Last weekend I received the pleasure of an invitation to view an advance showing of
Kingdom of Heaven, the historical drama movie, with Orlando Bloom in the starring role. It centers in the period spanning the time between the Second and Third Crusade during the tumultuous 12th century. From 1084 until 1187, Jerusalem was ruled by a Christian king. Most of them were pretty decent, Godfrey I, who first ruled the region, and Baldwin were notable for that. Toward the end those that ran Jerusalem, Guy de Chatillon and Reynaud, were absolutely the worst.
Indeed, the kings of Jerusalem constantly clashed with the popes who ruled European Christendom during that period for precisely the reason that the Christian kings refused to convert Jews and Muslims by force. While Baldwin (played in the movie by Edward Norton) and his better predecessors strove to create a tolerant and harmonious city, the pope sent waves of new soldiers and knights, especially among the group called the Knights Templar, to provoke a new war to undo the treaty signed 14 years previously between Saladin and Baldwin, and to make Jerusalem exclusively Christian. The intention of the church leadership was to force everyone to convert to what passed for Christian faith, and to slaughter the rest, the same as what runaway renegade knights did when Jerusalem was first captured. While the new commander/king, Godfrey was a noble king, the knights got out of control and slaughtered 20,000 Muslims and Jews. The Knights Templar were a continuous thorn in the side of the Christian monarchs and their more moderate friends, many of who took up more Eastern customs to harmonize with their new culture (So much so that Eva Green, as the queen Sabella, and sister of Baldwin (dying of leprosy), dressed so much like the part of a local woman--albeit a rich and progressive one--that I first thought she was a Muslim noblewoman, which looked in the previews like a forbidden interreligious love between her and Bloom's Balian).
They sought to undo all that Baldwin attempted to do in making Jerusalem a city where all the major faiths of the city (Christian, Jew, and Muslim), would be able to worship and visit their sacred sites. They arrogantly thought that God would give only them victory, believing that wearing a cross on the front of their knightly tunics and killing Saracens would ensure their place in heaven (Ridley Scott, past Oscar winning producer-director of
Gladiator, and who produced and directed
Kingdom, has publicly stated that he highlighted those attitudes on both Christian and Muslim sides to illustrate the background and illogic of religious-based hatred.). They provoked war by violating the former treaty of Baldwin and Saladin by attacking Muslim trade caravans, raping and killing the sister of Saladin in one of them. And the provocation backfired, the Christian armies divided, with many of the knights deserting the fight (Tiberius, played by Jeremy Irons, illustrated the moderate element in the historical occurrence), and the rest were slaughtered in a key battle in the Judean desert by Saladin's armies. The city was then conquered by Saladin (played in the movie by Ghassan Massoud), after a surprisingly hard siege against Jerusalem's defenders, led by Balian, and the city did not completely pass out of Muslim control until Israel's victory over the Arabs in the Six-Day War of 1967, 780 years later.
The story centers around Balian, a humble blacksmith, tormented by his wife's loss of their child in childbirth and grief-driven suicide, his murder of the priest who mutilated her body to assure her 'damnnation' according to Roman Catholic law, and his search for salvation and meaning for him and the woman he once loved. His rise to become a true knight, and the everlasting fame as "the defender of Jerusalem," as well as his coming to grips with both his honor, his desire for the forbidden love of Queen Sabella (who was married without consent to the ruthless Guy de Chatillon), and overcoming the religious superstition of the time, is the real story that has present-day application now. There have been many other reviews of the movie, but I want to lock in to one theme, the one I think Mr. Scott thought central to
Kingdom.
