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 Modern Medieval Sir Ridley Scott paves the road to the "Kingdom of Heaven"
Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" is many things, among them, a
charnel house of parable.
In a $30 coffee-table book esteeming the 67-year-old Scott's
attention to detail, he writes of his long-held fascination with the
medieval, "There is no escaping parallels with our time, when leaders
who try to make peace are admired, but their efforts so often are
subverted by more radical factions." (And the early scenes are bedecked
with white, lazing snowflakes as thick as 9/11's ash and soot.)
It's 1186. Balian (Orlando Bloom) is a French village blacksmith,
surprised by the news from the visiting Baron of Ibelin (Liam Neeson)
that he's the offspring of a sin: he's the Baron's bastard son. The
events come fast if not furious, and soon Balian is one of the survivors
of a shipwreck (a skittish black horse the other) that lands him on the
road to Jerusalem. Court politics follow, with the leper King of
Jerusalem, his sister Sibylla (Eva Green, eyes still as darting-mad as
in "The Dreamers"), her husband Guy de Lusignan (Martin Csokas,
looking like a cranky cousin of "The Office"'s Ricky Gervais in need
of a full-body shave) and the bloodthirsty warrior Reynald de Chatillon
(Brendan Gleeson, looking like the sex-mad screenwriter Joe Eszterhas
with Powerpuff Girl pink-tipped extensions). Jeremy Irons is on hand,
playing the sage Tiberias with facial scars and a scare-the-kiddies
guttural growl. Let the Crusades begin...
"Kingdom of Heaven" was previewed for most Chicago press on Monday,
a day after the billionaire Republican presidential candidate (in 1988)
and founder of the Christian Coalition, the Rev. Pat Robertson, was
allowed on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," with little
challenge to make racist remarks about whether Muslims ought to be
appointed to judgeships and other high U.S. governmental positions.
"They have said in the Koran there's a war against all the infidels.
Do you want somebody like that sitting as a judge? I wouldn't."
Would you want someone like Robertson, who has claimed the talent
given by God to summon tornadoes and earthquakes to make choices of life
or death for a society? "Kingdom of Heaven," with its portrait of
warring theocracies that include callow leaders given to smug cant,
gathering the cloak of "the will of God" to warm their own impulses,
is painfully topical, and will likely take on a raft of insults from the
likes of Robertson.
Whatever one's feelings about Orlando Bloom as a great historical
hero, he carries his character's pain well, brimming eyes filled with
curiosity and concern and cheekbones more defined, seeming less sweetly
boyish than in his turn in "Pirates of the Caribbean," his supernal
prettiness seared with scowls.
While an epic set in the eleventh century might suggest endless mud
and muck and death and despair, William Monahan's script, tracking the
fall of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, is a story about the quest for
peace as much as the thirst for vengeance and hunger for turf. (The
debuting 44-year-old former Spy magazine editor's forthcoming credits as
screenwriter include "Tripoli"--the spec script that introduced him to
Ridley Scott--"Jurassic Park IV" and Martin Scorsese's remake of
"Infernal Affairs," titled "The Departed.")
There are a few lines of pure brass--"I once fought two days with an
arrow through my testicle"; "All death is certain"--but Balian is a
Walter Hill action hero: one large speech and one small are the most of
his articulation. All else is deeds.
Special effects, or perhaps computing power, have improved since the
days of "Gladiator," and an entrance into the city of Jerusalem has a
glorious sweep surpassing any of the tableaux of "Troy" or the
pinball-machine glass painting-like gloop recently favored by George
Lucas. The city is a teeming souk that does not yet have to accommodate
the prospect of sudden nuclear annihilation by zealots. (Apocalypse,
however, may well be at hand.)
There is another moment of pictorial grace that draws from lessons
Scott surely learned from such medieval settings as those of
Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky" and Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev" as
well as from Kurosawa: a battle that ends with two kings who meet in the
midst of an arid plane--think Crawford, Texas, without a phalanx of
SUVs--with lance- and flag-bearing armies awaiting on either side. The
most beautiful shot also contains the only mediocre computer-generated
work I could see: a hazy band of men approach the spectacle of a rapture
of vultures swirling above a teeming bone yard that only hours earlier
had been a battlefield. (It's a canny choice: most eyes will be fixed on
the sky grayed with the eaters of the dead.)
Ultimately, Balian turns the course of history by giving his back to
the privileged, protected overseers of a corrupt Church. "God wills
it"? "To kill an infidel is not murder, it is the path to heaven"?
"Kingdom of Heaven" is anti-demagogue, and curious about men who
can meet and speak of difference and not of holy war. While the madness
of a movie antihero like Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev is sorely missing
from this tapestry, the sentiments are at least grand. Who is the seeker
of forgiveness? Monahan and Scott ask.
And for whom does the Reverend Robertson speak? For whom does Sir
Ridley? "Kingdom of Heaven" opens Friday.
Also by Ray Pride Tip of the Week
What Do You Believe?
Glossed in translation
Tip of the Week
Burp of a nation
The welcoming of chance
Tip of the Week
Tip of the Week
Unconsummated
Tip of the Week
Interesting Times
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