Bingo! Thank you.
APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE!
Posted on 05/09/2005 4:47:54 PM PDT by CHARLITE
These days it seems that whenever Hollywood meets history, history gets the squeeze.
Last year "King Arthur," "Troy" and "Alexander" were put through the revisionist wringer. Today it's the factually challenged movie "Kingdom of Heaven" whose historical content appears to have been schmushed.
"Kingdom of Heaven"'s director Ridley Scott recently took a cue from Cecil B. DeMille and chose the Crusades as the subject of his latest epic. This is the same fellow who brought us "Gladiator" and "Blade Runner," which makes me wonder: How did a talented filmmaker like Scott get stuck with an incoherent script like this? It's understandable that a film dealing with the ancient battles that took place between European Christians and followers of Islam might seek to make some modern-day comparisons. But is it really necessary to stuff the screen with the kind of pseudo-humanistic claptrap that could make a knight dump his armor on eBay?
As is typical of today's Tinseltown chronicling, fiction is fused with fact, much to the chagrin of the more informed filmgoer.
The movie takes place in 1184, sometime between the Second and Third Crusade. At the top of the film the audience is introduced to a young blacksmith named Balian (played by Orlando Bloom). Balian receives a visit from Godfrey of Ibelin (played by Liam Neeson), who claims to have fathered him and is seeking forgiveness for having done so illegitimately.
After a few conversations with Godfrey, Balian switches out of his horse-shoeing duds and opts for Crusader couture instead. In a Middle Age minute, the guy transforms himself into the most formidable knight in town. He also starts stealing a page from MoveOn.org and some guidance counseling tips from Dr. Phil.
While on his deathbed, Godfrey knights Balian and instructs him to pursue the vision of a "kingdom of heaven," where Christians, Muslims and Jews can peacefully party together. Balian eventually finds himself as a stand-in for the king of Jerusalem and in a position to surrender the city to the Muslim army. But this doesn't happen until he's killed a creepy priest, given up on organized religion, tossed his faith out the door and joined the ranks of the "can't we all just get along" crowd.
The film has a certain cinematic allure for some. If you like lots of head-splitting, side-piercing, gut-wrenching, limb-flying battling between foes, then this flick is for you. If you like a hefty dose of accuracy with your historically based entertainment, then it's not. In part, here's why.
The film depicts Muslim leader Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem, with his forces breaking through the wall of the city during the final battle. But the actual battle was outside the city in a place known as Hattin. That's why it's called the Battle of Hattin.
On another note, in order to provoke Saladin, the knights knock off his sister. The truth is she was held up but never snuffed out.
But to me, the real problem with the movie's authenticity is the way it interjects sappy messages into the story line. Exceedingly clear is who the heroes are, and likewise who the villains are. Saladin (who, in one scene, respectfully cradles a fallen cross) is portrayed as a wise, seasoned and noble leader.
In contrast, Guy de Lusignan, crony Sir Reynald, and the Knights Templar are shown as bloodthirsty, empty-headed warmongers. And as you might have predicted, the Christian clergy are cast as cowardly hypocrites who want to kill "infidels."
Many who see the "Kingdom of Heaven" may not realize that the Crusades were actually defensive in nature. Christians didn't act until the Muslims had conquered two-thirds of the Western World, and the Crusaders believed that they were restoring formerly Christian territories to their rightful status.
In the film the only Christian good guys are Balian, leper-King of Jerusalem Baldwin IV and his minister Tiberius. But unlike other Christians in the flick, these folks aren't motivated by religious faith. Instead they spout a form of modernist egalitarian drivel that sounds like it was written by Dennis Kucinich.
Balian makes a dramatic speech before the final battle where he tells the assembled throng that the Muslim army, which is about to attack and kill all of them, has just as much right to rule as its Christian counterpart does. Rather than a call to arms, Balian gives his troops a call to multiculturalism. If a real medieval commander had given such a speech, he'd have been chopped into tiny little pieces.
Which is probably what should have happened to that section of the footage, along with all the other PC portions.
Or to not see it and tell us what it is about. You'll just have to take my word about that.
Michael Frazier
Bingo! Thank you.
APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE!
The organizations and cabals that promote the defamations of Christians and Western Christian culture should be held accountable and exposed for their deranged agenda. This knee-jerk anti-Christian jihad of theirs has become rather ridiculous.
This time, they have managed to pollute "formerly Christian territories" throughout western Europe. Who are the "new Crusaders" going to be? Uncle Sam-ites? Who ELSE is going to save Europe (and western civilization) from these Muslim hordes? - Mexico?
The cabals promoting anti-Christian silliness, moral relativism, secular humanism, liberalism, and cultural relativism, have brough this on. Along with the idiotic Malthusian population control freaks and modern social engineering gurus. They have gutted Western culture. And they let the barbarians through the gates. It's a sad, stupid, silly, old story. Now liberals and secular humanists will need to ask conservative Christians to bail them out once again from another social disaster. God knows, it won't be the socialist pansies or liberal disarmanent freaks that will defend Europe and America from Islamo-fascist terror.
....and it won't be Vicente Fox, either.
Thanks so much for a great, well reasoned comment. It is exactly correct in all respects. How can so many millions of people, here and in western Europe, follow so blindly after such liberal socialist fools?
Using this ploy to pursue pleasure with abandon, socialism is then imposed by the oligarchical cultural elite who harbor resentment and hatred towards Christianity for a variety of bizarre, petty, and semi-psychotic reasons. enough, apparently, to make them romanticize Muslims. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.
"If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig." --Woodrow Wilson
"No man or woman of any faith or of no faith can truly love, truly serve, truly persevere, truly dare mighty deeds, truly hope for the future or truly honor the past, without a humble heart. So it is for humility, then, that, on behalf of the legislative branch -- both houses, both parties -- I ask for your prayers today. Because the only way we can serve well is to serve humbly, as servants both to God and our nation." --House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
I don't remember learning that in gov't school. I remember learning that the Christians were bad though.
It is time to eliminate and phase out the LA/NY television & film misinfotainment industry completely and replace it with something more in sync with normal Americans. There is really no reason that normal Christian Americans should give their money to non-Christian liberals who constantly bully Christians and slander Christian culture. That whole farce should just be ended.
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