That is what I see as the struggle of faith. No, not the struggle
between faiths, that is too obvious, but the struggle
of faith. It is the struggle which Scott notes that still makes Jerusalem of today a troubled city. Many reviewers I have read, including
Roger Ebert's otherwise quite complimentary one, seem to confuse Balian's criticisms of religious zealotry
for open unbelief. Such shows an ignorance of the HUGE difference between faith and religious superstition, which we see in every spiritual communion of today, from Christianity to Islam to probably Wicca, and definitely within the deadliest religion of all...atheism and the worship of the self which is so common in our world. In the end, what is the difference between Nero, Nietzsche, Stalin, Torquemada, Mao, and Osama bin Laden? It's only the object of their misguided zeal and intolerance. Rather, Balian is ably portrayed by Bloom as a man who holds the truest spirituality of all, that of one who puts the needs of people and the need to show humanity over religious dogma or outward spiritual---or political correctness.
Religious intolerance and cynical non-belief is fought in the film by both of the 'dreamer-warriors' shown in the film: Balian and Saladin. Both refuse to give in to those who think that anything is proper in God's name, Saladin versus his religious advisor and Balian (and Baldwin) versus the fanatical Templars and priests. But both also refuse to abandon faith for cyncism. Balian refuses to murder his own enemy, Guy de Chatillon, even though Guy sought Balian's own death, Saladin honors the treaty of peace with Baldwin, and Balian also holds to his Christian code of honor, honors his late knight-father's faith (Liam Neesom) and refuses to run away when Guy and Reynald commits the kingdom to disaster, rejecting the loss of faith by his mentor Tiberius (Irons). Critics will make a mistake when they assume unbelief by Balian when he refuses to believe his wife is in hell, or when he burns the bodies of dead fighters in Jerusalem to prevent plague, in violation of Catholic law, saying "God will understand. If he does not then God does not exist." He is not denying God, he is denying the stupidity of rigid religiousity. I have expressed such sentiments at various times in my own life, and I am a devout Christian. I therefore easily understood Balian's ease at mixing faith and reason, and the need for both.
Faith maintains hope, wonder, and a belief in the dignity of one's fellow man, and the boundaries necessary for the proper treatment of one's fellows and one's world. Reason eliminates ignorance and ensures balance and proportionality to faith. Balian exemplifies this tension---this necessary equilibrium. We have all seen the result of those who fail to respect that principle. Failure to maintain this balance always results in madness. Balian rose from humble origins to greatness because he understood the principle, and never forsook his honesty. And in doing so, he achieved salvation. He returned to France in honor, being forever honored in history as the great Defender of Jerusalem, with position as a knight and a baron, and with the love of his life, the by-then widowed Sabella. In that another key principle, rising out of the observance of that balance comes. The way of humanity---faith & reason--- is always harder, but it is always greater in its final reward. In that, Balian is, much more than that of most of those who pretend to the status of spiritual leadership, in community with his Lord and Savior. And Scott also shows that the majority of mankind, of whatever background, as in the scene of the incredibly stout defense of Jerusalem (I was wowed seeing all of Saladin's siege engines destroyed by the defenders) by Balian's citizen soldiers-knighted by Balian, always seem to be able to sense authentic faith and nobility when it appears. A present example is shown in the widespread love for the late Karol Vojtyla/Pope John Paul II. The world is full of pompous men of religion, for which they long have been sickened, but they crave and flock to the genuine article. Balian drew that kind of adulation, not only for inspiring Jerusalem's Christians, Jews, and Muslims to fight as one for their city and its dream of unity and peace, fighting Saladin's massive army to a standstill, but for showing the humanity not to sacrifice his people for his own ego, a selfish desire to hold the city. He surrenders on Saladin's promise of clemency, which promise he keeps.
I loved the movie. The historical background was not adequately explained to the audience, which caused my wife to fill half the movie asking me questions, but otherwise was well-written, and much more faithful to the time than many give Scott credit for. Those who derisively call this film an attack on Christianity are simply in need to come to grips that Jesus is not in need of historical whitewash. Some who operated in his name were indeed monsters. We can take comfort that the monsters of other spiritual paths have a much bloodier slate to own up to, which they one day will, when the craze of present-day political correctness will have been consigned to its own dustbin of history.
--Adios.
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