The Red Tent (2014)

Beautiful, moving film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I understand that Dinah was a minor character in the Bible, and so Anita Diamant wrote a book that cast her as the main character. My mom read the book and liked it. Well, the movie is too hokey. I don't know what the general aim was, but it comes across as one of those melodramatic biblical epics from the '50s or '60s. One of the men came across as a mangled version of Khal Drogo (and it turns out that some of the cast members of "The Red Tent" are best known from "Game of Thrones").Basically, movies like this are the reason why Monty Python made "Life of Brian". I do not recommend it. Had I been watching it alone, I would've spent the whole time making the sorts of comments that Mike, Servo and Crow make at crummy movies on "Mystery Science Theater 3000".

This was a favorite book of mine. I was very worried that they would screw this but it is very true to the book. No, it is not an exact retelling of the Bible. Then again, the Bible has many versions and is written word of stories passed down. This is historical fiction loosely based on the Bible and the way women lived and were treated at the time. That is really the main point of the story. That women can learn from each other and that we cannot always rely on men to do the right thing. That women are strong, resourceful and are often supporting men behind the scenes. The problem I have is that the main characters "The Good Guys" are obviously English, light skinned with English accents. The dark ones more often than not were "The Bad Guys". Also, they kept showing her in satin sheets. I doubt they had satin sheets in 1000 BC or whatever the date was.

It was an entertaining story if you told people it was fictional. I would have said I liked it a lot. Because this mini-series is from the Bible with Bible characters, you can't change the story and expect it to be good. It was terrible! It felt as though it was a feminist propaganda movie. All of the men were EVIL! Laban, Leah and Rachel's father was a wife beater! The bible showed him to be a tricksters not a wife abuser. Jacob, was a poor idiot who had no Godly conviction. The brothers were rogues.The ladies worship idols and regarded it as a girlie tradition. Only Rachel secretly stole her dad Laban's idol. Dinah was an arrogant, disrespectful brat, who calls her dad Jacob, talks to her Grandma like shes a peer! Then there is the Rape that never happened. She had consensual sex and then married him and her family are brutes?She has a son from her rapist(husband) that tries to kill her brother Joseph? Joseph appears to the king, dirty and unshaven and the bible makes a point of saying he cleaned himself, shaved himself and prepared to meet him. I wanted to like this one but couldn't. It feels obvious that the writer of this mini-series didn't like the original true story.

Acting and production values are high. Thought this would delve into the biblical stories and theorize the life of women in this era. I fully expected a measure of creative licensing away from the core story, BUT did not expect that God's relevance would be taken out of it almost completely and the few references they gave have been negative. To me this is blasphemy. If they had just created names, changed a few events and said it was a story about the era, it would have been fine and more believable. Haven't seen the end and don't want to - read enough reviews of the book to realize it will only get worse. It's like if you went to see the Titanic to find out it was all about global warming and the poor melting iceberg.