A Pilgrim’s Digression

Over the past two nights, I have been entertaining myself with the movie Kingdom of Heaven. I can’t speak to the historical accuracy of the film, not yet having watched the documentaries that accompany the DVD, but it’s an entertaining though not particularly deep film along the lines of Braveheart, with some bloody battle scenes reminiscent of that film.

The film also owes much to Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers, not the least of which is Orlando Bloom, who stars in the film as Balian, the defender of Jerusalem. One suspects Orlando would not have gotten the part if he hadn’t first played a certain elf in a blockbuster epic of a couple years ago. The final battle scene is where Peter Jackson’s influence really appears, however, with Saladin’s army using ballista and siege towers in epic scenes reminiscent of both the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers and in the Battle of Minas Tirith in The Return of the King.

In some ways, Kingdom of Heaven may in fact be an almost pacifist answer to Jackon’s belligerence. In the Lord of the Rings, largely because Jackson is hog-tied to Tolkien’s story and his world view, good and evil are portrayed in stark terms that do not allow the viewer to deviate from the way of thinking that says the bad guys wear black and the good guys wear white, or maybe green tights and soft, brown jerkins.

In Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott goes beyond a moralistic theme in an attempt to portray a more complex world in which both Christians and Muslims are a mixture of bad and good. To highlight the contrast between these similar yet vastly different films even more, Balian surrenders Jerusalem in exchange for the lives of its citizens, and this is portrayed as a victory in Scott’s film. One could hardly imagine Aragorn giving up Minas Tirith in exchange for quarter from Sauron.

Ultimately, despite a good attempt at what Dick Cheney scorned as “nuance,” Scott’s point is a bit muddled. Is he saying that if Americans surrender to Muslim extremists, they can expect decent treatment and safe escort back to Europe? Or is he saying that the idealism that draws men into battle is ultimately a vanity which must be dispensed with? I rather think the latter. Balian surrenders Jerusalem because he considers his responsibility to protect “the people” to be greater than any defense of a few stones piled together and called “the Kingdom of Heaven.”

It’s an interesting point of view for a man supposedly living in 1099 A.D. I wouldn’t expect populism of that sort in a leader before, say, 1960. When Balian knights every man of Jerusalem prior to Saladin’s assault, Scott’s naive attempt at imposing French Revolution-era philosophy on eleventh century crusaders goes a bit too far. Yet still I found myself a bit choked up watching that scene, just as I can still feel a lump in my throat during some scenes in Braveheart (or The Lord of the Rings for that matter). It’s amazing how the sight of men dying for no discernible reason can elicit such a visceral response in an otherwise thinking person.

One wonders if the spirits of the men who died defending Jerusalem weren’t made a bit restless when Balian surrendered a day or two later.

Despite its shortcomings, in terms of a coherent world view that helps modern people gain perspective on our current struggle with Islam, Kingdom of Heaven is a decent film with enough weight to make it worth a viewing, or maybe even two.

I watched this film hoping for some overarching message to take away from it about religious conflict. Anyone who doubts that the present war is a religious war is living in a dream world. If the Muslims we are fighting believe they are fighting a war for their God, then it matters little that our god is Democracy. I suspect the only message to take away from the film is that God resides elsewhere, and when we most think we are fighting for Him or for His cause, we are probably mostly deluded.

There is a scene in which Balian dismisses the argument that he is defending a holy city. He points out that in Jerusalem, the Christians built their temple on top of a Roman temple which the Romans built atop a Jewish temple, and soon when the Muslims take the city, they will build their temple there, too.

The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to all people, Balian summarizes, not too satisfactorily. What he has discovered is the rather trite point that the similarities of belief ought to outweigh any frightening differences. Nonetheless, this realization does not stop him from sacrificing many lives in order to force Saladin to a settlement. The ending is further complicated in that in the last scene, we see Balian back home in France. King Richard the Lionhearted comes calling for him, presumably because he wishes to enlist Balian’s aid on another crusade to retake Jerusalem. Balian denies that he is the same Balian who defended Jerusalem.

The ultimate futility of war is the message of Kingdom of Heaven. War only leads to more war, never to peace. It’s a lesson we learn over and over through hard experience, but are destined to forget as soon as we learn it anew.