With America’s eyes turning toward the battle for Rifqa Bary in Florida, it seemed fitting to pull this one out of the vault. Americans are famously clueless about history, but especially so when it comes to the history of Islam and Christianity. When I was in Bar Exam preparation, the lecturer, who was your typical American WASP, aparently felt the need to vent concerning the Crusades. He said the kings and knights went off to “teach Christianity to the heathens†in the Middle East, and how they completely destroyed the “Islamic Culture†there “that had existed for thousands of years.†He then went back to legal matters, but many listening had no doubt been entrenched more deeply in very popular and very dangerous misconceptions. Circumstances prevented me from addressing him directly, but I would have liked to point out that, at the time of the Crusades, “Islamic culture†had existed for about 400 years (Christianity, for the record, had been around for about 1000), that the Crusades had nothing to do with converting anyone or teaching anyone anything, but were about reclaiming territory and securing safe pilgrimages for the already faithful, and that they had hardly been unprovoked.
Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005) is one of many films about the Crusades. It does succumb to many of the same misconceptions of past films, but represents an improvement. One review commented that the Muslims in the film were put in a surprisingly positive light. The surprise for me was that the Christians were not portrayed as completely barbaric, as tends to be the habit of Hollywood. For instance, the Kevin Coster version of Robin Hood (1992) introduced a new character in Hazeem, a Muslim who follows Robin to England from Jerusalem (Morgan Freeman). Through Hazeem, Muslims get undeserved credit for all kinds of advances in science, including gunpowder, which came from ancient China, telescopes, which were invented in Denmark in the 17th Century, and Cesarean section. Hazeem tends to be juxtaposed against Friar Tuck, a drunken, bumbling (albeit lovable) figure of Christianity. Worst of all, at one point, Robin Makes a speech, during which he declares “One man, fighting for his home, is more powerful than 10 hired soldiers!†He then looks over at Hazeem and says “The Crusades taught me that.â€
And so it goes. Throughout history, from the class room to the silver screen, Christianity is portrayed as having spread out violently from Europe, destroying the peaceful, environmentally sound cultures in its path. Will the real story ever be told?
Balian (Bloom) at the Battle of Kerak, courtessy of Wikipedia.
Kingdom of Heaven is a definite improvement. Most of the characters we get to know are on the Christian side. Most of them are admirable. The biggest surprise was that the movie portrayed Muslims, Christians and Jews as living peacefully side by side for much of the story. One knight tells the lead, Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom) that his father, Grodfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson) kept Jerusalem as a place of prayer for all faiths, just as the Muslims did before them. (At least now both sides are equally misrepresented.) The villains of the story are Guy de Lusigan (Marton Csokas) and Reynald (Brendan Gleeson), two French knights who want to provoke a war with Syria. (Those who care to check out the DVD extras will notice the real Guy, at least, wasn’t so bad) They succeed about two thirds of the way through, which leads up to the climactic battle (which, I might add, is a great piece of film-making). We don’t see enough scenes on the Muslim side to really like or dislike them. We do see a brief shot of Saladin crying over the bodies of men slain in battle. We see a lot of shots of both sides shouting “God wills it!†as they move into battle.
In the book “Unveiling Islam,†Ergun Caner, a former Muslim, comments that this cry (Dues Volt! in Latin) was only adopted in Europe after centuries of raids and colonization by the Arabs. Other features of Islam seem to have rubbed off on Christians about this time. For instance, the teaching in Islam that one who dies in jihad automatically goes to paradise (Hadith 4:73, 9:93:555) seems to have been adopted by Pope Leo IV, when he promised forgiveness of sins to any who fought the Muslims.
Saladin attacks Jerusalem in a great battle scene.
The heroes of Kingdom tend to be those who acknowledge God’s authority but insist on using cool-headed reason to end conflicts. There is a priest in Christian Jerusalem who comments “thanks to religion, I’ve seen the lunacy of madmen in every denomination be called the will of God. The kingdom God desires is here (pokes Balian in the head) and here (pokes him in the heart).†This evenhanded film is probably characteristic of the post 9/11 era where Americans want to believe all religions are the same. Today, the media can’t seem to fathom that Muslim parents, who’ve cared for their daughter for 17 years, might kill her for apostacy. As she repeatedly told an interviewer, “you guys don’t understand!”
