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Movie Night: Kingdom of Heaven
Movie night this time was with Kingdom of Heaven (2005), dealing with the fall of the first Christian kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187 and the plucky bastard (no, really) who led the defense of Jerusalem against the mighty armies of Saladin. My boyfriend swore up and down that the director's cut was not nearly the confusing mess the theatrical cut was said to be, and since he had gone through all the trouble of finding the version I decided to give it a shot.
Liked: Pretty, pretty pictures
One good thing about the director's cut being three hours long is that there is that much more time to air the breathtaking scenery. I really liked the widescreen shots of the natural surroundings, the city, and the battles. The first glimpses of Jerusalem were really thrilling, and I loved all the different costumes and weapons that showed off the multicultural nature of the setting. I could have spent the three hours just drooling over the camerawork, and come to think of it I sort of did.
Oooh, biiiig...
Disliked: Should have made it a miniseries already
Unfortunately, three hours in theater is still three hours in theater and it was about an hour too long for my tastes. I heard that the theatrical release cut out most of the first hour, and I can see how the movie would have made very little sense without the buildup. But the full director's cut dragged too much in the first half, and by midnight I was so bored and tired I asked to leave off and continue in the morning (making this another movie night-and-day).
Rather than cutting willy-nilly with incoherent results, or dumping the whole thing on the audience and boring them, the whole script should have been rewritten for a much tighter pace suitable for a theatrical release. Or just give it the full treatment and make it a deluxe miniseries or something. Anything but this in-between treatment, too long for theaters and too short to give leisurely buildup.
Liked: Great acting
Leaving aside Orlando Bloom's long stares and single-toned voice in his desperate attempts to look manly and blacksmith-y (okay, he wasn't completely awful, but I like to tease), the movie had some memorable performances I really enjoyed. While Kingdom of Heaven never entirely lived up to its multicultural ideals and remained primarily a story about Europeans, the Islam side of the setting was somewhat balanced out by Syrian icon Ghassan Massoud's portrayal of Saladin in his gravitas and humanity. His line about Jerusalem being both nothing and everything was suitably epic and resounds to this day.
Hello, I am a brilliant statesman at the head of a badass army that will handily crush you.
The other main monarch in the movie, the leprous king Baldwin IV through the performance of Edward Norton, was a fitting counterpart to Saladin, dramatically speaking. (Historically? No real contest.) I heard Norton was originally offered the role of Guy de Lusignan, which you would think is more in keeping with his filmography. But instead he went for the role where all anyone would ever see of him were his eyes through a mask. And boy did he kill it, quite aside from the fact that the character dropped dead on screen. His Baldwin IV had quiet strength that gave way to just one scene of explosive emotion that displayed the intensity behind his usual gentleness. I'm just going to go ahead and imagine he was The Incredible Hulk all along behind that mask.
Disliked: Hollywood preachiness
Okay, I get that the court of Jerusalem, at least in the movie, had high ideals about multiculturalism and tolerance and making the world a better place and such. The multicultural aspect was kind of undermined by the fact that the non-Christian characters were backdrops or adversaries and never actual characters the audience could get to care about, but it's cool. Every culture tells its own story, and if I found it a bit patronizing and offensive that a bunch of white Christians who had profited handsomely from their ancestors' horrific war crimes were setting themselves up as grand protectors of Muslims, Jews, and others, heck, what's a little self-delusion between friends. At least these were well-intentioned people who were sort of trying to make up for past wrongs.
What's not so great from a cinematic point of view was how much they loved to talk about it. The eyeroll-inducing lines about making the world a better place grated on the nerves after a while. Seriously, this is a movie, not a Chick Tract. Couldn't the script have let the characters shut up about how great they were and allowed these fine actors to actually, you know, act in ways that would inspire the moviegoing audience? How about having some meaningful conflicts about religion, past crimes, friendship, imperialism and so on? Oh yeah, that might actually lead to getting some Muslim and Jewish perspectives on the Crusades, and we all know that's too uncomfortable to contemplate. Instead we'll blow the first 30 minutes on a pretty blacksmith angsting about things that have no bearing whatsoever on the main action of the movie. Nailed it!
