously the inhabitants of “Abu Yesha” (Hebrew for Abu Shusha). As Newman and Marie Saint become deluded in whirlwind romance, the camera eliminates vision of Mount Tabor and Marj Ibn Amir, all that can be seen is Newman and Marie Saint, all outside engagements become distractions or allegory for the romance. This romance is taken with the utmost seriousness and as a key component to the power politics of Zionism. Paul Newman’s romantic relationship with Eva Marie Saint distracts him from not only the strife of the Palestinians, but from learning of them at all. John Derek, a white actor playing the Mukhtar of Abu Shusha, serves as the only voice for Palestinians, who are only referred to as “Arabs.” He warns Newman of the unrest the Zionists have caused by winning partition in the U.N., and then is killed in the Abu Shusha Massacre of 1948. The film shows this massacre with a negligent sparseness, but as a moment for Paul Newman’s character, this is where the damage he has caused catches up with him. His two greatest friends including the Mukhtar are killed, and in his last speech at their funeral, Newman holds on to the naivety that the Zionists can make peace in Palestine with their movement. The key image of Exodus is the Zionist characters seeing masses of people as a single being to be controlled, their meat-ineffable understanding of expanse is that of a division between ruler and ruled, and they reason that it is better to be the ruler without understanding the consequences. Exodus is a film of distant beauty, these self-imposed rulers overlook enormous vistas of life and want to clutch it, not understanding the emotions that overwhelm them are alive in the masses they seize. By showing what the Zionists can’t see, or showing that they cannot see it, Preminger outlines the function of meat-ineffable. Make no mistake, Exodus is a Zionist film. It is also a film that sees with extreme precision the abstractions of human vision in history. The characters understand space as a monolith, but the camera’s understanding of this loss and confusion in space is what makes the film great. It is a film that aims to understand its characters as key historical components that are burdened by hubris. The film does not propose anything cogent, but it aims to teach and mourn for misunderstood surroundings precisely by teaching how to see these surroundings. Meat-ineffable is what makes the image powerful by way of understanding and not moralizing.
I wrote on Fred Camper's Interactions and Otto Preminger's Exodus for Ultra Dogme.
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