Poetic License

It just isn't fair to take stories out of the Bible and make up your own story. Poetic license or not, I felt cheated when I saw the movie, The Red Tent. Something I would never have noticed if it wasn't for the fact that I am taking a Bible Timeline class. I am reading about what happened in the Old Testament and the movie puts its own spin on the Old Testament. When I saw a movie entitled The Red Tent and the explanation informed me that the movie chronicled the twelve tribes of Israel, I thought watching the movie would reinforce the Bible for me. I would be able to see how they dressed, some of their customs, and the recognizable names. The first detour was how in the Bible, Jacob arrives tired and thirsty at a well at his uncle's home and there sees Rachel. It was love at first sight. He asks to marry her and after working for seven years his wedding night approaches.

In the Bible, the Father (portrayed as an abusive and mean man) tricks Jacob by having the oldest daughter, Leah, marry Jacob. In the movie, it is Rachel who fears the wedding night and begs Leah to marry Jacob.  Eventually he does marry both of them and while Leah gives him eleven sons and one daughter, Rachel gives him a son who they name Joseph.

The movie may use the Biblical names but the story varies from the Bible. The movie follows some of the story line like showing how Joseph is favored by Jacob and the jealousy of his brothers, Simeon and Levi. Somehow, the coat of many colors is in the movie but told with a different spin. It did show how Jacob is sold to slave traders and how they show their father the bloodied coat. The story switches to Jacob's only daughter, Dinah and how she falls in love with a prince and marries him. To prove his love all males have to be circumcised. While they are recuperating, the brothers enter the castle and murder all the males who are incapacitated. Something similar does happen in the Bible but it is referred to as the Rape of Dinah. In the movie it is a consensual love affair. Some parts of the movie ring true while other parts do not.

I can see where Anita Diamant, the author of The Red Tent, tried to make the characters in the Bible more loving and kind. There is a lot of love making, between the players in the story. I felt as if the love scenes were a bit much; between Jacob and Leah, Jacob and Rachel, Dinah and Sheshem and then between Dinah and Job. Maybe she thought, and rightfully so, that sex sells!

The part of Joseph saving his family by becoming a leader in the Canaanite world through his being an interpreter of dreams is not in the movie.Toward the end of the movie, which I do not remember reading in the Bible, Dinah and Joseph return to say their goodbyes to Jacob as he is dying.

Maybe if I had not taken classes on the Old Testament I may have believed every word in the movie, but now I know better and know how there is a lot of poetic license in what an author writes and in making a movie!

"I had to kind of squeeze it, 

and maybe the reason why the end is a 'fable'. 

I stayed within frames of something 

that is not a historical approach, 

it's a much more poetic approach.

If anything, too poetic within the circumstances.

But, it's what came out over the short time."

Francis Alys