Liked: Political complexity
In one important way, I think, Kingdom of Heaven overcame the reflexive good/evil divide for some meaningful conflict. That was the the way stakes were set in the defense Jerusalem, that the struggle was to win favorable terms for the civilians of Jerusalem and not to win a glorious victory over infidels. I thought this showed a surprisingly nuanced understanding of politics, that a lot of international strife (including war, politics by other means blah blah blah) isn't so much to defeat the other side as to give your moderate counterpart excuses against his more extremist constituencies.
In movie terms, the moderate Balian was fighting back so hard and racking up the losses so his moderate counterpart Saladin could tell his more bloodthirsty subordinates: (put on Jersey accent here) "Hey fellas! I'd love to take Jerusalem in a glorious bloodbath of vengeance, but we're just losin' good Muslim warriors draggin' this on. How about we offer these crazy Christians their lives and send them on their way so they'll get out of our hair and we can put the city back in order, huh? Yeah?" Balian and Saladin both understood this reality and each other, and so made the sacrifices of their men count by saving the lives of the civilians in Jerusalem.
This struggle between moderates and hardliners, the font of all meaningful political conflict, is seen in the earlier parts of the movie as well. I thought the strife between Baldwin IV's court, depicted as moderates, and the Templars, depicted as extremists, was some of the best parts of the script and wished it had a clearer focus in the story. (Cutting out the tacked-on adultery and the pointless dead wife would have helped.) To a lesser extent Saladin and the handsome young guy in the black hat played out the same conflict, showing the universality of the struggle sane people go through to hold back the forces of violence and disorder.
Disliked: Manages to be more sexist than twelfth century A.D.
I am no expert in the history of this period, so I can't give a full account of any historical inaccuracies that may be in the script. It does seem from the cursory internet reading we did that Baldwin IV was a somewhat more belligerent monarch than the movie's idealistic portrayal suggests, invading Egypt for tribute and so on, and that Raynald of Chatillon wasn't quite the monstrous fanatic he was depicted to be. The historical Raynald seemed to act as his self-interest dictated, earning Baldwin's ire for being too conciliatory toward Saladin at times and at others for harassing caravans as seen in the movie. And let's not even go into Balian's background.
And you know what? That's just fine in my book. Anyone with access to Wikipedia can find out what the real history was, and intelligent people can keep a fictional movie and actual history apart. The requirements of writing a cinematic script can call for the messiness of history to be pruned back, and details that a modern audience can't stomach are ignored or modified. I would never call for any historical fiction, particularly when bound for mass consumption, to emulate history slavishly and get bogged down in all the details. Such nit-picking a great way to kill movies, not to mention Ars Magica games.
But I do take issue when a twenty-first-century movie script goes out of its way to be more reactionary than events from a thousand years ago. I am specifically talking about Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem, and the way the writers took a shrewd ruling queen in her own right and turned her into a basket case defined solely by her relationship to men.
At least she was a gorgeous basket case.
First, let's look at her marriage. Sibylla/Guy remains one of the great unappreciated historical ships, because every single fictional depiction seems to leave them stewing in a miserable marriage while Sibylla flits off in pursuit of the first handsome face to come along. Oh yeah, that's a third of the plot of Kingdom of Heaven. The thing is, whether for political gain or personal reasons, the marriage between Sibylla and Guy was a strong one that lasted through political pressure, war, calamity, and dispossession, right until her death in 1190 three years after the fall of Jerusalem. Sibylla kept her husband through her court's pressure to ditch the Guy, and used an elegant bit of trickery to re-choose him as husband at her coronation. She had daughters with him, campaigned with him (and I'm not talking roleplaying games), and remained his steadfast political and personal partner to the end.
The script took this historical Sibylla, who freely chose her partner despite outside pressure, and turned her into a discontent housewife who threw herself at a total stranger. Really? Are we still mistaking adultery for women's liberation these days? I'm not saying that adulterers should be stoned or whatever. Marriages can and do end, and should be allowed to come to a natural conclusion without legal or social stigma. But adultery is still a dishonest, messy affair (pun intended), and I can't imagine what the writers thought they were adding to the character of Sybilla by mashing a totally unnecessary affair into the script.
