MovieChat Forums > Kingdom of Heaven (2005) Discussion > The confusing religiosity of this movie ...

The confusing religiosity of this movie (Part 2)

posted 2 years ago by MadCy12 (15)
12 replies | jump to latest

Balian prays one night, doubting his faith, and then a day later gives up and starts leaning towards agnosticism. This rapid change seems forced and out of place, giving no real worth to the movie, but again, his wife and unborn child died, whilst the clergy of the Western (Catholic) church said various horrid things at the wrong time.

Balian states "I am outside God's grace", but the Angel Hospitalier says "I have not heard that", alluding that there is a God, and when Balian says he has lost his religion, he gets the following response:

Hospitaller : I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What God desires is here [points to head]

Hospitaller : and here [points to heart]

Hospitaller : and what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man - or not.

This is more or less a weird quote. For such a character to say he puts no "stock" in religion, but the latter half is perfect. In fact, in Orthodox theology, you will find saints who say a true Christian should not speak at all, but act like one and by his/her example and there will be no words needed. The scene with the burning bush, where Balian tries to brush off religion and "Moses" as simply misunderstood natural happenings, is met with the Angel Hospitalier character appearing out of nowhere, with no horse, in the middle of the desert, behind Balian who arrived there with a horse due to his understandable crisis of faith.

Hospitaller : One may stare into the light, until one becomes the light. I've done it many times.

Balian of Ibelin : [throws a rock at a bush that catches fire by the spark] There's your religion. One spark, a creosote bush. There's your Moses. I did not hear it speak.

Hospitaller : That does not mean that there is no God. Do you love her?

Balian of Ibelin : Yes.

Hospitaller : The heart will mend. Your duty is to the people of the city. I go to pray.

Balian of Ibelin : For what?

Hospitaller : For the strength to endure what is to come.

Balian of Ibelin : And what is to come?

Hospitaller : The reckoning is to come for what was done one hundred years before. The Muslims will never forget. Nor should they. [the Hospitaler slowly walks away as a second bush several yards from the burning one catches fire. The Hospitaler is nowhere to be seen in the clear and open desert]

First of all, the Hospitalier has no way of knowing of Balian's love interests, unless...

Secondly the Hospitalier makes it sound like Jerusalem was always a Muslim city, until "those Crusaders" came and took what was never theirs.

This is partially true, in the fact that the city was never "Catholic" and the Crusaders did in fact kill a lot of innocent Muslims. The catch here is in the fact that the Muslims killed a lot, A LOT, of innocent Christians, after all the Quran commands them to do it, and JERUSALEM WAS NEVER NEITHER CATHOLIC NOR MUSLIM, it was an Orthodox Christian city where many Orthodox Christians were massacred by the Muslims.

Despite this, the Angel Hospitalier walks off into the desert, Balian turns and sees a completely separate bush catching fire on its own, turning again he sees that in the vast open and empty desert the Hospitalier knight is nowhere to be seen.

If this is not an allude to "God exists" then I do not know what is.

After dueling in the desert with a few Crusaders who want him dead by the orders of Guy of Lusignan, he falls unconscious after killing the attackers. We see the Angel Hospitalier appear again out of nowhere, giving Balian a gentle touch to his forehead, pretty much reviving him, and disappearing again.

Despite these obvious "God exists" signs given to Balian, he continues with his critiques on religion in the final act of the film, almost as if he just came off of his reading session of Kant and Russel. The Catholic bishop helps little in the fact he is repeating the same "God wills it" while trying to save himself from the Saracen horde outside of Jerusalem.

Balian says how no one and everyone has claim to the Holy Sites and Jerusalem itself, saying basically that Jerusalem belongs to all people, the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims, and how not one of those groups has the right to claim it their own. Balian later tells the bishop "you have taught me a lot about religion". As if the Angel Hospitalier did not do anything????

In burning the dead bodies which are deceased by plague, Balian says to the bishop. "If he is God, he will undestand, if he does not understand, then he is not God, and we need not worry". Oh how simple, if God does not agree with what I'm doing, he is not God, and there is no God. This attitude is short-sighted and confusing. I'm not saying anything on what should have been done to the bodies themselves.

