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(More customer reviews)"The Disputation" was released in 1986. At the time, I watched in on the A&E Channel. Unfortunately, it ran only once, never to be seen again. When the opportunity arose to purchase it on DVD, I immediately bought it for $24.95 plus shipping. Having viewed it twice, I have reached the following conclusions: First, the acting is magnificent. There is not a bad actor in the bunch, particularly Christopher Lee as King James I and Alan Dobie as Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides, but also known by the acronymn Ramban.) It's a superb British production. The transfer from video to DVD is quite bad, and although that was a bit of a disappointment, my quarrel is not with the video transfer; it is with the amount of time spent on the actual disputation (or debate) between former Jew and now priest of the Catholic Church Pablo Christiani and Rabbi Nachmanides. It seemed an extremely short period of time within the body of the whole program, so the second time I watched it, I timed each of the debates. Given that the entire DVD is only one hour and three minutes long, I was disturbed by the fact that Christiani and Nachmanides meet four separate times for a total of only approximately 20 minutes. The rest is filled with discussions between the king and his wife, the king and his girlfriend, the king and Nachmanides, Christiani and the king's wife, so and so forth. So, although I'm glad that I finally got to see "The Disputation" after a 24 year interval, had I remembered that there was only 20 minutes of interaction between the "debaters," I would have passed on this purchase.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Disputation - Nachmanides Debates Before King James of Aragon
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