Spielberg directing Moses

Steven D. Greydanus wrote an article at the National Catholic Register a couple of days ago titled “Moses, Spielberg & DeMille: Why Spielberg should do the next Moses movie” After covering Spielberg’s past achievement and connections to DeMille he wrote,

 A successful Spielberg-directed Moses story could be a cultural landmark of immense significance. It could have an impact on a scale similar to The Passion of the Christ, but without the polarizing controversy. It could give a fundamental biblical story new currency for generations to come. Like DeMille’s film, it might even help renew awareness of the Ten Commandments and the foundational role of the Judeo-Christian heritage in Western civilization.

Of course there’s no guarantee that it would do any of these things. Depending on the screenplay (I have no idea what it looks like) and how Spielberg handles it, it could be terrible. Even on a best case scenario, it seems likely that there would be at least some drawbacks, and that caveats of some sort or other will be necessary.

I am a bit ambiguous about  the project. On one hand I would love to see such a movie. On the other hand I lament every time a classic literary (and in this case religious) works gets translated onto the big screen. I am afraid that the traditional literacy I cherish, which has to do with the ability of reading and understanding what you read, is getting replaced with visual literacy (and in many cases digital literacy) or the lack of them. I guess I am a bit conservative in this sense: I think each media has its own beauty and advantages and we as a society loose a lot if the next generation becomes more clueless about traditional literacy. What can I say? I like books AND movies, but afraid if on knows a work only through the later variation and not the original book, one can miss a lot of learning and joy.