Continuing in the comments, we're almost done.

[–] MadCy12 (15) 2 years ago

Near the end, Balian threatens Salah Al-Din (Saladin) that if he does not grant the inhabitants of Jerusalem safe passage out, he (Balian) will personally see to it that every single Holy Place in Jerusalem is torn down and desecrated, because those places "drive men mad".

Balian is shown to go above religions and gods, and makes a threat to both Muslims and Christians alike. At the end of the movie, a Muslim character says to Balian "If God does not love you, how could you have done the things you have done".

I watched the movie a few days ago and still think about it. It is very thought provoking and I really liked the movie, even though the ambiguous and forced approach to religion and the pandering to Islam and Humanism is noticeable, I still feel a sort of attachment to the movie. I wish we had more of these traditional 3-4 hour historical epics.

The end.

[–] Ace_Spade (9601) 2 years ago

There's a lot to chew on in your two posts. It's been too long since I've seen the film; I don't remember the detail that you do.

What I do remember was that I really liked the movie and I thought it was a good, complex look at what was an incredibly complex time in history, but that I did think it was skewed slightly towards Islam, and that yes, Balian's extremely modern viewpoint seemed out of place.

I remember there being good and bad by Christians and Muslims, but I also remember there being more criticism of the Christian world than the Islamic one. However, at this period in time, if I recall my history correctly, the crusaders were being particularly brutal, and the story centres more around Christians, so it makes sense we would see that more. Critiques of Western civilization are also more relevant to Western audiences.

As to Balian, yes, his view seems out of place, but there were people who held those views. I think this might be a bit of a Tiffany Problem. If you haven't heard of it, the Tiffany Problem is that the name Tiffany is an old one, but we don't think it sounds right in a medieval setting, so we wouldn't name a princess in a fantasy setting "Tiffany". It would sound wrong, even though it's historically accurate. (Sorry if you knew that already; I'm not trying to be condescending). Balian's worldview might fall into this category. However, I do think that having the lead character hold a more-or-less anti-theist worldview and have his point of view always be the correct one, well, that's "PSA not Art" storytelling. If Scott wanted to challenge worldviews, he shouldn't put his own up as a shining beacon of constant rightness and critique others. Alan Moore, an anarchist, makes V in V for Vendetta an EXTREMELY morally questionable character, despite representing Moore's personal beliefs. He also found time to make some of the *fascists* sympathetic. That's great writing and a great understanding of humanity.

Ultimately, I think Balian and the philosophy of the film are flaws in a mostly-great picture.

Oh, and one small point: Orthodox Christianity might have held Jerusalem prior to the Muslims or Western Christians, but Jerusalem was a Jewish city for long, long before that. Yes, they conquered the Holy Land from Canaanites and other tribes, and yes, they were occupied by other kingdoms (like Rome), but Jerusalem is far more aptly called a Jewish city than a Muslim one, or a Christian - Western or Eastern - place.

[–] MadCy12 (15) 2 years ago

Thank you for reading my post and taking the time to answer it, I agree with you on a lot of stuff, so I won't waste your or my time repeating that again.

Balian's agnosticism is definetly possible considering he:

1. Lost his child and wife

2. Was treated like a lunatic and was told his wife is in hell
3. In general he was surrounded by very crude manipulators, Dostoyevsky perfectly describes them in the famous "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter in his even more famous "The Brothers Karamazov".

In regards to history, you are right to call it brutal, yet the Crusaders killed a lot of Orthodox Christians, not just Muslims.

I know you know this, I'm only repeating it to say the following:

As brutal as they were, the movement itself was not rooted in this malevolent desire for wealth, power, and murder. There were without a doubt a lot of true believers, whatever "true" may mean in that context, but definetly pious in any case.

In regards to Jerusalem, it was taken from the Jews in the first century, and was controlled by pagan Romans, up until the Christianization (I might have spelled thay incorrectly, I apologize) of Rome, many Jews and Christians were as you know constantly being murdered.

