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Kingdom
of Heaven
reviewed
by Ian Dawe
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October
09, 2005
| For all its aspirations to be the next Lawrence of
Arabia, I felt truly stirred by Ridley Scott's latest film
only once. Balian (Orlando Bloom), a French blacksmith and illegitimate
son of a crusading nobleman, arrives in Jerusalem for the first
time. Poor and unrecognized, he asks an old man, "Where was
Christ crucified?" It's the kind of question you can ask
in Jerusalem, even now. The old man points to a hill. Balian climbs
the hill and in an absorbing, spiritually-charged montage, searches
his heart for signs that God is speaking to him in this holiest
of places. He does not hear much. In that lies the most intriguing
notion in this attractive but otherwise unsatisfying historical
epic.
Ridley Scott is one of those directors that can always be relied
upon to deliver a visually interesting film, often with good performances
from good actors, but sometimes he simply drops the ball. Legend
(1986) suffered from a glut of contemporary fantasy films and
Kingdom of Heaven perhaps suffers from the same symptom.
If it had come along before Scott's own Gladiator (2000),
it would have been seen as a landmark achievement in historical
re-imagination. As it stands, there is so much sound and fury
in the film that it ultimately grows more tiresome than inspiring.
The story is set in 12th century middle east, in a
fascinating time in which the first European crusaders have long
since taken Jerusalem and established a new kind of kingdom there.
By importing elements of their culture and adapting to the surrounding
Muslim culture, a strange, interesting kind of nation was in the
process of being born. Like most colonial cultures, the second
and third generation of Europeans began to feel more at home in
their adopted land than in the place of their ancestors. Balian,
the afore-mentioned blacksmith, is recruited by his long-lost
father (played with great aplomb, but also a certain amount of
auto-pilot by Liam Neeson) to return to the "new world"
and inherit his estate. Having just lost his wife and child, Balian
has little reason to say no, and so he goes. Along the way, he
eventually becomes responsible for the defense of the holy city
itself against the Muslim General and King Saladin, who means
to re-claim it after a century for Islam.
Scott has been to this territory before. The clearest progenitor
in his oeuvre is 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), which
dealt with similar themes of colonization and nouveau riche struggling
for their piece of the pie. That film was one which I greatly
admire, as much for its Vangelis soundtrack and weighty Michael
Wincott performance as anything else. This time around, however,
the film doesn't quite deliver.
That's frustrating, for even with its drawbacks, the movie offers
much to be admired. Edward Norton gives an astonishing performance
as a crusader King dying of leprosy, made all the more astonishing
by the fact that his face is obscured through his entire performance
with an immobile silver mask. Brendan Gleeson also gooses the
film's energy level quite a bit with his exuberant take on Reynald,
a war-hungry Knight. Jeremey Irons delivers the goods as the scheming,
wise Tiberias. Of course, because it is a Ridley Scott film, the
visuals are spectacular, but in this post-Gladiator, post-Lord
of the Rings age, they all have a feeling of "been there,
done that". Great technical excellence, to be sure, but in
the service of spectacle rather than a compelling or original
story. Add to that a certain hesitant quality to Orlando Bloom
in the lead (perhaps this was too much for his, too soon) and
the product ultimately just doesn't satisfy.
For the DVD, Fox produced an extensive array of extras, probably
anticipating that the film would be more successful than it was.
Disc one contains the film in a nearly flawless anamorphic transfer,
complete with the Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks we've come
to expect from films of this nature. The only extra here is a
"pop-up video"-style text commentary dealing with the
history of the period that is fairly informative, although a quick
scan of any history book from your local library will teach you
more. The second disc contains a long series of production featurettes,
organized in an "interactive production grid" that divides
them up according to the perspective of the individual involved
(director, cast and crew). While this might seem innovative, the
featurettes are ultimately rather bland and often descend into
that dreaded "happy talk". You also get two complete
TV specials: "Movie Real: The Kingdom of Heaven", from
A&E and an episode of "History vs. Hollywood" from
the History Channel. Of the two, the History Channel segment is
the most disposable and seems tweaked and simplified to the point
of being insulting to any serious student of history. The A&E
special is only marginally better. Both rely on film footage and
interview with the filmmakers. A good, comprehensive PBS-style
documentary about the crusades would be more to my taste, but
perhaps I'm just odd that way…
A
freelance writer and longtime film enthusiast, Ian
Dawe is now completing a Master's Degree in Film History.
He currently teaches at Selkirk College in Castlegar, British
Columbia.
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