Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

DustyReviews: Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong. That is your oath.
New Subscriber: I… I didn’t know there would be an oath.

Rating: R
Director: Ridley Scott
Writer: William Monahan
Stars: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, David Thewlis, Edward Norton
Release Date: May 6, 2005 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 24 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

In medieval France, Crusaders visit the village of Balian, a blacksmith haunted by his wife’s recent suicide after the death of their unborn child. Their leader introduces himself as Balian’s father, Baron Godfrey, and asks him to return with him to the Holy Land, but Balian declines. Later that night, Balian kills his half-brother, the town priest, after discovering that he ordered Balian’s wife’s body beheaded before burial. The next day, Balian joins his father’s group, hoping to gain salvation for himself and his wife in Jerusalem. They are soon confronted by soldiers sent to arrest Balian, during which many are killed, and an arrow strikes Godfrey. Reaching Messina, they have a contentious encounter with Guy de Lusignan, a prospective future king of Jerusalem who intends to break the fragile alliance between the Crusader states and Sultan Saladin with help from the brutal anti-Muslim Templar Knights. A night before the departure, Godfrey knights Balian and orders him to protect the helpless, then dies of his arrow wound.

Balian sails for the Holy Land, but his ship runs aground in a storm, leaving him the lone survivor. Balian walks toward Jerusalem, finds a horse, and fights a Muslim cavalier over the horse. Balian slays the cavalier but spares his servant, who guides him to Jerusalem. Arriving in the city, Balian frees the servant, who tells him his mercy will earn the Saracens‘ respect. Balian meets Jerusalem leaders: the leper King Baldwin IV, Tiberias the Marshal of Jerusalem, and the King’s sister Princess Sibylla, Guy’s wife and mother to a boy from an earlier marriage. Balian travels to his inherited estate at Ibelin and uses his knowledge in engineering to help the struggling residents irrigate the land. Sibylla visits him, and they become lovers.

Guy and his ally, the cruel Raynald of Châtillon, attack many Saracen caravans, provoking Saladin to march on Raynald’s castle. Balian defends the castle and the nearby villagers at the king’s request despite being outnumbered. After a fierce battle that ends with the Crusaders defeated, Balian encounters the servant he freed, learning that he is actually Saladin’s chancellor Imad ad-Din. Imad ad-Din releases Balian in repayment of his earlier mercy. Saladin and Baldwin later arrive with their armies and negotiate a truce. After punishing Raynald and Guy, a weakened Baldwin asks Balian to marry Sibylla and take control of the army, but Balian refuses. Baldwin dies and is succeeded by Sibylla’s son. As regent, Sibylla continues the peace with Saladin. Sibylla learns to her horror that her son is developing leprosy like his late uncle, tearfully poisons him while he sleeps in her arms, and hands the crown to Guy.

Guy declares war on the Saracens, attempts to assassinate Balian, who barely survives, and releases Raynald, who kills Saladin’s sister. Despite Balian’s advice to remain near Jerusalem’s water sources, Guy marches to war, and the Saracens overwhelm the exhausted Crusaders in the ensuing desert battle. Saladin captures Guy, kills Raynald, and marches on Jerusalem. Tiberias leaves for Cyprus while Balian stays to protect the people. After a devastating three-day siege, Saladin parleys with Balian, who reaffirms he will destroy Jerusalem if Saladin does not accept his terms of surrender. Saladin agrees to allow the Christians to leave safely, and then he and Balian ponder if it would be better if the city were destroyed, leaving nothing to fight over. The Christians leave Jerusalem. Balian defeats a humiliated Guy in a sword fight and spares his life. Sibylla renounces her claim as queen and returns with Balian to France.

A few years later, English knights en route to the Holy Land visit the village of Balian, now the famed defender of Jerusalem. Balian refuses the English king’s offer to join his army, stating that he is merely a blacksmith. Later, Balian passes by his wife’s grave as he rides with Sibylla towards the unknown. An epilogue notes that “nearly a thousand years later, peace in the Kingdom of Heaven still remains elusive”.

