In all of cinema history, only three films have ever achieved the daunting task of winning eleven Academy Awards. All three were sweeping three-hour epics that continue to influence filmmaking to this day. But before there was Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and before there was Titanic, there was Ben-Hur.

It’s a humbling and exhausting proposition just to watch — never mind review — such a renowned classic as the three-and-a-half-hour 1959 Charlton Heston opus. But I’ve got all day to work with and I’ve settled into the couch in front of my big-screen. Let’s do this.

To start with, I could tell right away why this movie is so long: It’s padded beyond belief. Scenes are often three times longer than they need to be, loaded with long stares, slow line deliveries and repetitive dialogue. That said, the story is so tired, the performances so powerful, and the music so melodramatic that I didn’t even need huge stretches of dialogue to understand what was going on. So those lines are not only redundant and boring, but also unnecessary. Still, at least the film is pretty to look at.

The back of the DVD case boasts that 100,000 costumes, 8,000 extras, and 300 sets went into the making of this picture. According to Wikipedia, over 200 camels and 2,500 horses were procured for the movie. The budget for the film was a record-breaking $15 million (remember, that’s unadjusted for inflation), and it’s patently obvious where all the money went.

The actors are all wonderful, the set designs and costumes look fantastic, the matte paintings look gorgeous, and the armies of extras are all perfectly costumed and choreographed. Then there’s the score, which is overwhelmingly dramatic and sweeping. In point of fact, there was so much music written for so much movie that this score is still unrivaled as the longest in cinema history.

Unfortunately, the 1950s sound mixing is terrible, as the dialogue is so much more difficult to hear than the score. Then again, the camerawork is far better than might be expected of the time period. Hell, it’s better than might be expected of any time period.

Additionally, it’s clear that a lot of effort was put into the effects, though they look dated in places. The nautical battle, for example, is obviously just a bunch of toy boats throwing tiny flares at each other. Also, quite a few of the swords look an awful lot like painted wood. Sorry, but it’s true.

Really, this movie makes a point to beat its audience over the head with how epic it is. How epic is this movie? The prologue focuses on the birth of Jesus Christ. Scores of extras filing into Judea for the census, painstakingly detailed matte paintings to show the star over Nazareth, three elaborately costumed old men arriving at a stable full of barn animals and even more extras, the whole shebang.

Yet Christ himself never shows his face or utters a single word at any time in the whole film. Consider this an early sign of how much padding is in the movie.

Instead, the film’s story begins in 26 AD, just when Christianity was getting started and the Roman empire began to crumble under its own weight. The central storyline concerns a wealthy Jewish prince named Judah Ben-Hur (Heston). He’s an old childhood friend of Messala (Stephen Boyd), a Roman soldier who just rose up through the ranks to take charge of Ben-Hur’s neck of the woods. Unfortunately, Messala is ambitious and Ben-Hur is protective of his people, so of course Messala takes the first opportunity to screw his best friend over. So Ben-Hur is sentenced to slavery, until through hard work and good fortune, he becomes the adoptive son of a Roman consul. He also comes to be a champion chariot racer, ultimately returning to seek revenge against Messala by way of a life-or-death Coliseum match.

Remember, this movie is 212 minutes long. Gladiator was an hour shorter. Just saying.

Part of the problem is that there’s so much talking about the evils of revenge, how blood begets blood, and so on. The trouble is that most of it is just that: Talking. The characters just keeping going over the same points repeatedly, with very few actions to back up the speeches.

Still, for all the complaints that I have about this film… there’s the chariot scene. That fantastic, iconic chariot scene. The one scene when all of the movie’s flaws and strengths so perfectly coalesce into fifteen minutes of cinematic perfection. The action is breathtaking, the tension is palpable, and there’s a sense of danger that’s extremely gripping. Everything about that scene, from the staging to the stuntwork to the chariots’ designs, was absolutely flawless. Yes, it’s every bit as padded as any other scene in the film, but why would anyone want such a phenomenal scene to end?

Alas, the film just keeps going for a solid hour after the chariot race, with very little of consequence happening at any point.

Ben-Hur boasts production design that by and large still looks extraordinary so many decades later, and every single performance is absolutely golden. Unfortunately, what really dates the movie is its bloated screenplay and its unwieldy structure. So much of this film is redundant and unnecessary that the film becomes a chore to sit through. Not even the dazzling visuals can make the story’s leaden execution any less boring.

They just don’t make films like this anymore, and I’m not entirely sure that they should.