Esther Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Esther Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 6, 2017

Note: This film is available as part of the box set The Bible Stories Collection.

That oft quoted adage “the book was better” might never be more appropriate than in adaptations culled from the Bible. How can mere mortals hope to compete with what many believe is a Divinely inspired collection of writings? That of course hasn’t stopped a lot of mere mortals from trying, and Biblical stories have been a staple of first film and, later, television outings virtually from the time these media were invented. While the big screen Biblical epics of the 1950s and 1960s were often kind of silly ( David and Bathsheba), or alternatively overly reverential and therefore kind of stodgy (The Greatest Story Ever Told), they typically (though not always) brought audiences in to delight not just in the pomp and circumstance, but also perhaps to blandish any qualms of conscience that not going to church and/or shul “religiously” (so to speak) may have engendered. One of the more interesting films to come out of this adaptive fervor was the 1966 effort The Bible: In the Beginning..., a John Huston directed effort which presented several iconic tales from Genesis and which was initially planned as just the first installment for a whole series of Biblically oriented tales culled directly from scripture. Its failure at the box office put the kibosh on that plan, but several decades later, a similar plan was put into production, albeit on a much smaller scale, with a series of made for television films (many marketed as miniseries despite not being all that lengthy) that offered various Bible tales, usually with at least one marquee star attached. Many of the made for television entries included in this set were part of a series which ran on various Ted Turner owned networks starting in the 1990s, and some at least have long been favorites of those who like their Biblical adaptations on the more intimate and less epic side of things.

There’s a kind of funny Jewish adage that is trotted out for various holidays which says, “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.” That might be slightly amended to say “Let’s eat and drink” for the festival of Purim, a kind of Jewish Halloween where folks dress up as various characters from The Book of Esther and celebrate the victory of Jews over the nefarious bad guy Haman. If you’ve ever been to a Purim celebration, the so- called “Purim spiels" (plays) tend to be pretty boisterous affairs, and the fact that these parties often openly encourage alcohol consumption can make them positively raucous as the evening wears on. While Purim is considered a “minor” festival, it’s often treated as a major frolic, something that would seem to be at odds with a story about potential genocide.

As with many of the other entries in the Bible Stories collection set, Esther has a bit of competition from other treatments, including The Book of Esther and One Night with the King. While this Esther has a bit more to offer than I what jokingly referred to as The Book of Esther’s “cast of tens”, it can’t quite match the production design opulence of One Night with the King. This version hews very close to the standard tale, with Hadassah (Louise Lombard) and her (in this version) cousin Mordecai (F. Murray Abraham) caught up in yet another wholesale attempt to slaughter innocent Jews. (Lovers of kitsch may also remember the 1960 "epic" Esther and the King, co-directed by Raoul Walsh and Mario Bava, and starring Joan Collins as a particularly seductive "nice Jewish girl".)

Hadassah is taken captive more or less as part of the harem of King Achashverosh (Thomas Kreschmann), but rather quickly (and somewhat discursively in this version) becoming his favorite and, therefore, the new queen under her new name of Esther. Meanwhile, nefarious courtly advisor Haman (Jürgen Prochnow) is hellbent on the destruction of the Jews, without realizing that Esther is in fact one herself.

This Esther kind of plays like a Lifetime romantic movie at times, something that’s perhaps understandable but which tends to make the story feel less epochal than some of the other tales in this set. Production values are a bit sparse, with obvious attempts made to limit perspective of sets, probably to give the impression that things are more opulent than they actually are. Performances are generally okay, if a bit hammy (no trayf pun intended), and there’s some actual romantic chemistry between Lombard and Kretschmann as the unlikely royal couple.

Esther Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

All of the films in The Bible Stories Collection are presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1. While most (perhaps all) of these efforts were broadcast in the United States in 1.33:1, it looks from scouring through the IMDb that many (perhaps all) of them did in fact have theatrical releases in various foreign markets, meaning they were most likely all shot with "safeties" and/or "shoot and protect" regimens in mind. That said, those who have seen the 1.33:1 versions which were released on videotape and DVD will no doubt notice quite a few "tighter" framings, framings which often tend to lop the tops or bottoms off of heads and/or faces, at least intermittently.

Esther is pretty much perfectly in line with the majority of the other offerings in this set (at least those from this general time frame), offering a variable grain field that at times is minimal and at other times more readily apparent, but detail levels that overall remain good and at least occasionally very good, at least when close-ups are employed (which they are with fair regularity throughout the film). This is one of the more colorful entries in this set, with some really beautifully saturated hues helping to make costumes especially pop with some immediacy. A lot of the interior palace scenes are lit to a kind of golden honey color, and while fine detail levels are mitigated, the actual look of these scenes is quite evocative at times. Fine detail generally in midrange shots is negligible, something else that may indicate high frequency filtering.

Esther Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Esther's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track gets some considerable energy from its score, one which like Samson and Delilah features an array of percussion instruments that really helps to invigorate the lower frequencies. There are also a couple of brief musical interludes within the film itself where Esther is learning to play an instrument that help to up the sonic ambience. A couple of chaotic scenes, especially in the early part of the film, feature decent spread of crowd noises around the surround channels, but as with many of the other films in this set, the bulk of the dialogue resides quite squarely up front, where it's presented cleanly and clearly. As with the other films in the collection, a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix is also included.

Esther Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There is no supplementary material of any kind on this Blu-ray disc.

Esther Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You don't have to be Jewish to celebrate Purim, at least that is if you're not averse to dressing up in silly costumes and getting rip roaring drunk (perhaps reversing the order of those activities might be helpful). Esther is an okay retelling of this venerable tale, one that has good if occasionally overheated performances and which features a physical production that obviously reeks of this being a made for television effort. Perhaps due to its relative brevity it never quite works up to much in the way of an emotional payoff, but this is one Bible tale that actually has something close to a happy ending. Recommended.