My Review:

I will be honest up front. I did not like Kingdom of Heaven very much. I know that this movie has a pretty hardcore cult following, so if you’re in that camp, prepare yourself. Ridley Scott’s movie is an ahistorical epic that largely ignores its own context in favor of interjecting its early 21st century political worldview onto a foreign setting. The problem is not that neither the Christians nor the Muslims were the good guys in the film (and neither were), but rather that neither side was particularly Christian or Muslim at all. The film’s hero Balian is an unreligious Christian who kills a priest to start the film, sets off for the Holy Land to find some type of personal redemption, then finds himself among warring Christians and Muslims who are only identifiable by wardrobes (rather than their words, actions, and worldview), and he ends up concluding that maybe everything would be better if there were not a Jerusalem at all. The only thing missing was the song. You know the song.

♫Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.♫

That 20th century morally self-deluded atheist gobbledygook might resonate more with me if the 20th century had not provided ample historical evidence that non-religious people are no less careless with human life than their religious forebears. Indeed, just going by the numbers, it might be that a belief in God (any God) and judgment for one’s sins is the primary thing which has allowed our species to reign the killing in to some degree over the millennia. It is perhaps difficult for a moral relativist story-teller to envision scenarios wherein the lack of concrete divine law might lead to the justification of unspeakable atrocities, even if 100 million dead in the 20th century shout loudly about that very thing.

To be fair to Ridley Scott and his anti-war movie, a story in that particular setting, involving both Christians and Muslims, did have a purpose. That purpose was to make the argument that if the zealots did not exist on either side, maybe everyone could just be chill and live together peacefully. That was a relatively bold stance to take in 2005, in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars that followed. It was just as unnuanced and unrealistic a message in 2005 was it was in 1185, but perhaps it was worth saying, anyway.

My biggest gripe with the film is that it never drew me in to care about Balian. I could have put all of my complaints aside if I’d ever been given a good reason to care about Balian and really take his side. His arc was too subtle to have an emotional hook. If you’re going to tell a “lone voice of reason” story, then more effort needs to put put into laying that groundwork. What about his background gave him special insight into the situation in Jerusalem that the others lacked? Where were the scenes of him persuading others to his point of view? From whom did he develop this worldview and what was that mentor-mentee relationship like? This story felt like it needed to be a political epic, not a battle one, with a lot more time spent curating a compelling debate.

I also thought the movie suffered to a great degree from its musical score. It’s not that the score was bad. Far from it, actually. However, in a battle epic, the audience is usually sold on the validity of the choice to fight – nay, the necessity to fight – by the score. That’s the thing above all that draws you in. Here though, as we are not supposed to really support the cause from one side or the other, the music does its job and never pulls you in. Not taking a side in the battle is part of the point, but it also prevents me from caring about the outcome of what is happening. The audience is supposed to care about what they’re watching.

Critiques aside, Kingdom of Heaven is a beautiful and brilliantly acted film. Orlando Bloom was well-cast as the internally divided Balian, and even though we did not get enough of him learning his knightly craft, he sold the fighting scenes extremely well. Liam Neeson as a grizzled veteran, teaching a young upstart how to fight is absolutely his bread and butter as an actor and he was fantastic. Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, and David Thewlis were all great as well. For me though, the most outstanding performance in the film was Edward Norton was King Baldwin. Despite not showing his face, he delivered tremendous gravitas, as well as both a physically strong and frail character, as the scene demanded.

The cinematography and costuming was also as good as it gets in Hollywood. I loved the look of the film, the battle sequences, and how time period realism everything conveyed. I just wish the sum of the parts had not been so much greater than the whole. I have heard that the notably longer director’s cut of this movie is quite a bit better. Perhaps many of my complaints would have been addressed with a 3 and a half hour film.

So in summary: I did not like the movie. I particularly did not like that it failed to persuade me to care about Balian, the protagonist. On the other hand, it is beautifully filmed, with great cinematography, costuming, and battle sequences. It is also tremendously well-acted, with Edward Norton giving the most standout performance, in my opinion.

Have you seen Kingdom of Heaven? If so, what did you think?