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 Entertainment | May 2005 
'Epic Kingdom' Wows
 John Maxim - The Herald Mexico
| | The film should also be nominated for Best Picture and its producer-director, Ridley Scott, should finally receive an Oscar for Best Director. |
Not since his own "Gladiator" five years ago, which won five Oscars, including Best Picture, made a superstar of Russell Crowe, and brought epic films back into fashion again, has there been as superb an example of the genre as Ridley Scott's new historical film about the crusades called "Kingdom of Heaven" ("Cruzada").
The story begins in France in 1184, 100 years after the crusades, the armed expeditions undertaken by European Christians in an effort to free the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem, from Islamic influence, began. In a tiny village called Ibelin, a young blacksmith named Balian (Orlando Bloom, the Paris of "Troy" in a star-making role that he plays very well), has just lost his pregnant wife (and unborn son) who committed suicide, a sin which requires her to be beheaded before burial, will cause her to suffer forever in purgatory, and will prevent her from going to heaven.
Down the snowy mountainous path used by crusaders comes an aging knight named Godfrey, Baron of Ibelin (the only character invented by astute screenwriter Willam Monahan, and a very believable one at that), who seeks out Balian, informs him that he's one of his many bastard sons, and invites him to join him and a small group of other noblemen in the crusade. When the local priest (Michael Sheen) informs him that praying in Jerusalem could save his wife's soul from damnation, Balian agrees.
The route to Jerusalem, as his father informs some others, is simple. "Just follow this path until they speak Italian, then go on until they speak something else." On the way, his father teaches him to fight with a heavy sword and a dagger before he knights him, makes him his heir in title and possessions, and is severely wounded in an ambush by disbelievers. Before he dies, his son asks him "What is the kingdom of heaven?" "The kingdom of heaven," Godfrey replies, "is peace between Christians and Muslims." Considering the situation in the Middle East, what could be more topical today?
After surviving a shipwreck, an attack by a sheik and his servant who steal a horse he has saved from the shipwreck, Balian kills one of them, the horse gets away, and the slave leads him to Jerusalem over the desert sands. Suffering remorse for his first murder, Balian is later told by another crusader, "To kill an infidel is not murder, 'tis the path to heaven."
Jerusalem is ruled by Saracen King Baldwin (Edward Norton), a wise young man ravaged by leprosy who wears a silver mask and has managed to keep an uneasy peace between the various factions, including a Roman general named Tiberias (Jeremy Irons), fighting for control of the holy city. King Baldwin's sexy young sister, Sibylla (Eva Green), forcibly married as an adolescent to a French power-mad villain named Guy de Lusignan, whose evil partner is Reynald (Brendan Gleeson), and Balian fall in love.
Balian claims his father's estate at Kerak on the outskirts of Jerusalem, an arid 1,000 acres on which he digs wells and finds water for crop irrigation. There is a bad, choppy editing cut from an intimate love scene to a smashing desert caravan fight scene, which led me to wonder, "What else are we missing so the film can be commercially viable at 145 minutes of prime summer screen time?" I guess we'll have to wait for the DVD to see the director's cut, rather than 20th Century Fox's.
"There must be war! God wills it!" someone cries as the King of Syria, Saladin (expertly portrayed by Ghassan Massoud, who should get a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination), crosses the Jordan River and shows up with an army of 200,000 soldiers that must be faced by a group of Christian knights before he destroys Kerak and sacks and burns Jerusalem and everybody in it. The knights are sworn to defend the poor and helpless hiding within the city walls.
The battles that follow, with two huge armies confronting each other, one within the city walls and the other massed on the desert sands outside, are spectacular and bloody. Cinematographer John Mathiesen and Director Scott capture the blood and battle atrocities obliquely, using rapid editing, constantly moving swirls of figures fighting, a rain of drops of blood and arrows flying through the air, and the sounds of swords clashing and screams of the wounded to paint a visually clever abstract picture of precise happenings.
The final siege of Jerusalem, which takes days, when Saladin's tremendous catapults hurl huge fireballs into the city, making the night sky with a crescent moon as an omen look like a piece of outer space filled with fiery comets, and the infidel battle equipment, including high moving wooden towers and tremendous battering rams and firebombs that create a breach in the thick wall of Jerusalem where the Muslim forces may enter it, is sensationally effective epic filmmaking.
The line between reality and special visual effects is erased and everything looks real, particularly a slow rising vertical crane shot that reveals the breach in the wall too filled with rubble and bodies to be passed over, causing the battle to stop. Harry Gregson-Williams' music, Arthur Max's production design, Juan Jesús Garcia's art direction, Janty Yates' costume designs, and the special effects by Jason McCameron are top notch and should all be nominated for Academy Awards, so stunning are they.
The film should also be nominated for Best Picture and its producer-director, Ridley Scott, should finally receive an Oscar for Best Director. Not since Sir David Lean has there been a director who can balance story, characters and spectacle so intelligently that an epic film retains its humanity and moves the audience emotionally, besides keeping it enthralled visually with suspense. It's also time, if it hasn't happened yet, that Ridley Scott be knighted by the Queen of England. He's a nobleman among filmmakers and the reigning Prince of Epics.
UNESCO Lifetime Achievement award winning journalist John Maxim writes regularly on Mexico’s cultural scene for The Herald. |
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