"That's a nice-a donut."
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
With Kingdom of Heaven director Ridley Scott attempted to duplicate the success of his blockbuster smash and Best Picture winner of 2000, Gladiator. While the latter was a big-budget epic about a man who is ousted from the top and seeks revenge in the bloodbath of ancient Roman times, this big-budget tale is about a man who rises up to the top and tries to find his faith in the Holy Land during the bloody Crusades of the Middle Ages.
It is the year 1184, and war has been raging on for nearly a hundred years between Christians and Muslims. One day, a modest blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom) finds himself thrust right into the middle of the conflict as a strange man (Liam Neeson) who claims to be his father offers him the opportunity to seek a new life by joining the conflict along side him. The man is a Baron, and a highly regarded Knight underneath the King of Jerusalem (who is a leper, and who you'll be astonished to know is Edward Norton behind the mask). Soon enough Balian is in the holy city, surrounded by fighting. It is not just among the people of different faiths, but also in-fighting; as people like Guy de Lusignan (Martin Csokas), next in line to be king, are bent on expanding the war, whereas the king and other people hope for peace.
It is refreshing that the movie attempts to play it even-handedly with the two religions. The leader of the Muslims, Saladin (Ghassin Massoud) is portrayed as an honest, fair man who has the same goals as Balian and the king. These men, for the most part, are religious idealists where ultimately one's actual religion doesn't matter, but rather his or her thoughts and actions. One man laments that he first thought they were fighting for God, but eventually realized that they were fighting for wealth and land - something that most wars can be boiled down to. There are plenty of subtle remarks about the current climate in the Middle East, especially about extremists on both sides of the fight. For instance, one man at a pilgrim camp shouts "to kill an infidel is not murder; it is the path to heaven!"
As is often the case with Scott's films (see: Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, for example), characterization is very weak and shallow. The movie is filled with lofty, but empty, proclamations and conversations like: "What will become of us?" "The world will decide!" Though I think that in Kingdom he manages to portray the atmosphere more strongly, but in each of these cases, the general plot is rather dull. Why even bother with the rather lackluster romance between Balian and Sibylla, the king's daughter? The visuals clearly take precedence over the story. But the eye candy is pretty good; the action and fight scenes are first-rate.
In those scenes are some extreme acts of machismo and bravado - like a man with an arrow straight through his neck who gets up and continues fighting, not to finally be taken down until he is hit with two more arrows in his chest. In general though it isn't nearly as gruesome or bloody as some other films from around that period of time, including Braveheart.
As with Maximus in Gladiator, Balian chooses his fate rather than just accept the hand that he was dealt. And, for better or worse, he joined the fight for religious freedom. A fight that is still ongoing, as onscreen script prior to the closing credits noted "nearly a thousand years later, peace in the kingdom of heaven remains elusive." It's not as compelling as it should have been, nor as relevant as it tries to be, but Kingdom surpasses Scott's other recent efforts.
The Verdict: B-.
Michael Bentley 10:18 AM
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