There are a number of battles in history that I have often wished someone would make a movie out of – battles that represent some of Christian Europe’s victories over the Jihad. For instance, the Battle of Tours (A.D. 732), where the French stopped a Muslim army that had pillaged its way across northern Africa and Spain, thus saving western civilization. Or the naval Battle of Lepanto (1571) that broke the Turks’ stranglehold on the Mediterranean and liberated thousands of slaves. Or the valiant defense of Constantinople, which resisted the Ottoman empire (which terrorized the world for about 500 years) for centuries. And then, of course, there were a series of battles late in WWI that marked the final destruction of the Ottomans and the liberation of the Serbs (who are now vilified as oppressors of Muslims). Today, we’re watching the story of a young potential martyr unfold from our livingrooms.
On one hand it seems like a pipe dream to hope that these stories will ever get the remembrance and celebration they deserve in the present climate. Americans can’t seem to fathom a time when western culture was in danger of being overrun.  Still, Kingdom of Heaven might be a step in the right direction. Maybe the next Ridley Scott will read this column. Time will tell.
[Rating:5/5]
Aside from the brilliant acting, spectacular setpieces, and sweeping epic scale of HBO’s John Adams, it’s the teeth that stand out more than anything. To wit: as people age, so do their teeth, and in days long gone when toothpaste and mouthwash were as common as combustion engines and power tools, the older one got, the worse his teeth looked. But in too many historical movies, be they epics or simple homespun character tales, nary a yellowed bit of enamel is to be found. Be it Braveheart, A Knight’s Tale, The Passion of the Christ, or even post-apocalyptic movies like Terminator Salvation and Waterworld, nothing destroys the carefully crafted immersive quality of a film like gleaming pearly whites.
Spiderman 3 is everything Spiderman 2 should have been: fast-paced, hard-hitting, and dazzling. While Spiderman 2 was a testament to just how little you can do with plot and philosophy, Spiderman 3 stands as a shining example of just how much can be accomplished with mindless entertainment.
I lived in Minnesota for five years (ten if you count the first five years of my life too, which I do, but not when considering pop culture awareness) and grew to develop a fondness for Minnesota culture: their love for the outdoors, their friendliness, their practicality, and their sense of Norwegian history. However, for whatever reason, I never listened to a full episode of Garrison Keillor’s weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Through the snippets I have heard over the years, it seems to be a variety show centered on Minnesota culture, with frequent references to a fictional Lake Woebegon and heaping with nostalgia for a time when people actually sat in their living rooms and listened to radio shows like this one.
And all these lessons are well and good. But as a movie, as a piece of celluloid entertainment, it just doesn’t work. Watching people sing songs for an hour and a half, with very little actual plot holding it all together (Kevin Kline’s bumbling inspector, Guy Noir, supposedly sent to investigate the corporate deal that is bringing an end to the show, provides the barest of narrative threads for us to follow) is a tough thing to do. Several times I turned to my wife with a puzzled look on my face and said “This is one weird movie.”
John McTiernan is a veteran of action movie directing, and he puts his chops to good use here, even though much of the action takes place in confined spaces aboard submarines. Having cut his teeth on the excellent Predator (one of MJV’s favorite movies of all time) and defined an entire hero archetype with Jon McLane in the original Die Hard, he once again shows his talent for creating scenes that ratchet up suspense and tension, though this time he does it through characters and dialog alone: a key scene in which Captain Ramius, played to the hilt by the outstanding Sir Sean Connery, orders his men to continue down a deep ocean trench even though all their sea charts point to imminent doom if they don’t turn aside is just as powerful as any 
Jack Ryan, the longstanding Tom Clancy hero played here by Aled Baldwin, is the only one who knows what Ramius is really up to. Here again Red October avoids cliché, and instead of having the entire movie come down to a matter of one powerful commander refusing to believe Ryan (as is the case in so many movies like this), his concerns are mostly heeded throughout the movie, and moments of tension are scattered throughout instead of having everything lead up to one moment at the end, which the audience would surely know the outcome of anyway.
Not that facts aren’t presented here–plenty of them, to be sure, make up vital portions of the movie. There are interviews throughout the movie with several individuals who worked at Enron as well as Bethany McLean, the reporter who broke the story of Enron’s scandals in 2001 (as well as co-author of the book on which this movie is based), corporate whistleblower Sherron Watkins, and even Gray Davis, the former governor of California. Snippets of congressional hearings, particularly those involving Jeff Skilling, the president of Enron, are revealing and sometimes tough to sit through, as we watch him dance around the truth and even outright lie to his inquisitors about what happened at Enron and the key role he played in the downfall of the company.
