The Book of Esther and “One Night with the King”

                This post will be a two for one special.  Not only will we be looking at Queen Esther as a valiant woman, I’m also going to review the 2006 movie based on a novelized version of the story, titled “One Night with the King.”

                Quick basic overview of the facts of the Bible story- Esther was a Jewish orphan girl living in Persia, and was chosen by King Xerxes to be his bride.  The Grand Visier (every bit as evil as Aladdin’s Jafar) is infuriated that the Jew Mordecai (Esther’s uncle and guardian) will not bow to him, and so he convinces the King that the Jews are disloyal and should be destroyed.  The King allows the Visier to issue and edict allowing the Persians to kill all Jews on a particular day in a few month’s time.  Esther knows that to approach the King without permission is to risk death, but for the sake of her people, she goes to the King and asks him to spare the Jews.  He agrees, and all ends happily.  So, now onto the details, where the interesting stuff lurks.

                Of course, the most obvious aspect of Esther’s character is her bravery.  She risked her life in order to save her people.  In doing so, she is an Old Testament prefiguration of Christ, laying down His life for His sheep.  But she was also a woman with a lot of common sense.  When the King was choosing his bride from among the maidens of the land (very Cinderella-eque) they each had a chance to come before him, arrayed in any finery they chose from the royal treasury.  Esther chose nothing for herself, but asked Egeus, the eunuch who had charge over the virgins, to adorn her.  She understood that he would be a better judge of what the King would find attractive.  And it worked.  “The king loved her more than all the women: and she had favor and kindness before him above all the women.”

Later, we see her feminine intuition working when she goes to the King without being summoned.  Instead of asking right then and there for him to save her people, she asks him to a banquet that day.  After he had eaten (and drunk) his fill, he asked her what her petition was.  She asked him to come to another feast the next day.  That day, Esther waits until her husband is “warm with wine” and then she asks him her great favor.  She understood that she needed to charm her husband before asking something so great from him.  It’s a bit of wisdom we can all learn from – bribing men with food never did any woman any harm. J

One of my personal goals in having this blog has been to learn more about the women of the Old Testament.  When I heard about this movie, “One Night with the King,” I was really excited, and looking forward to a cinematic portrayal of this compelling story.  I should have realized that this wouldn’t be the case.  I could rant about the overuse of slow motion and oddly placed flash-backs, the over-complicating of the story with political intrigue and unnecessary characters (including a contrived love interest!) or the terrible script writing (including such lines as “Are you okay?”).  However, I’m going to limit myself to the film’s treatment of the character of Esther.

It’s true that the Biblical account of Esther doesn’t give us much about her personality, other than what I’ve mentioned above.  We know that she was physically beautiful, wise, and brave.  We know that she was a Jew with a firm faith in God.  However, I like to think that the real life Esther was very different from this film’s portrayal of her, which is more reminiscent of a Disney princess than a valiant woman.  We see her telling stories to the children of the village, making them laugh and giggle.  We see her sneaking out of the house to attend one of the king’s banquets, against her uncle’s orders.  We see her reveling in the beauty of the palace gardens (spinning around, head thrown back, smiling at the sky).  We see her dramatically running through the rain to the royal hall in order to ask Xerxes for mercy for the Jews.  (Esther would have much more sense than to appear before the king looking like a drowned rat.)  In short, we are given a picture of an impetuous and imaginative young woman who would fit very well into Princess Diaries, or maybe the Kiera Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice.

(I did love the costumes, but seriously, it looks like Xerxes is trying to take a selfie here...)

The movie makers got the big picture, that Esther was brave, but they didn’t give us a portrait of a valiant woman.  They gave us what they’re good at—Disney princesses.  It’s disappointing, but I should have seen it coming.  The one thing they did with her character that I did like is that they gave her a love of books and reading.  She loves the stories of the Old Testament, and is so familiar with them that she can recite them from memory.  But she also reads other stories, like the Epic of Gilgamesh.  (I don’t know how historically accurate that is, but I don’t think it’s outside of the realm of possibility.)  So I guess if you want to learn more about Esther, the real Esther, your best bet is to read her story from a source we can trust—Sacred Scripture.