The confusing religiosity of this movie (Part 1)

This is going to be a long post, and due to limited space, I will continue in another post.

I wish to get a few things out of the way, as to not have anyone confused on my intentions and potential biases.

First of all, this topic will discuss religion, a lot, but I really do not wish for this to go off-topic into another debate on whether Christianity is true or not.

I am a Christian, or at least, I try to be. I'm not from the western world, and I'm not Protestant, I'm not a Roman Catholic, and I don't belong to any small Christian sect, neither am I non-denominational. I am an (Eastern) Orthodox Christian. The Orthodox Christian church and the Catholic church were one Church up until 1054 AD, where differences and crippled relations let to a "Great Schism", and as you all know Martin Luther created his own spin-off of Catholicism, as did Henry VIII with Anglicanism. It is like when a glass shatters, and starts breaking more and more. A lot of people in the west do not even know for the Orthodox Church, but it is the second biggest denomination of Christianity after Catholicism.

Historically speaking, Eastern Orthodox Christians can make the factual claim that they are the unbroken continuation of the Church founded by the Apostles. Jerusalem and the entire "eastern" area of Christianity were Eastern Orthodox, until the Muslims (Saracens) conquered most if not all Christian lands that were once Orthodox. The First Crusade started shortly after the Great Schism, and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Emperor, an empire and emperor who were Orthodox Christians, implored the Pope for help with the Muslim invasions, but under strict terms that the Western Latin Christians were to hold no sway over the historically Orthodox lands. The Latins betrayed this request and set up their own Crusader states in the Palestine area.

Now onto the movie itself.

I'm well aware that Ridley Scott is an agnostic, he makes sure he gets that across in almost every movie, but in some moments you can almost see him playing and thinking about his own beliefs, like the burning bush scene in KoH.

I really like Kingdom of Heaven, because of its settings, and the Director's Cut (Roadshow Version) is framed like those old grand epics of the 50s and 60s, with an overture, intermission, and an entr'acte. The soundtrack is simply amazing, the cinematography and combat scenes feel grand and satisfying. The pacing seems to take a back seat during the latter half of the movie, but this is easily forgivable.

Where I'm really confused is the philosophical discussions on religion and point of life. Not that I don't understand them, but the views of Balian and some people on these matters are weird for the time period. As others have critiqued the movie, it is a 21st century secular look at a 12th century world, which was entirely religious. Balian with some of his views seems like an average agnostic who just read Kant and Hume, and fell in love with humanism and its "gotcha" moments at Western Christianity.

What is ironic is that I, as an Eastern Orthodox, am expected to critique Western Christianity because they caused a lot of damage to us, like the Fourth Crusade in 1204, which saw the Catholic Crusaders pillage, loot, and rape the city and inhabitants of what was called the greatest city in the world, Constantinople, oh yeah, this city was also the capital of Eastern Orthodoxy and the Byzantine Empire!

But I'm not going to spend time critiquing the historical inaccuracies and biased misconceptions of some of these things, that was done a lot by others, I'm also not going to talk about the obvious demonizing of everything and anyone Christian, where Western Christian Europe is shown as a bland and desaturated gutter, where the clergy and other Christians are shown as borderline psychopaths, whereas in the Muslim world, everything is seeping with life and color, and the Muslims are shown in the most opposite way to the Christians, as stoic, faithful, and justified in their doings. Of course no one mentioned the fact the Muslims have been mercilessly killing off Christians in Orthodox lands for five centuries now, because Muhammad decrees it so in the Quran.

But I'm here merely to discuss a few of the scenes which discuss religion.Ridley Scott stated that Balian is an agnostic because he himself is an agnostic. However, the presence of the Hospitalier knight who is basically an angel contradicts Ridley's apparent goal of making Balian an agnostic.

Part 2 is in a different post.