Exodus – 2021

There were mainly two reasons that I decided to watch Exodus. First, the title. There’s got to be something special about a movie called Exodus. I’m not a particularly religious man but I know this story from the Old Testament pretty well and Old Testament stories are usually a pretty solid base for a story. The second thing is the cover art. If you have gotten as far as I have in the fine art of watching movies you have developed a sixth sense when it comes to those things. Often you can tell by just looking at the cover art if you’re going to enjoy the movie or not. I’d say it worked in 90% of the cases. I know what kind of movie it is just by looking at the cover art.

Not always, of course, there are still those last 10% of the time where I get fooled. This was such a time. There is in fact a story about a door to be found in the desert somewhere. It’s proven by someone finding an old VHS tape where it’s present. But that’s about as interesting as it gets. I was looking forward to someone leaving this dimension and entering another realm to make conclusions about existentialism. I wasn’t really granted that wish.

Dystopia

What I got was a dystopian future(?) where people aren’t allowed to leave. Leave what, you may ask? Well, society I guess. You should think of the other people and stick up to each other and don’t leave anyone behind. Sounds a bit like a communist manifest to me. In all this, there are of course people trying to leave and there are people looking for that door in the desert. But it’s not very interesting, it’s not mysterious. We get to follow one guy in particular and the encounters he makes while trying to find that door. But as the movie continues it gets more and more incomprehensible. It’s not an interesting strangeness to it. it just seems to annoyingly leave out the information we need to finish the puzzle of what’s going on.

But I also think this is the point. Not giving us the answers is part of the plan to make us think and I also feel that in the end, it’s a metaphorical movie. It’s not about finding a door in the desert at all. It’s about finding your inner peace, illumination if would will. Perhaps the quest of finding God och the Holy Grail. Either way, I think Exodus missed the point by a mile. It just became boring and didn’t give me very much at all.