Scott’s crusader epic is a much better, more thoughtful film than you’ve been led to believe
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Orlando Bloom (Balian of Ibelin), Eva Green (Sibylla of Jerusalem), Jeremy Irons (Lord Tiberias), David Thewlis (Hospitaller), Liam Neeson (Godfrey of Ibelin), Brendan Gleeson (Raynald of Chatillon), Marton Csokas (Guy de Lusignan), Edward Norton (King Baldwin IV), Ghassan Massoud (Saladin), Michael Sheen (Priest), Velibor Topić (Almaric), Alexander Siddig (Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani), Kevin McKidd (Sergeant), Jon Finch (Patriarch Heraclius), Ulrich Thomsen (Gerard de Ridefort), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Godfrey’s nephew), Iain Glen (Richard I)
Version control: This review cover the Director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven, a three-hour film that is much better than the original theatrical version.
For hundreds of years the Middle East has been the site of wars over land and religion: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is a grand, melancholic epic about the crusades, a period of history that seems to become even more divisive and controversial if every passing year. During the First Crusade (1096-99), a European Christian army had bloodily seized control of Jerusalem (massacring its Muslim population). The Crusaders built a state that lived through fragile truces, in a constant state of cold war with the Muslim states that opposed their conquest. Scott’s film picks up the final years of that ‘kingdom of Heaven’.
He does so through fictionalised version of the events. Balian (Orlando Bloom), a former military engineer, is now a widowed blacksmith in Northern France – until Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson), a crusader lord, returns to claim him as his illegitimate son. Fleeing his home after murdering his bullying priest brother (Michael Sheen), Balian arrives in the Holy Land as the new Lord of Ibelin. But he not a paradise, but a kingdom full of ambitious lords and zealots, surrounded by the armies of Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) with the whole thing only just held together by the wise leper king Baldwin IV (Edward Norton). There is already a power struggle for who will control Baldwin’s heir, the child of his sister Sibylla (Eva Green). Will it be the moderates led by Tiberias (Jeremy Irons) or the zealot Templars led by Sibylla’s husband Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csorkas)?
I’ve always been interested in this period of history, and I’m a sucker for a grand historical epics. So I’m pretty much the target for this ambitious, luscious, flawed but engaging film. It helps when it’s assembled by a director as full of visual flair as Ridley Scott. Kingdom of Heaven is an extraordinarily beautiful film – one of those where you really could snip out every frame and hang it up on your wall. Gorgeously lensed by John Mathieson, it moves from a chilly, blue-filtered North France (a land of artistic snow fall and permafreeze) to a David Leanesque desert land, of rolling sand dunes and skies tinged with deepest blue. It’s a film of breathtaking scale, as medieval armies converge, legions of siege weapons roll up to never-ending city walls and the desert stretches as far as the eye can see.
It makes a fantastic backdrop for a film that’s tries really, really hard to take a measured, reasonable view on human nature and religion. It’s fair to say that this makes Kingdom of Heaven a very serious film (there is barely a few minutes of humour in its entire three hour runtime – a joke about Neeson once fighting three days with an arrow in his testicle is about all you’re gonna get), but it’s also nice to have a film celebrating compromise and moderation. Really, Kingdom of Heaven isn’t a true representation of the Crusader period at all – the real Balian and Baldwin would scarcely recognise the humanist liberals they become here – but as a sort of fantasia on balancing conflicting demands in a place that seems to make men mad, it’s hard not to be respect that it’s trying as hard as it is.
To achieve it’s aims, Kingdom of Heaven divides both sides of the argument into goodies and baddies. For the goodies, Baldwin and Saladin are reasonable, just men willing to strive for a world where all can worship freely. Edward Norton – unbilled under a silver mask and English accent – brings a great deal of strength and wisdom to Baldwin, matched by Ghassan Massoud’s superbly patient Saladin. On the other side, we have the “God wills it!” brigade. Admittedly on the Muslim side, they are embodied by one of Saladin’s advisors, whereas the crusaders are awash in angry, Holy War bloodlust types who believe any killing is justified if it’s in God’s name.
Kingdom of Heaven has a respect for faith, particularly when filtered through the words of characters who don’t believe painting a cross on their chest allows them to kill anyone who disagrees with them. Several times, Balian argues doing sensible, reasonable things technically against the word of the Biblewill be understood by God (if he’s worthy of the name). It playfully suggests David Thewlis’ (in an excellent performance) reasonable Hospitaler might actually be an angel, with his power to appear undetected and prodding of Balian towards doing the right thing (Thewlis even disappears into a burning bush at one point).
But, if I’m honest, much of the rest makes its points rather forcefully, showing a world where fine words are corrupted by ambition and anger. Many of those preaching faith are really motivated by a constant hunger for more –power, land, you name it. The closer a character is to the Church, the more likely they are to be either a pantomime, mustachio-twirling villain (like Marton Csorkas imperious Guy or Brendan Gleeson’s playfully-psychotic Raynald) or snivelling hypocrites like Jon Finch’s Patriach (who counsels converting to Islam and repenting later when the shit hits the fan).
Kingdom of Heaven lays out this earnest, well-meaning political viewpoint of how moderation should trump fanaticism, while filling its wonderful visuals with gorgeous costumes, stupendous sets, a brilliant score and some stunning battle sequences. But there is always a fascinating lack of hope in Kingdom of Heaven. When Balian troops up Gethsemane on his arrival in Jerusalem, he only hears the wind not the word of God. When offered the chance to save the kingdom from itself, it comes with such a morally compromised price-tag a straight-shooter like Balian is always going to say no. While his father (one of Neeson’s patented performances of weary, maverick nobility) clings to ideals, the film is perhaps best summed up by Jeremy Irons’ wonderfully world-weary performance as the cynical Tiberias: mournful, depressed and wondering what the hell it’s all been for.
It’s no wonder it’s such a savage world. Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t shirk on the medieval violence. Bodies are hacked to pieces with fountains of blood. It opens by introducing us to a regular Dirty Dozen of toughened Crusader veterans – only to slaughter nearly all of them in the first act. Death is only seconds away in this dangerous world: even sailing to the Holy Land is to risk near certain shipwreck. It’s fascinating that the film’s amazing reconstruction of the Siege of Jerusalem sees Balian fighting to make the siege so difficult that Saladin will be forced to offer terms rather than slaughter the city’s population as the First Crusaders did hundreds of years ago.
Sadly, the film’s main weakness is Orlando Bloom. Surfing the peak of his post LOTR popularity, Bloom’s limitations are ruthlessly exposed by carrying this historical epic. His delivery lacks shade and depth, he doesn’t have the charisma for the big speeches and he never convinces as either a man consumed with grief or a battle-hardened veteran (he doesn’t even remotely look like Michael Sheen’s older brother). It’s a part that needs a role of commanding presence, but Bloom doesn’t have it. It’s unlucky he also has to play off Eva Green giving a complex, well-judged performance as a Queen who learns humility the hard way (the director’s cut restores an entire plot-line for her, which adds hugely to the film’s quiet air of inevitable tragedy).
Kingdom of Heaven has a lot going for it: it looks amazing, it’s crammed with stunning scenes on a truly epic scale and gives excellent opportunities to a host of great actors. It’s an interesting, surprisingly glum exploration of the struggle to find peace. Sure, it’s view of the Crusades has very little link to do with the actual crusades and it’s a little one-sided in its views. But it’s also a thoughtful film that’s really trying to say something that’s worth hearing about moderation, all with some truly breath-taking epic film-making. It’s not a lost masterpiece, but it’s a much more impressive film than its reputation suggests.
Movie Musings 