Second, let's look at her politics. Sibylla ruled Jerusalem for one year from 1186 when her son died until 1187 when Saladin took the city. Her son's death, while obviously not helpful to the stability of the kingdom, was not the all-consuming apocalyptic event it was portrayed as in the movie, nor was Sibylla helpless; she ruled in her own right and future historians acknowledge that her husband Guy's power was strictly derived from her. She kept a balance between the opposing factions of the court, but it wasn't like she or anyone could have stopped Saladin's rise. She escaped Jerusalem and rejoined Guy, and together they laid siege to Acre trying to take it back before she died of an epidemic. That's par the course for a siege, whose outcome often hangs on whether the besiegers will drop of disease faster than the defenders starve.
In the movie, Sibylla seems to have no power base of her own and needs to rely on one man or the other (Guy or Balian), with Balian's rebuff meaning she is totally at Guy's mercy. Which seems odd for a woman who has more lineage and power than the two of them combined. The male-centrism is even clearer when she is portrayed as being unable to hold the city once her son dies, which again is odd because her son's claim came through her as Baldwin IV's sister. She is portrayed as someone driven entirely by concern for her son and her personal life, aware of the larger implications of her actions but uncaring because, well, she's such an emotional and delicate creature and all. And I can't be the only one who finds the ending, where she gives up all the rest of her political power to follow Balian to France, highly problematic. I couldn't believe the words had come out of a twenty-first century script when Balian gave her the ultimatum to give up on being queen if she wanted him. I rolled my eyes when she actually did so.
Like I said, historical accuracy isn't the end-all be-all of historical films. But when the writers distort the heck out of history for the sole purpose of making it even more reactionary and sexist, that's problematic and shows either an agenda or obliviousness. Looking at the contrasts between the historical Sybilla and the Kingdom of Heaven Sybilla, I can't help but wonder: How far have we really come?
In sum: Ehh.
In sum, Kingdom of Heaven had good camerawork and acting held back by a script that was several drafts and a ton of judicious editing away from being something great. The political situation was intriguing, the overt sexism less so. It had good parts and bad, but I'll always remember the pretty pictures.
Liked: Pretty, pretty pictures
One good thing about the director's cut being three hours long is that there is that much more time to air the breathtaking scenery. I really liked the widescreen shots of the natural surroundings, the city, and the battles. The first glimpses of Jerusalem were really thrilling, and I loved all the different costumes and weapons that showed off the multicultural nature of the setting. I could have spent the three hours just drooling over the camerawork, and come to think of it I sort of did.
Oooh, biiiig...
Disliked: Should have made it a miniseries already
Unfortunately, three hours in theater is still three hours in theater and it was about an hour too long for my tastes. I heard that the theatrical release cut out most of the first hour, and I can see how the movie would have made very little sense without the buildup. But the full director's cut dragged too much in the first half, and by midnight I was so bored and tired I asked to leave off and continue in the morning (making this another movie night-and-day).
Rather than cutting willy-nilly with incoherent results, or dumping the whole thing on the audience and boring them, the whole script should have been rewritten for a much tighter pace suitable for a theatrical release. Or just give it the full treatment and make it a deluxe miniseries or something. Anything but this in-between treatment, too long for theaters and too short to give leisurely buildup.
Liked: Great acting
Leaving aside Orlando Bloom's long stares and single-toned voice in his desperate attempts to look manly and blacksmith-y (okay, he wasn't completely awful, but I like to tease), the movie had some memorable performances I really enjoyed. While Kingdom of Heaven never entirely lived up to its multicultural ideals and remained primarily a story about Europeans, the Islam side of the setting was somewhat balanced out by Syrian icon Ghassan Massoud's portrayal of Saladin in his gravitas and humanity. His line about Jerusalem being both nothing and everything was suitably epic and resounds to this day.
Hello, I am a brilliant statesman at the head of a badass army that will handily crush you.
