Kingdom of Heaven
(Crossposted from Alan’s blog, mostly because of the Dragonhunt comment. And because I didn’t want to lose it, though it’s a little profane for CavLec proper.)
Saw Kingdom of Heaven yesterday. Thought it kicked Gladiator’s ass all over the screen.
I totally see why some people didn’t like it, and I totally disagree with them. This is not a heroic film, which everyone seems to have been expecting. This is a film about snatching what small victories you can from the Inescapable Logic of Fate. About not being a fricking hypocrite, even when half the world around you is—and about the discovery that when you’re not a fricking hypocrite, the people around you do strangely heroic and non-hypocritical things in order to follow your example.
It’s a very Dragonhunty film, actually, aside from the near-total absence of women (in the flick, not in Dragonhunt!). Tell me the Templars aren’t Heaven/Hell all over.
And I dug it. Really good flick, I thought, and one more people could stand to see and think about.
It’s a very anti-religion film. Very. I suspect that’s where some of the reviewers’ hate comes from, covertly. Me, I loved every anti-clerical moment of it. Which isn’t to say it was one-note about religion; there are decent and honorable religious characters, the main difference between them and the indecent and dishonorable ones being (again) the lack of hypocrisy.
Ridley Scott films a mean mass-battle scene. As good as Jackson. My husband says better, but I disagree; the focus in this film is different from LotR, so of course the techniques are different. There’s one post-battle scene that’ll haunt the hell out of you. I don’t know why no one’s done it before, but there it is.
Kingdom is significantly less manipulative than Gladiator; the manipulation scale isn’t at zero by any means, but most of the manipulation happens early in the movie in order for the Logic of Fate to take over about one-third through. I felt manipulated by the whole long-lost-daddy setup (I would rather have seen than been told of Godfrey’s basic humanism), but I didn’t feel manipulated at all by the fate of the King of Jerusalem (which I won’t spoil).
The cast is pretty darn good, and Orly actually mostly manages to hold up his end of things despite being up against the likes of Liam Neeson and the totally kick-ass Jeremy Irons. Props to the casters for actually casting Arabs as Arabs (even though Saladin wasn’t an Arab, he was a Kurd, but oh well—I can forgive that one, especially as the actor was fabulous).
Orly’s got two basic problems, one of which he can probably fix and one of which he may be stuck with. The first problem is his utter lack of irony. A few moments in Kingdom needed a shit-eating grin or some other indication of Orly’s awareness of the irony he was surrounded with, didn’t get one, and fell a little flat because of it. The second problem is Orly’s reedy, weightless voice, and honestly, I’m not sure that’s fixable. Still, he did okay, and he was certainly pretty to look at.
So was Martin “Celeborn” Csokas, playing a total asshole. Wouldn’t have thought he could do it, but he was great, creeptastic without having to chew scenery.
Good film. Dorothea-Bob says check it out. If you stay for the credits and are a total LotR geek, watch for the impressive number of LotR people involved with this one. Good to know those folks aren’t going hungry.
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