Kingdom of HeavenReview by Peter T. Chattaway |
posted 5/06/2005
1 of 5
There have been surprisingly few films about the Crusades, and the handful that do exist have been ambivalent at best about the legacy of those wars.
Prior to Ridley Scott's action epic Kingdom of Heaven, perhaps the biggest Hollywood production to date was Cecil B. DeMille's The Crusades, a 1935 romance that condensed a century or two of history into a melodramatic but ultimately pious love triangle. The film opens on a sensationalistic note, as Muslims tear down crosses and sell Christian women into slavery, but concludes with a message of religious tolerance, as the arrogant King Richard sets aside his faith in the power of his sword in order to find peace and harmony with the Saracens. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the future president of Egypt, was so impressed with the film's dignified portrayal of Saladin (or, in Arabic, Salah-ad-Din) that he let DeMille use the Egyptian army as extras in his 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments.
Balian (Orlando Bloom) and Godfrey (Liam Neeson)
Beyond that, there have been one or two smaller films, as well as scattered references to the Crusades in films about Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, though the wars themselves are almost always kept well off-screen. One significant exception is the 1991 Kevin Costner vehicle Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, a rather noisy and politically correct action flick that begins in a Jerusalem prison mainly so its title character can add a Muslim sidekick to his Merry Men, preaching the virtues of religious diversity.
So when Scott set out to make his own movie about this era (technically, it does not take place during the Crusades but, rather, between them) he was venturing into largely unexplored territory. And it is to his credit that the film is as nuanced and complex as it is.
Scott and his screenwriter, William Monahan, had been discussing this project before the "war on terror" began, and they are quite alert to the fact that their film comes out at a time of intense religious and political fervor. Thus, instead of settling for the pat messages of earlier films, they aim for a more complicated understanding of both the Christian and Muslim sides. Kingdom of Heaven focuses not only on the conflict between the opposing armies, but on the debates within both camps over what God's will might be.
The film stakes out its own kind of neutrality by viewing these events through the eyes of Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom), a French blacksmith who has been doubting his faith ever since his wife committed suicide, thus damning herself in the church's eyes. As his wife's corpse is laid to rest, a knight named Godfrey (Liam Neeson) visits Balian's smithy, reveals that he is Balian's father, and offers to take him to the Holy Land. Balian is reluctant at first, but when he sees that the local priest has not only beheaded his wife's body but stolen her crucifix, he kills the man in a crime of passion. To atone for both his sin and his wife's, Balian then catches up with Godfrey to go with him to Jerusalem.
Edward Norton plays the leprous King Baldwin IV
Once there, though, Balian does not sense the divine forgiveness he had hoped for. Soon he finds himself embroiled in local politics. An uneasy truce exists between the Kurdish warrior Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) and Jerusalem's King Baldwin IV (Edward Norton), a leper whose body and face are kept hidden behind robes, gloves, and masks. Muslims and Christians may practice their faiths openly for now, but Baldwin must contend with the fanatical, warmongering Knights Templar, and Saladin knows he can exploit this internal division. Eventually these tensions escalate into a full-fledged war, with Saladin laying siege to the Holy City, and Balian, as senior military officer, leading its defense.
On one level, Kingdom of Heaven does for history what Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films did for Tolkien's novels—it turns its source material into an exciting, action-oriented spectacle, yet manages to capture something of the spirit of the original events. An early fight scene between Godfrey's men and some officers who have come to arrest Balian would be right at home in the macho B-movies of the 1980s; one musclebound warrior keeps right on fighting long after an arrow has pierced his throat and neck. In addition, the armies and trebuchets that surround Jerusalem during the final battle cannot help but bring to mind the assault on Minas Tirith in Return of the King, the finale in Jackson's trilogy. Even so, Scott finds singular moments of breathtaking, menacing beauty; late at night, a string of fires comes to light on the dark, distant horizon, and it takes a moment to register that these are firebombs heading straight for the camera.
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