The other main monarch in the movie, the leprous king Baldwin IV through the performance of Edward Norton, was a fitting counterpart to Saladin, dramatically speaking. (Historically? No real contest.) I heard Norton was originally offered the role of Guy de Lusignan, which you would think is more in keeping with his filmography. But instead he went for the role where all anyone would ever see of him were his eyes through a mask. And boy did he kill it, quite aside from the fact that the character dropped dead on screen. His Baldwin IV had quiet strength that gave way to just one scene of explosive emotion that displayed the intensity behind his usual gentleness. I'm just going to go ahead and imagine he was The Incredible Hulk all along behind that mask.
Disliked: Hollywood preachiness
Okay, I get that the court of Jerusalem, at least in the movie, had high ideals about multiculturalism and tolerance and making the world a better place and such. The multicultural aspect was kind of undermined by the fact that the non-Christian characters were backdrops or adversaries and never actual characters the audience could get to care about, but it's cool. Every culture tells its own story, and if I found it a bit patronizing and offensive that a bunch of white Christians who had profited handsomely from their ancestors' horrific war crimes were setting themselves up as grand protectors of Muslims, Jews, and others, heck, what's a little self-delusion between friends. At least these were well-intentioned people who were sort of trying to make up for past wrongs.
What's not so great from a cinematic point of view was how much they loved to talk about it. The eyeroll-inducing lines about making the world a better place grated on the nerves after a while. Seriously, this is a movie, not a Chick Tract. Couldn't the script have let the characters shut up about how great they were and allowed these fine actors to actually, you know, act in ways that would inspire the moviegoing audience? How about having some meaningful conflicts about religion, past crimes, friendship, imperialism and so on? Oh yeah, that might actually lead to getting some Muslim and Jewish perspectives on the Crusades, and we all know that's too uncomfortable to contemplate. Instead we'll blow the first 30 minutes on a pretty blacksmith angsting about things that have no bearing whatsoever on the main action of the movie. Nailed it!
Liked: Political complexity
In one important way, I think, Kingdom of Heaven overcame the reflexive good/evil divide for some meaningful conflict. That was the the way stakes were set in the defense Jerusalem, that the struggle was to win favorable terms for the civilians of Jerusalem and not to win a glorious victory over infidels. I thought this showed a surprisingly nuanced understanding of politics, that a lot of international strife (including war, politics by other means blah blah blah) isn't so much to defeat the other side as to give your moderate counterpart excuses against his more extremist constituencies.
In movie terms, the moderate Balian was fighting back so hard and racking up the losses so his moderate counterpart Saladin could tell his more bloodthirsty subordinates: (put on Jersey accent here) "Hey fellas! I'd love to take Jerusalem in a glorious bloodbath of vengeance, but we're just losin' good Muslim warriors draggin' this on. How about we offer these crazy Christians their lives and send them on their way so they'll get out of our hair and we can put the city back in order, huh? Yeah?" Balian and Saladin both understood this reality and each other, and so made the sacrifices of their men count by saving the lives of the civilians in Jerusalem.
This struggle between moderates and hardliners, the font of all meaningful political conflict, is seen in the earlier parts of the movie as well. I thought the strife between Baldwin IV's court, depicted as moderates, and the Templars, depicted as extremists, was some of the best parts of the script and wished it had a clearer focus in the story. (Cutting out the tacked-on adultery and the pointless dead wife would have helped.) To a lesser extent Saladin and the handsome young guy in the black hat played out the same conflict, showing the universality of the struggle sane people go through to hold back the forces of violence and disorder.
Disliked: Manages to be more sexist than twelfth century A.D.
I am no expert in the history of this period, so I can't give a full account of any historical inaccuracies that may be in the script. It does seem from the cursory internet reading we did that Baldwin IV was a somewhat more belligerent monarch than the movie's idealistic portrayal suggests, invading Egypt for tribute and so on, and that Raynald of Chatillon wasn't quite the monstrous fanatic he was depicted to be. The historical Raynald seemed to act as his self-interest dictated, earning Baldwin's ire for being too conciliatory toward Saladin at times and at others for harassing caravans as seen in the movie. And let's not even go into Balian's background.
