Film Review : Of Gods and Men
Directed by Xavier Beauvois
Truth, goodness, beauty; freedom, equality, fraternity; faith, hope, charity. These three Trinitarian triangles are the heartbeat of this amazing film, which won The Grand Prix and the Ecumenical Award at Cannes, where one critic talked of it as ‘a small miracle of a film’.
I think small is too small a word. ‘In the face of terror, their greatest weapon was faith’; ‘stunningly serious and passionate’; ‘beautifully told story of bravery’. Based on a true tragedy, the whole truth of the story remains a mystery. We know how the monks died, but not who killed them.
Truth: seven of nine French Cistercian monks were taken hostage from their monastery in an Algerian mountain village and killed. One of the two who evaded capture is still alive. A brother of the one who died still lives outside Paris, and I’m told the film helped him come to terms with his brother’s death. (The power of art!)
Goodness: we follow the daily routine of eight monks, praying, eating, working, helping, healing, meeting; they sow seeds, make honey, gather firewood, dispense medicines, counsel the young, do the wash up, but all this routine is rudely disturbed by a civil war.
First some Croatian construction workers are brutally slain because they are Christian. The political authorities advise the monks to leave. They know the threat, but after much discerning, individually and communally, they refuse to leave, or decide to stay, for the people they have become so integrated with. Their goodness and kindness is much appreciated, especially Luke the doctor, (aptly named).
Beauty: the camera work at times takes your breath away, especially panning the stunning landscape and beautiful countryside, making the contrasting road blocks and killings all the more gruesome. A noisy helicopter hovers over the monks while praying, highlighting the fear war brings and the supportive peace of prayer.
The goodness of the monks is emphasised a lot, without idealising them. Their leader, for example, makes a unilateral decision and is reproached for ‘undermining the principle of community’.
Another monk agonises over whether he should leave and return to his family and take up again his former work as a plumber. Another gets on another’s nerves doing the kitchen work and storms out swearing. But these are miniscule compared to their chanting, working and discerning, and as one of the villagers says pleading for them not to go, ‘we are birds, you are our branches; if you leave us, where would we perch, (poserions) ourselves?’, echoing John’s gospel comparing Jesus to a ‘vine’.
So the good shepherds decide unanimously not to leave their flock unattended, and the cost is high, but the faith, hope and love are deep. The evocation of the monks’ inwardness takes centre stage, although the issue of the links between French and Islamic culture, especially in 1996, when the film is set, and French-Algerian relations, are to the forefront too. (One of the monks knows his Koran).
But it is a film mostly filmed in interiors, and even though film is not noted for its capacity for interiority, this one is up there with Bergman. In fact, the final scene echoes the dance of death at the end of The Seventh Seal, another film about faith in the face of mortality.
This is a difficult review to write. I just know no review can do this film justice. There are so many memorable scenes that to leave any one out doesn’t feel right. As a narrative, it is a masterpiece of cinematic editing, some of which is jolting, to say the least. Be warned!
This is a film that will stay with you long after you leave the cinema or turn off your DVD.