Moses and Aaron

Streaming video - 1974

One of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s major films, MOSES AND AARON finds the filmmaking duo, through their exemplary craft, transforming a familiar Biblical tale into a borderline-surreal cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. Based on rigorous consideration and questioning of Biblical and archaeological history, particularly with respect to the collective memory — passed down and transcribed over hundreds of years, however inaccurately — of the Egyptian enslavement of the Hebrews and the Exodus, the film is concerned with the myth of human progress, and the transition from polytheism to monotheism. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every st...artling camera move and cut, a totalizing force, Straub-Huillet’s adaptation of Schoenberg’s unfinished opera opens us to the stimulating worldview of a filmmaking duo whose masterful efforts are finally coming to light. *"The stark images are as passionated and engaging, profound and beautiful as the complex music to which they insightfully respond." - Richard Brody, **The New Yorker*** more