Kingdom of Heaven
Review by Zachary Keith Parker
Kingdom of Heaven begins in 1184, where French priests are burying a woman on a hilltop in France. Soon we learn she was the wife of Balian (Orlando Bloom), a blacksmith overwhelmed with grief over his wife’s death, especially considering how she committed the “unforgivable” act of suicide.
Right on the desperate story's cue, a mysterious Knight of the Crusades and Lord of Ibelin, Godfrey (Liam Neeson), comes to Balian and tells him the oh-so-surprising revelation that he is Balian’s father.
Balian follows his father to Jerusalem where Godfrey dies from an injury, and passes his wealth and land to Balian. The Christian King of Jerusalem, Baldwin V (Edward Norton), is a leper and dies very quickly, so Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas), a greedy and merciless commander, takes the throne due to his marriage to Baldwin’s sister, Sibylla (Eva Green). Sibylla is quite taken with the bravery and devotion of Balian,giving us the obligatory passionate love story.
The infamous Moslem leader, Saladin (Ghassan Massoud), intends to destroy the Christian army in Jerusalem due to the disgraceful actions of King Guy and his criminal buddy, Sir Reynald de Chatillon. In a faithful representation of the Battle of Hattin, we learn (not see) that the Moslems slaughtered over 20,000 soldiers including Reynald. Saladin spares King Guy, and advances to recapture Jerusalem. From then on, we see Balian espouse tolerance and equality dogma, fighting for those ideals.
Godfrey and Balian’s ideals are advertised in the trailer: “You are not what you are born but what you have it in yourself to be. A kingdom of consciousness, peace instead of war, love instead of hate. That is what lies at the end of Crusade.” Balian refuses certain commitments to Christianity and Islam so he can become a man devoted to the nobler mission of bettering the world.
To add to the film's promotion of religious neutrality, Ridley Scott envisions a world, or as the title suggests, a heaven where Islam and Christianity share mutual respect. Scott clearly thinks both Islam and Christianity are compatible if both direct their efforts to “bettering the world,” regardless of their religious “dogma.”
This egalitarian world is only conceivable when Ridley Scott portrays Christianity as arrogant, cowardly, deceptive, and intolerant: Marton Csokas performs his role as the bigoted, greedy Christian Knight as he did in 2003’s Timeline; the priests are thieves and help Balian learn that religion is pretentious and artificial.
To be honest, the story and characters are more artificial than anything else. The story lacks any creative effort, and each character is sloppily developed. At first, Scott leads us to believe Balian seeks spiritual redemption for his wife and himself, but amidst Scott’s “peace and consciousness” agitprop, spirituality loses its value.
In fact, the characters of Godfrey and Baldwin V are really the only characters the audience can sympathize with, but Liam Neeson’s performance as Godfrey is both monotonous and mediocre. Orlando Bloom loses control over his character after his character sleeps with Sibylla, abruptly changing him from a silent Christian in need of redemption to a poised battle leader.
The battles are lifeless and insipid, which further distances the viewer with frenzied and up-close camera work. It is not only hard to watch, but hard to believe. The Siege of Jerusalem is a combination of the barbarian conflict in Gladiator and the siege of Minas Tirith in Return of the King. Surely, the 120 million plus budget could have been spent a little more wisely, spending time developing characters and stories, instead of dragging the audience along for two hours and half.
Not even half of Ridley Scott’s idealistic vision is ultimately plausible. The film ends with a note of how “Nearly a thousand years later, peace in the kingdom of heaven remains elusive.” No kidding. Islam and Christianity have been at odds for nearly two thousand years. Scott’s generous portrayal of Islam will only add to the appalling belief that Islam is a “religion of peace,” or at least devoted to their religion to the point of death, whereas Christians would gladly “convert now, repent later.”
To underscore Islam’s so-called compassion, Monahan and Scott stoop to rewrite history to fit their tolerance dogma by showing Saladin in a key scene as a merciful leader who graciously let Christians retreat safely. Then to emphasize his mercy, Scott shows Saladin walking through some debris and picking up a fallen cross and placing back in the middle of the table, as if to say, Saladin could have left Christianity scattered, but he lifted it back on its feet and walked away.
According to multiple historians, Saladin actually demanded a monetary ransom for each individual in exchange for their freedom, while all who could not afford such a ransom were taken as slaves or slain.
Director Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is a deplorable retread of his earlier Gladiator, except while both films share a secular philosophy (meaning a candidly anti-Christian one), only Gladiator is well-written, exciting, and original. Scott has dropped the bar with Kingdom of Heaven, reinterpreting the Crusades without any kingly grandeur or heavenly depth.