Technically, the Orthodox Church is the continuation of the Temple of Solomon and Christ is the fullfilment of Old Testament prophecies, and in this context you could say Jerusalem is a Christian city (sorry if I triggered some).

If we were to say Abraham, the founder of Israel, was a real person (I believe he is and was) then he lived somewhere around 2000 B.C. which means Jerusalem was in their hands for the longest, before being cut off by the Babylonians and then dozens of other groups over the course of the time until today.

In any case, it is a Jewish city today, but under laborious examination, the Orthodox could say it is really theirs, a side note, the Orthodox Church owns most of the land in Jerusalem too.

[–] Ace_Spade (9601) 2 years ago

Yes, I think Balian's agnosticism is possible or even probably, even in the historical context. I think mainly the objection is just that he is presented as "right" all of the time with little doubt or argument from the film's perspective. In other words, Balian's position (agnosticism or skepticism) is a worldview held by many, but people outside of that worldview aren't necessarily wrong. The fact that the movie paints Balian's worldview as 100% good while portraying other worldviews as grey areas is what makes the film a bit (just a bit) preachy.

Same with an imbalance in the portrayal of Christian and Muslim characters; the film leans its criticism in one direction, and that's another bit of "preachiness" that feels uneven.

Both of these are less "plot" and "character" and more "message," which is never fun in an entertainment film. Well, at least these aren't the sole focus of the film, and so the whole thing doesn't come off as a commercial, anyway.

Yes, you're right: many people were true believers, although I think it's also worth portraying (as the film does) the level of corruption that had infiltrated the Church at that time. While they might have legitimately believed in their hearts that God wanted them to slaughter and pillage, I doubt they would enjoy their cross-examinations on such matters at the Pearly Gates, so to speak. But, yes, many were devout, and pious, and many were even authentic in their beliefs and were not as bloodthirsty as others - agreed. And where the film does succeed is in portraying the different motives, including the greed, cruelty, faith, etc., alongside each other. Any film aiming at accuracy would have to have those nuances and contradictions on display.

So, while I agree that Christianity comes out of Judaism, and any Christian would believe that they are part of a fulfillment of Jewish tradition, we also need to acknowledge that adherents to Judaism don't agree and also that there is a distinction between Jewish people ethnically/politically and people who are Jewish in religion. A LOT of overlap, but still a distinction.

Jerusalem was a Jewish (ethno-politically) city under occupation by empires like Rome and Babylon, then Christians (of various stripe) and Muslim.

I know what you mean with the technical point that Christianity believes itself to be the continuation of Judaism, but there is still the political difference between those peoples, the fact that Christians slaughtered Jewish people (which hardly seems in keeping with the spirit of the continuation) and the fact that, if there was no difference, Christians should have arrived, liberated the city, and placed it into the hands of the Jewish authorities. They didn't do this, so there is a distinction on all levels that matter in terms of discussion of the occupation of Jerusalem in the Holy Land.

We're also talking about Catholic crusaders, in the context of the film, who would just as readily say that their Church was directly founded by Peter at the command of Christ, and would have an equal claim on the lineage of Jewish heritage (nevermind their slaughter of Jews, too).

As to Abraham, I was counting more from Moses' leading of the 12 Tribes out of Egypt and Joshua's leading of them into the Canaanite lands. Arguably, since the Jewish people had left for Egypt, they had left that land and the Canaanites had a legitimate claim to it. By the time of the Crusades, of course, there were no Canaanites, so any contested claim there is kind of a moot point.

[–] MadCy12 (15) 2 years ago

I agree with a lot of the stuff you're saying, though I think that "Christians killed Jews" is not a good argument against the claim. Especially if you were to hypothetically believe in the (Orthodox) Christian God or even prove his existence, then it had little to do with politics, though that seems like a short-sighted way to go about it.

As I said, the Catholics killed a lot of Christians, and not trying to play the victim here, but the Orthodox kept getting the short end of the stick.

