Kingdom of heaven WAS fair!

[godsent]

I went to watch the kingdom of heaven last night,and i have got to say,it was definatly a fair and well made film!

I wont spoil the film by telling you what happens or anything,this is really a good film to watch,if you want to see basically what happens at the crusades in a graphic detail!

The battles were evenly fought and i was verey happy with the film!
I would recommened it!

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

three of those battles actually happened too (except there was historically TWO battles at Kerak). i also thought they did a great job of being fair, but i think they should have made one more clergyman to balance out that guy that was obviously not a true priest.
i also loved Orlando Bloom’s line, “That sounds like the way we pray.”

 

[godsent]

Yeh that priest got on my nerves"convert to islam and repent later"

That was stupid!

 

[chevalier]

I actually have reservations about the historical accuracy.

 

[cestusdei]

Fair? In real life Saladin let those with money buy there way to freedom. The rest were enslaved. But if they had showed that the Muslims would have been screaming. Even thought that IS what happened.

 

[chevalier]

Yeah, Saladin put up a show of giving a gift to one of the crusader leaders by freeing a small number of people. Others were freed by the money of people like Balian d’Ibelin in whom something broke and they started buying people off. Not like there weren’t people who ran off with their gold ASAP.

How about showing the real battle of Hattin and the after battle scenes? How about some Muslims cooperating with Christians against other Muslims? There was no such thing as one united Muslim faction. Breaking truces and treaties wasn’t the domain of the Christians alone, either. By the way… Well met, Father Knuckleduster.

 

[Scott_Waddell]

I have not seen it, but I trust James Bowman’s review of it here that basically chalks it up to the typical Hollywood tolerant progressives projecting their sensibilities back into history.

The most hilariously idiotic of the film’s many historically stupid moments comes at the climax of the battle for Jerusalem in 1187 when Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom), the commander of the city’s Christian defenders, has a parley with the leader of its Muslim besiegers, Saladin, here invariably given his more authentic moniker, Salah al-Din (Ghassan Massoud). Nice that they insist on accuracy in something. Balian tells his adversary that he will surrender the city if the Muslim army will give its Christian inhabitants a safe-conduct to the sea, where they may take ship to return to Europe. The terrible alternative, Balian tells him, is that he will give the order for all the religious sites in the city to be destroyed: “Your holy places, ours — everything that drives men mad.” It’s hard to imagine a more perfect example of Hollywood’s view of religion — or of a thought that would have been more unthinkable to the person supposedly uttering it.

Such words would have been sheer gibberish — evidence of madness themselves — in an age in which “religion” was inseparable from the culture. Another character says “I put no stock in religion” and generally speaking we are to understand that neither does anyone else who is in the least sympathetic here. The only true religious believers, at least on the Christian side, are thugs and murderers. But at the time of the Crusades “religion” wasn’t the optional Sunday-morning pastime it has since become. It was a matter of identity. For someone to say “I put no stock in religion” would have been as nonsensical as saying “I put no stock in being my father’s son.” People’s religion wasn’t just what they believed, it was what they were. In other words, like so many movie-makers before them, Scott and Monahan have looked into the past and seen nothing but their own silly faces looking back at them.

Scott