Gal Gadot For Esther
The Israeli actress should take her attempted cancellation as an opportunity to reimagine one of the Bible's great female characters
There is an attempt afoot to cancel Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress.
By now, the storyline is familiar: this past October Gadot announced that she was again teaming up with Patty Jenkins, the director of the Wonder Woman movies that catapulted her to international fame, to create a remake of Cleopatra, the famed Hollywood studio-era extravaganza that starred Elizabeth Taylor at the height of her powers.
Cleopatra is an obvious follow-up to the universally-hailed rendition of Wonder Woman, seen by many as a vehicle for the empowerment of women, both through the success of Jenkins and Gadot themselves and the example of the strong, beautiful, moral, kind, and decent Wonder Woman that Gadot embodied. Cleopatra was herself a successful player in the games of court of ancient Rome, a beautiful woman who used her cunning and charm to achieve and maintain a position of power.
Cleopatra would also extend the personal success of both Gadot and Jenkins, as the actress takes her rightful place as the Elizabeth Taylor of the present generation and the director demonstrates her ability to create an even greater degree of cinematic spectacle than the two time Oscar-winner Joseph Mankiewicz, the director of the 1963 version that starred Taylor. To say nothing of the box office potential of yet another Hollywood retread that requires no introduction to audiences.
Unfortunately, Gadot ran into an internet outrage mob all-too-predictably determined she had no right to play Cleopatra, since (you guessed it) Gadot is not an Arab and Cleopatra was Egyptian. The details of the critique are not worth describing, since it is obviously possible for any actor to play any character of any time ever. It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter, but for anyone keeping score, Gadot was born and raised less than 200 miles from the Nile River delta and is a native speaker of a Semitic language that had been known and probably spoken in Egypt for a thousand years at the time that the historical Cleopatra (who probably did not speak a word of Arabic, and was a Macedonian by heritage) lived.
So far and to her credit, Gadot has not bowed to the mob. If she wishes to play the character she should of course do as she pleases.
This turn of affairs, however, provides her an opportunity to transform this project into the creation of a modern and original movie of far more power, popularity, and impact than a Cleopatra retread ever could. Using the useful excuse of her attempted cancellation, Gadot could say unfortunately we can no longer do Cleopatra, but since everyone we need is ready to make a movie we might as well make another that is a relatively easy pivot. This movie would be set about five hundred years earlier, at the seat of an empire that was greater, in its time, even than Rome at its peak. I am speaking of the story of Esther, as described in the Biblical book that takes her name.
Whereas Cleopatra was an heiress and a creature of court, intrigue, deception, and sexual licentiousness, Esther was a moral and decent woman with no aristocratic pretension who was forced into the Persian king’s harem against her will. There, her unsurpassed beauty, charm, and discretion allowed her to rise to queen of an empire of 127 nations.
Moreover, the story of Esther is simply a better story than the story of Cleopatra. In the place of amoral fights for power and lust, it presents the great and unexpected trial through which Esther must pass when she is forced to decide whether or not to risk her life to save the Jews of the Persian empire who have been slotted for extermination, a fate she might escape because she has kept from the king the truth of which of his many nations she hails from.
We are also rewarded with further dramatic riches in the person of Haman, the Machiavellian court adviser (think Jafar from Disney’s animated Aladdin), and Esther’s uncle Mordecai, the pious Jewish exile from Jerusalem who both inspires Haman’s murderous hatred of the Jews and guides Esther in her successful scheme to reverse Haman’s plot. If Jenkins had any fun creating Themysicra (the hidden city of Wonder Woman’s birth), she’d probably enjoy herself even more with the ways she could bring ancient Shushan, the Persian capital of the story, to life.
While it’s true that Esther, in this age of Biblical illiteracy, may not have quite the ready-made audience as Cleopatra, the film’s marketers would still enjoy a sizable (and enthusiastic) group of future ticket-buyers to rely on. Who knows? Creative early target market screenings might generate the kind of buzz enjoyed by The Passion of the Christ, the Aramaic-language 2004 movie directed by Mel Gibson that grossed over $600 million.
For Gadot, in particular, starring in a major Hollywood production based on Esther would be a defining moment for her impressive career. It now seems there is no other woman living who could play Wonder Woman. Yet Esther, the simple and stunning young woman thrust into a crucible from which she emerges triumphant, sounds like the role of a lifetime, one that would not make Gadot the Elizabeth Taylor of our time, but something greater: the Gal Gadot of all time.
This says nothing of the great mitzvah Gadot could uniquely perform by playing the role and getting the movie made. For she has not only earned her role as major Hollywood actress and most beautiful woman in the world with grace, she also has done it without sacrificing any bit of her easily worn Jewish and Israeli pride. You can see it in the social media post she made of herself lighting Shabbat candles and wishing well to “all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts committed by Hamas” in 2014 and, more importantly, her monologue when she hosted Saturday Night Live in 2017, when she spoke a few lines in Hebrew, mocking, in very Israeli fashion, the producers of the show.
In other words, Gadot embodies a natural Jewish pride, strength, and equality of participation in the lives of the nations of the world that would make Theodor Herzl cry to see. Though she inspires girls and boys the world over, she has a special impact on Jewish children. And in a time when we have sadly seen yet another rise in the forces of hate that always find the Jews to be, in one way or another, an attractive target, one can see similarities between the fates of both Esther and Gadot (albeit with much smaller stakes in Gadot’s case.)
The emotional apex of Esther’s story comes when Mordecai appeals to her to risk her own life to convince the king to overturn the decree that has been issued to kill the kingdom’s Jews, telling her, “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace… Who knows: perhaps you have attained your position just for this moment.” Circumstances may now have aligned to provide Gadot her own opportunity to be a credit to her people in a way that could last for generations. I hope she grabs it.