[–] Ace_Spade (9601) 2 years ago

My argument isn't that Christians killed Jews, it's that the Jewish people had the longest claim to Jerusalem (occupations notwithstanding) and if another group claimed to be following a fulfilled version of Judaism (both Catholics and Orthodox make this claim) then they shouldn't harm Jewish people and, when they have power in Jerusalem they should give the city over to the Jewish peoples, which neither Catholics nor Orthodox did. My point there was just to draw a distinction between the religious/philosophical concept of Judaism and the political nations of Israel and Judah, particularly as it pertains to the various contested claims on Jerusalem. I would draw the same distinction between Christians and a lot of the "Christian" kingdoms' activities during the Middle Ages. The Inquisition, for instance, seems impossible to justify under even the harshest readings of Christ's teachings, and most of what the various Bishops of Rome got up to seems incompatible with Christian doctrine, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.

[–] MadCy12 (15) 2 years ago

Again, I agree with you on most things, the Orthodox think too that what Rome did a lot of times was bad and un-Christlike. I mean, the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his magnum opus "The Brothers Karamazov" brilliantly critiques the hypocrisy of the Latin Church.

But having the righteous claim to Jerusalem, and then giving the city back to the non-Christian people? I do not think the claim to Jerusalem should be made from who killed more of which side and who held it the longest.

In my opinion, Jerusalem and Antioch should have stayed Byzantine Christian, as this was a time when both Jews and Christians could go on pilgrimages. It is only when the Islamic horde of warriors appeared, countered by equivalently zealous Latin crusaders, that all really went even deeper to hell.

I'm not saying how the Orthodox Christians were perfect and were constantly being the victims of all others, but with all taken in account, the Orthodox Christian theology leaves no room, and therefore had very little people, who did bad stuff. Sure, you had events like the Russian Pogroms but this does not mean that a very large and ancient religion, moreover the entire existence of a transcendental being like God, should be discarded.

What we have today of Jerusalem is a shell of its former self. Christians are not allowed to go to certain very important sites where the Muslims built their monuments over previously Christian ones. There's parts of Jerusalem where you'll be kicked out if you have a Bible or cross on yourself.

Whatever Jerusalem may be today, it sure as hell ain't about religious equality.

[–] Ace_Spade (9601) 2 years ago

Yeah, I think we're basically eye-to-eye on most of this. Side note: I love Dostoyevsky, but I haven't yet read The Brothers Karamazov. It's in my pile of books to read.

I don't think that the claim to Jerusalem should be about killing, either, nor about occupation, but rather whose city it was, historically-speaking. This might get caught up in warfare, but to my read of it, Jerusalem was founded by the Canaanites - a tribe no longer in existence to my knowledge. That makes Israel - the Jewish peoples - the next claimants to the city, and it should belong to them.

We definitely agree that the city should be open to all pilgrims who want to visit the holy sites there. That includes all kinds of Christians, Muslims, or Jewish people as well as anybody else who just wants to see those historical places. It should definitely be about religious equality and tolerance.

I'm also 100% in agreement that the corruption of men need not damn the institution, and the Church - much less God - should be discarded based on the heinous crimes of people.

[–] MadCy12 (15) 2 years ago

Yes, I agree. As the movie points out, God would not approve of blood spilled in Jerusalem, whether it be Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. At the end of the day, if everyone is allowed to do their pilgrimages, then it does not matter who controls the city. Jerusalem is currently full of tension, between Catholics and Orthodox, Muslim Sunni and Shiite, Jews and Orthodox Jews, and so on. I believe, especially when it comes to Jerusalem, but other things too, that Balian, agnostic or not as he was, described it perfectly at the end of the movie:

"If this is the Kingdom of Heaven, let God do with it as he will.”

[–] Ace_Spade (9601) 2 years ago

And it's sentiments like that that make the film still pretty great, even if it does have some odd flaws and quirks.

I think I'd like to do some more reading on the crusades and Holy Land now, particularly regarding the Orthodox Church's involvement. Our conversation has made me aware of my knowledge gaps in that area. Thank you.

[–] MadCy12 (15) 2 years ago

No, thank you! This conversation pushed me a bit forward where I was able to look at both the movie and Crusades with a more open mind, and it is fruitful conversations like this that the world needs more today...

[–] Ace_Spade (9601) 2 years ago

This is why I come to moviechat.