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Philip_P
Guest
These are some thoughts on the movie. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts, too. Please try to keep the thread focused on the movie by backing up your opinions with examples from it.
Laying aside questions of historical accuracy and treating the movie as fiction, not documentary, what is the movie’s message, and is it anti-Christian? Some of the Christian characters are bloodthirsty fanatics eager for war. Virtually all mainstream Christian thought, though, from the Vatican on down, would reject such an attitude as being not authentically Christian. The movie seems to agree; the fanatics are definitely the villains, and are opposed by more level headed, compassionate Christian characters reluctant to rush to war. A few church officials are depicted unfavorably too, such as the patriarch of Jerusalem. Yet obviously the Church is more than its leaders, else the papacy of Alexander VI would have long since permanently discredited Christianity. The movie distinguishes the cowardly patriarch from the principled defenders of Jerusalem. Is the movie anti-war, or at least anti-Crusade? Here, perhaps, is the source of the suspicion that it’s anti-Christian. KOH is very violent. Its sympathy is with the civilians, and with those soldiers whose priority is the civilians. KOH doesn’t really pass judgment on the Crusades as a whole, but it certainly does not endorse them. The final, heroic action is not the triumph of the Christian armies, but rather the surrender of Jerusalem to the Muslims in exchange for the guaranteed safe passage for the evacuation of the city’s civilians. Does this preference for saving civilians, even if it means military victory for the Muslims, make the movie anti-Crusade? Does being anti-Crusade make the movie by extension anti-Christian?
These questions remind me of the movie Gunner Palace, a documentary that followed some American soldiers around Baghdad for a few months. The movie did not really make any political points, did not even engage in much commentary, did very little apart from show our soldiers not as soldiers, but rather as kids of 18, 19, 20, patrolling the streets but in their off time just being normal, young adult men. I was surprised to see the documentary consistently described as “anti-war.” Does humanizing war automatically become anti-war?
A key moment for me in KOH was the sequence when Balian comes to his land and spends time, not fighting, but digging a well to improve the day to day life of the people in his care. Even today, we like to talk about wars in abstract terms. We don’t keep track of how many civilians have died in the Iraqi war, and anyone who asks is called anti-American, or else they’re challenged to defend Saddam’s mass killings, as if somehow death balances out death. Why is it “anti-war” to focus on a war’s effects on people’s day to day lives? What does it say about our attitudes toward war, patriotism, loyalty?
Laying aside questions of historical accuracy and treating the movie as fiction, not documentary, what is the movie’s message, and is it anti-Christian? Some of the Christian characters are bloodthirsty fanatics eager for war. Virtually all mainstream Christian thought, though, from the Vatican on down, would reject such an attitude as being not authentically Christian. The movie seems to agree; the fanatics are definitely the villains, and are opposed by more level headed, compassionate Christian characters reluctant to rush to war. A few church officials are depicted unfavorably too, such as the patriarch of Jerusalem. Yet obviously the Church is more than its leaders, else the papacy of Alexander VI would have long since permanently discredited Christianity. The movie distinguishes the cowardly patriarch from the principled defenders of Jerusalem. Is the movie anti-war, or at least anti-Crusade? Here, perhaps, is the source of the suspicion that it’s anti-Christian. KOH is very violent. Its sympathy is with the civilians, and with those soldiers whose priority is the civilians. KOH doesn’t really pass judgment on the Crusades as a whole, but it certainly does not endorse them. The final, heroic action is not the triumph of the Christian armies, but rather the surrender of Jerusalem to the Muslims in exchange for the guaranteed safe passage for the evacuation of the city’s civilians. Does this preference for saving civilians, even if it means military victory for the Muslims, make the movie anti-Crusade? Does being anti-Crusade make the movie by extension anti-Christian?
These questions remind me of the movie Gunner Palace, a documentary that followed some American soldiers around Baghdad for a few months. The movie did not really make any political points, did not even engage in much commentary, did very little apart from show our soldiers not as soldiers, but rather as kids of 18, 19, 20, patrolling the streets but in their off time just being normal, young adult men. I was surprised to see the documentary consistently described as “anti-war.” Does humanizing war automatically become anti-war?
A key moment for me in KOH was the sequence when Balian comes to his land and spends time, not fighting, but digging a well to improve the day to day life of the people in his care. Even today, we like to talk about wars in abstract terms. We don’t keep track of how many civilians have died in the Iraqi war, and anyone who asks is called anti-American, or else they’re challenged to defend Saddam’s mass killings, as if somehow death balances out death. Why is it “anti-war” to focus on a war’s effects on people’s day to day lives? What does it say about our attitudes toward war, patriotism, loyalty?
