Kingdom of Heaven

I don’t understand why people seem to think this is cerebral stuff while 300 is trashy and simplistic, just because 300 has more shouting, some monsters and is shot like a music video. Kingdom of Heaven takes itself very seriously, but really isn’t that far from its more enjoyable and intentionally silly historical epic cousin. Both have the same bloodthirsty battles, insistence on casting British people as ANY historical figures, oversimplified political intrigues and women given a token ‘powerful’ role that really does nothing but shadow the men, and sparingly sketched backstories. Both are based pretty loosely on historical events. But since Ridley Scott used artsy visuals (I don’t mean to disparage; the cinematography was superb) and paced the film extremely slowly (I WAS watching the extended Director’s Cut, mind you), his film was considered more worthy. However, it cannot hold a candle to the compelling Gladiator, mostly because the focus is never sufficiently on one man, or the consequences of his deeds.

While historically Balian was an aging, sturdy nobleman of Italian descent who aided several coups and once threatened to slaughter all the Muslims in Jerusalem and desecrate their holy places, here he is played by Orlando Bloom as a pretty young French blacksmith who is unaware his real father was a knight until he returns to take him to the crusades, teaching him swordsmanship in one single session along the way (Liam Neeson playing mentor figure #1425863). Bloom’s performance is fine, but there’s little to interest us about Balian – he just does as he has to do, more or less, and happens to be liked by the right people and despised by the obvious baddies. In Jerusalem, he helps the King (a leper played superbly by Ed Norton, who manages to upstage the rest of the cast with nothing but his eyes and voice, given a multi-faceted cameo role to play with) go up against the chillingly cool and powerful Muslim leader Saladin, who appropriately to historical records is a strong and compassionate leader who is in a position to take advantage of the fractious and divided Christian crusaders when provoked. This was a film about Christians vs Muslims, but it certainly isn’t ‘us and them’, with noble Christians bravely facing down infidel barbarians – and rightly too, considering what history tells us of the conduct of the crusaders up to and including Richard the Lionheart.

The film was beautiful to look at, contained some strong performances and was at least close enough to history to have a flavour of authenticity, but it was so distant, Bloom’s Balian so plain and unimpeachable, that it was hard to maintain interest. It was annoying how battle was shown to be little more than slaughter upon slaughter, yet the typical Hollywood patterns were observed – minor characters get offed quickly, important people get wounded or captured so that they can make speeches before the end, and protagonists are invincible. Overall, not really worth the time it took to get through it. Or to write all this!