The riddle of religion in Ridley Scott's films

In an episode called "After the Fall" in Season 3 of The Good Wife, a young woman decides to throw herself off a bridge into a waterfall. The scene is like a Japanese painting. The shot is slow and there is a feeling of inevitability to it. The music plays gently at first, and then swells into moving, epic, grandness. The viewer is filled with a sense of poignancy.

It's a little known fact that Ridley Scott produces The Good Wife. Yet, when you do sit down to binge watch the show, season after season, there are unmistakable signs of the master's hand guiding the story and bringing his own unique sense of cinema to the small screen.

The scene of the suicide in The Good Wife has many similarities to the scene from Gladiator where General Maximus Decimus Meridius dies. In this now iconic scene, the General, in his death, drifts back to his farm and we see his hands drifting over the heads of ripening wheat. In both scenes, the viewer is at one with the protagonist and feels the protagonist's sense of peace after having let go of all earthly turmoil.

At the end of it, Ridley Scott's work is about human frailties. Perhaps that's why, when I heard Scott's younger brother Tony Scott (a co-producer of The Good Wife) committed suicide by jumping off a bridge, what flashed through my mind was the scene from the show.

All these human frailties are set against vast backdrops. That's what makes Scott a storyteller of epic tales. Not epic in the sense of superheroes flying through the air, but of ordinary mortals, who, in the face of their ordinary lives do extraordinary human things. When you go to a theatre then there is nothing more satisfying than seeing this scale. This is what cinema has been invented for.

Once, while editing at The Mill (the famous post-production house for advertising folk) in London, I spotted a golden statue housed in a glass box. It was a replica of the Oscar the production house had won for the film Gladiator. I was surprised for a moment, and then it made sense. After all Ridley Scott is, Sir Ridley Scott, an Englishman, a BBC man and also an advertising man.

Scott made the famous Apple 1984 commercial. It was about a David (Apple) in a world ruled by the giant Goliath (IBM). It was an ad to be watched in cinema theatres, on a large screen. In fact, it still remains a landmark ad film in advertising and marketing circles. Scott credits this kind of training in making commercials, to his his film school. So perhaps it was only natural for Ridley Scott to turn to his roots in London to recreate the visual effects for the Gladiator.

His use of technology only adds to the backdrop and grandeur of the story. Technology never becomes the story as it does in many Christopher Nolan films. Technology creates the canvas to demonstrate the small physicality of the human against these vast backdrops and bring alive the spiritual moment where a character recognises the odds or takes on the odds.

In recent years this spiritual quest seems to be more obvious through Ridley Scott's choice of films. He's described himself as agnostic, but his films have begun to reflect the spiritual tussle and the need to know more than what organised religion offers. It's probably because of this, that his portrayal of the Crusades in the Kingdom Of Heaven was flayed by religious journals.

Then there is Prometheus, one of the most thought-provoking science fiction films since 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sci-fi is really not a new genre for Scott. He directed two of the most outstanding sci-fi films: Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982). But with Prometheus (the prequel to Alien), Scott brings an emotional maturity to the thrill of the science fiction films with profound questions about the human race. Again, it feels like his own personal spiritual quest is at the core of the story.

Coming back to the television serial The Good Wife, the main character, Alicia Florrick, too, struggles with her own inability to accept religion as easily as her daughter does. Season after season of this superbly crafted serial, you watch the main character develop from a naïve woman, to a shrewd, manipulative lawyer who is trying to hold on to what is morally right and what is wrong.

There are many who could dissect Scott's filmography which reads like the A-list of Hollywood cinema: Legend, Thelma and Louise, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, Body of Lies, 1492: The Conquest of Paradise, G.I Jane, Hannibal and many more. Some of these were undoubtedly duds at the box office. Yet, no one can call them unwatchable. The sound design (check Alien with its hissing pipes and the hissing alien), the pacing of Scott's film that allow you to take in every emotion and the setting, the lighting all add to the details of creating a moments scene by scene of the vulnerability of the character.

The next Ridley Scott film scheduled for release, Exodus: Gods and Kings, is about Moses. Scott describes Moses as "the incarnation of freedom". Among other things, the film explores the nuances of the relationship between Ramses and Moses. From the trailer, it's clear that the movie is going to be spectacular. Exodus will once again reflect Scott's own questions about creation, birth and belief. And no doubt, Exodus will once again have the audience congregate to follow Ridley Scott's very own religion of great storytelling.