And you know what? That's just fine in my book. Anyone with access to Wikipedia can find out what the real history was, and intelligent people can keep a fictional movie and actual history apart. The requirements of writing a cinematic script can call for the messiness of history to be pruned back, and details that a modern audience can't stomach are ignored or modified. I would never call for any historical fiction, particularly when bound for mass consumption, to emulate history slavishly and get bogged down in all the details. Such nit-picking a great way to kill movies, not to mention Ars Magica games.
But I do take issue when a twenty-first-century movie script goes out of its way to be more reactionary than events from a thousand years ago. I am specifically talking about Sibylla, queen of Jerusalem, and the way the writers took a shrewd ruling queen in her own right and turned her into a basket case defined solely by her relationship to men.
At least she was a gorgeous basket case.
First, let's look at her marriage. Sibylla/Guy remains one of the great unappreciated historical ships, because every single fictional depiction seems to leave them stewing in a miserable marriage while Sibylla flits off in pursuit of the first handsome face to come along. Oh yeah, that's a third of the plot of Kingdom of Heaven. The thing is, whether for political gain or personal reasons, the marriage between Sibylla and Guy was a strong one that lasted through political pressure, war, calamity, and dispossession, right until her death in 1190 three years after the fall of Jerusalem. Sibylla kept her husband through her court's pressure to ditch the Guy, and used an elegant bit of trickery to re-choose him as husband at her coronation. She had daughters with him, campaigned with him (and I'm not talking roleplaying games), and remained his steadfast political and personal partner to the end.
The script took this historical Sibylla, who freely chose her partner despite outside pressure, and turned her into a discontent housewife who threw herself at a total stranger. Really? Are we still mistaking adultery for women's liberation these days? I'm not saying that adulterers should be stoned or whatever. Marriages can and do end, and should be allowed to come to a natural conclusion without legal or social stigma. But adultery is still a dishonest, messy affair (pun intended), and I can't imagine what the writers thought they were adding to the character of Sybilla by mashing a totally unnecessary affair into the script.
Second, let's look at her politics. Sibylla ruled Jerusalem for one year from 1186 when her son died until 1187 when Saladin took the city. Her son's death, while obviously not helpful to the stability of the kingdom, was not the all-consuming apocalyptic event it was portrayed as in the movie, nor was Sibylla helpless; she ruled in her own right and future historians acknowledge that her husband Guy's power was strictly derived from her. She kept a balance between the opposing factions of the court, but it wasn't like she or anyone could have stopped Saladin's rise. She escaped Jerusalem and rejoined Guy, and together they laid siege to Acre trying to take it back before she died of an epidemic. That's par the course for a siege, whose outcome often hangs on whether the besiegers will drop of disease faster than the defenders starve.
In the movie, Sibylla seems to have no power base of her own and needs to rely on one man or the other (Guy or Balian), with Balian's rebuff meaning she is totally at Guy's mercy. Which seems odd for a woman who has more lineage and power than the two of them combined. The male-centrism is even clearer when she is portrayed as being unable to hold the city once her son dies, which again is odd because her son's claim came through her as Baldwin IV's sister. She is portrayed as someone driven entirely by concern for her son and her personal life, aware of the larger implications of her actions but uncaring because, well, she's such an emotional and delicate creature and all. And I can't be the only one who finds the ending, where she gives up all the rest of her political power to follow Balian to France, highly problematic. I couldn't believe the words had come out of a twenty-first century script when Balian gave her the ultimatum to give up on being queen if she wanted him. I rolled my eyes when she actually did so.
Like I said, historical accuracy isn't the end-all be-all of historical films. But when the writers distort the heck out of history for the sole purpose of making it even more reactionary and sexist, that's problematic and shows either an agenda or obliviousness. Looking at the contrasts between the historical Sybilla and the Kingdom of Heaven Sybilla, I can't help but wonder: How far have we really come?
In sum: Ehh.
In sum, Kingdom of Heaven had good camerawork and acting held back by a script that was several drafts and a ton of judicious editing away from being something great. The political situation was intriguing, the overt sexism less so. It had good parts and bad, but I'll always remember the pretty pictures.