The Psalm that introduces Xavier Beauvois's lacerating elegy doesn't leave much mystery as to where things are headed: "You shall die like men and fall like princes." There is an air of predestination that clouds Of Gods and Men, giving it the feel of some ancient allegory told and retold by scholars throughout the ages. The characters live in buildings that look to have stood on the Algerian hillsides for centuries, and they themselves seem wholly disconnected from the modern world, even with the appearance of things (cars, a telephone) that signify the story's setting in the 1990s. That is just one of the reasons why when modernity comes crawling with evil intent into this world it makes so little sense.
Beauvois and Etienne Comar's script is taken loosely from the lives of a group of French Cistercian monks who found themselves threatened by Muslim extremists waging war on the Algerian government. Details are here kept intentionally vague: dates are never mentioned, nor is the country itself (Beauvois shot in a particularly green and verdant corner of Morocco). Although the struggles dramatized here were clearly part of the same larger struggle that was rippling through the outside world in the 1990s, it's hard to see how or why the monks should have been swept up in it.
Their lives are depicted as being delineated with a cool, quiet framework of ritual. The pre-dawn prayers at which their voices ring out with reverent devotion into the light stone walls, the lines of desks at which they study and write, the evening shared meal, and all the duties of sustenance (gardening, cleaning, harvesting their beehives for honey to sell). In these nearly idyllic scenes, Beauvois somehow manages, through his mix of contemplative cinematography and extremely human details, to gracefully tap into a font of faithful reverence without losing any sense of artistic distance. It's nearly impossible for the viewer not to be swept up in the elemental beauty of it all -- the monks' singing, performed by the actors themselves, is alone enough to knock a tear right out of you -- but not so much so that it's possible to forget that something threatens.
Although the film's monks are so thoroughly men of their faith, they don't separate themselves from the Muslim villagers who live just down the hillside from their monastery. One of the elder monks, Luc (Michael Lonsdale, whose dusty sarcasm keeps the film from potentially overdosing on sanctity), runs a medical clinic for the villagers, turning none away. We see the monks walking through the village in their street clothes, welcomed as parts of the community, and listening with rapt attention to an imam's prayer just as they would their own services.
This means nothing to the ravening band of bearded, Taliban-like killers whom we see without warning charging into a nearby construction site and butchering the Croatian workers for no stated reason except that they are foreigners. Not long after the same men charge into the monastery on Christmas Eve, demanding to take Luc at gunpoint to treat one of their wounded. The monastery's leader, Christian (Lambert Wilson, empathic and astounding) refuses, avoiding violence only by engaging the extremists' leader in a Koranic discussion. The point is made repeatedly how little these killers have in common with the Muslim villagers who see the Christian monks as an intrinsic part of their community, one which they can't imagine living without. It's hard to think of another film in recent years that has created such an intoxicating picture of compassionate, cross-cultural tolerance and respect. That it all seems on the verge of being burnt away only sharpens the film's coruscating tragedy.
From there on, the film circles into a different kind of contemplation, one where the monks aren't so comfortable anywhere in their routines, but must actively consider whether or not to stay and, more importantly, whether or not staying and dying in an increasingly hostile land will ultimately serve any purpose. For all the (admittedly incomparable) beauty of its scenery and composition, this is where Beauvois's film truly achieves the level of parable. The reactions are carefully parsed in small, knotty scenes that dramatize each monk's fears. "I didn't come here to commit collective suicide," says one, while another notes simply, "I'm not afraid of death. I'm a free man." In a story that could so easily have slipped a halo over these peaceful men's heads, Beauvois humanizes them all, with their various fears, egos, uncertainties, and complicated feelings of love for everything that surrounds them -- even those who could end up being their killers. By removing the aura of heroism from the monks' lives, the film actually returns it to them in a humble way.
For all the suppressed anger that courses through some of its scenes, the film never descends to denouncement, in the manner of the following line from the same Psalm that began the story: "Arise, O God, judge the earth." Here, love carries the day.
Aka Des hommes et des dieux.
Beauvois and Etienne Comar's script is taken loosely from the lives of a group of French Cistercian monks who found themselves threatened by Muslim extremists waging war on the Algerian government. Details are here kept intentionally vague: dates are never mentioned, nor is the country itself (Beauvois shot in a particularly green and verdant corner of Morocco). Although the struggles dramatized here were clearly part of the same larger struggle that was rippling through the outside world in the 1990s, it's hard to see how or why the monks should have been swept up in it.
Their lives are depicted as being delineated with a cool, quiet framework of ritual. The pre-dawn prayers at which their voices ring out with reverent devotion into the light stone walls, the lines of desks at which they study and write, the evening shared meal, and all the duties of sustenance (gardening, cleaning, harvesting their beehives for honey to sell). In these nearly idyllic scenes, Beauvois somehow manages, through his mix of contemplative cinematography and extremely human details, to gracefully tap into a font of faithful reverence without losing any sense of artistic distance. It's nearly impossible for the viewer not to be swept up in the elemental beauty of it all -- the monks' singing, performed by the actors themselves, is alone enough to knock a tear right out of you -- but not so much so that it's possible to forget that something threatens.
Although the film's monks are so thoroughly men of their faith, they don't separate themselves from the Muslim villagers who live just down the hillside from their monastery. One of the elder monks, Luc (Michael Lonsdale, whose dusty sarcasm keeps the film from potentially overdosing on sanctity), runs a medical clinic for the villagers, turning none away. We see the monks walking through the village in their street clothes, welcomed as parts of the community, and listening with rapt attention to an imam's prayer just as they would their own services.
This means nothing to the ravening band of bearded, Taliban-like killers whom we see without warning charging into a nearby construction site and butchering the Croatian workers for no stated reason except that they are foreigners. Not long after the same men charge into the monastery on Christmas Eve, demanding to take Luc at gunpoint to treat one of their wounded. The monastery's leader, Christian (Lambert Wilson, empathic and astounding) refuses, avoiding violence only by engaging the extremists' leader in a Koranic discussion. The point is made repeatedly how little these killers have in common with the Muslim villagers who see the Christian monks as an intrinsic part of their community, one which they can't imagine living without. It's hard to think of another film in recent years that has created such an intoxicating picture of compassionate, cross-cultural tolerance and respect. That it all seems on the verge of being burnt away only sharpens the film's coruscating tragedy.
From there on, the film circles into a different kind of contemplation, one where the monks aren't so comfortable anywhere in their routines, but must actively consider whether or not to stay and, more importantly, whether or not staying and dying in an increasingly hostile land will ultimately serve any purpose. For all the (admittedly incomparable) beauty of its scenery and composition, this is where Beauvois's film truly achieves the level of parable. The reactions are carefully parsed in small, knotty scenes that dramatize each monk's fears. "I didn't come here to commit collective suicide," says one, while another notes simply, "I'm not afraid of death. I'm a free man." In a story that could so easily have slipped a halo over these peaceful men's heads, Beauvois humanizes them all, with their various fears, egos, uncertainties, and complicated feelings of love for everything that surrounds them -- even those who could end up being their killers. By removing the aura of heroism from the monks' lives, the film actually returns it to them in a humble way.
For all the suppressed anger that courses through some of its scenes, the film never descends to denouncement, in the manner of the following line from the same Psalm that began the story: "Arise, O God, judge the earth." Here, love carries the day.
Aka Des hommes et des dieux.
