Kingdom of Heaven

[SeattleUte]

As an admirer of Gladiator I had to see the Ridley Scott creation Kingdom of Heaven. If you love spectacular medieval battle scenes and depictions of siege warfare, as I do, that alone makes this movie worthwhile (my favorite part of Lord of the Rings was Helm's Deep). The cinematography and music is sweeping and gorgeous. There's nothing to take your breath away like mounted combat lines of Saracens and Christians bearing banners and engaged in full scale assault against one another across a desert plain to lovely strains of orchestra. But sad to say the plot and characterizations lack credibility and depth; I'd say the drama is comparable to Star Wars, with the exception of King Baldwin IV, as I note below.

The bad Christians were incredibly bad, in an incredibly stupid way. They killed nice Muslims ("Saracens") for sport, and raided their caravans, even though when the movie opened the Christians had occupied Judea for a century, and the Arabs outnumbered them 100x and therefore could take it back at a whim, but were satisfied with peaceful co-existence. These bad Christians apparently also didn't know that water is scarce in the desert, even though they and their fathers and grandfathers had spent their entire lives in Judea.

I find this repeatedly in historical fiction including movies depicting the Middle Ages--powerful Christians behaving really badly in incredibly stupid ways. Can this be accurate given the Christians' ultimate spectacular political and military successes in the Middle Ages?

On the other hand, the good Christians didn't seem to be Christians at all, certainly not medieval Christians. They were 21st century Europeans. (This is also a common characteristic of fiction depicting the era. Certainly there must be a more nuanced portrayal to be had.) The good Christians' objective was not a Christian Palestine but an ecumenical and peaceful Palestine. The protagonist and King Baldwin's sister had sex, and while throughout the movie every now and then they spouted some standard medieval Christian pieties and fears of damnation, they were (like 21st century Europeans) seemingly untroubled by the fact that she was married, apparently because her husband was one of the worst of the bad Christians. The protagonist was as unremarkable as the ones in the most recently produced Star Wars episodes. This was a lot like Star Wars set in the Middle Ages.

Before watching the movie I read some good things about the characterization of the leper king of Jerusalem, the good Christian Baldwin IV, and sure enough the scenes with him in them were invariably powerful. He passes as an extraordinarily enlightened medieval king, enlightened perhaps by his suffering. That part of the drama worked, as an intriguing back-story, but there was not near enough of King Baldwin. Otherwise the good Christians just lacked credibility, as did the bad Christians for being so thoroughly bad and stupid.

The Muslims (the Saracens) were almost invariably good in a noble savage sort of way. Yes they were savage, but their savagery seemed generally to be meted out in proportion to the bad Christians' chicanery. Otherwise, they spared women and children, preferred peace, and kept their word.

Grade: B-

BTW, Munich was a B.