Kingdom Of Heaven - The Crusades

Onesimus

Have you watched this film? I'm just wondering how true to its true history is this film? or would you consider it to be traced with watered down truth mostly influenced by those who dislike religion both Christian and muslim alike? and thus distort its history in the movie.

I'm asking because I've never read up on the Crusades that much and my knowledge of them is purely limited to say the least.

Onesimus

hinault

I've seen the movie and as a film it makes for good entertainment.

As regards the historical accuracy of the move? I'm not sure that it is that accurate. I have read some books on the Crusades and depending on who's view you accept the Crusades were either
1.rallied by the Pope to defend Christians in the Near East/Middle East
and/or
2.to conquer and then enslave the Jews and Muslims of the Near East/Middle East.

mikemac

From my limited knowledge

Saladin was an honorable leader and had a code of honour with Richard the Lionheart
It was the brave move from Richard not to try for Jerusalem. Possibly they would have taken it but they'd never hold it. So he faced down the hotheads who urged an attack.

The honorable peace that was settled left the city in Muslim control but gave free passage to Christians

There were some almighty massacres and brutality on both sides. There was also honour and compassion on both sides

Onesimus

feelingstressed wrote: »

From my limited knowledge

Saladin was an honorable leader and had a code of honour with Richard the Lionheart
It was the brave move from Richard not to try for Jerusalem. Possibly they would have taken it but they'd never hold it. So he faced down the hotheads who urged an attack.

The honorable peace that was settled left the city in Muslim control but gave free passage to Christians

There were some almighty massacres and brutality on both sides. There was also honour and compassion on both sides

Well the same goes for the Christian king in the movie who held on to it before the muslims who also kept the peace and allowed muslims free passage also. But according to the film ( true history here? ) there was a few bad apple templars who kept going off and killing muslims for no reason to incite them to war which is eventually what happened and then the muslims took it over once again.

I wonder how the story unfolds from there as they dont say in the film. In whose hands is Jerusalem in today then? it always was a place of division and upset. I pray for it now I really do.

Would be interesting to get a non-biased and good historical book on it all. Will have to do some Catholic online shopping.

Michael G

Onesimus wrote: »

I'm just wondering how true to its true history is this film? or would you consider it to be traced with watered down truth mostly influenced by those who dislike religion both Christian and Muslim alike? and thus distort its history in the movie.

I'm asking because I've never read up on the Crusades that much and my knowledge of them is purely limited to say the least.

Your instincts are correct. There is nothing historical in this film except for a few details that are incidental to the main plot. The message of the film is that Christians are cruel and murderous but Muslims are basically nice (though they will of course have to protect themselves if anyone is nasty to them). You can get all of that in the Irish Times once a week or so, which means that you don't have to waste money on renting a bad film.

Onesimus

Michael G wrote: »

Your instincts are correct. There is nothing historical in this film except for a few details that are incidental to the main plot. The message of the film is that Christians are cruel and murderous but Muslims are basically nice (though they will of course have to protect themselves if anyone is nasty to them). You can get all of that in the Irish Times once a week or so, which means that you don't have to waste money on renting a bad film.

Your quite right actually.

The secularism - anti Christian - atheist/agnostic influence within the film is certainly there alright. right from the beginning where your man kills the priest ( why the priest and not somebody else? lol ). then its on to Jerusalem whislt on the way a Christian shouts '' it is not a crime to kill an infadel'' and it is where he has an affair, and ( agnostic/atheist influence steps in here ) then he doubts in God and goes his own way. Then the bishop in it is the butt of all the jokes near the end. shouting ''blasphemy'' and tellings lies like ''lets just convert to islam and repent later'' and all that blah blah.

But your right, the muslim majority in the film are portrayed as little angels lol. The Christians are the big meanies. There is though I would suspect, even in the professional historian field a lot of myth and made up theories invented by the modern historian which are not true but they sell well because they tell people what they want to hear. Such as ''The Catholic Church is horrid yayyy''

philologos

Read an account of the First Crusade. Blood flowed through the streets of Jerusalem according to historical accounts following it. They put every Muslim and Jew in the city to the sword. It was simply put injustifiable in the light of the Gospel. The Crusades sicken me as a Christian.

antiskeptic

Onesimus wrote: »

Would be interesting to get a non-biased and good historical book on it all. Will have to do some Catholic online shopping.

Why not get an unbiased one on the Inquisition whilst your at it?

Michael G

Jakkass wrote: »

Read an account of the First Crusade. Blood flowed through the streets of Jerusalem according to historical accounts following it. They put every Muslim and Jew in the city to the sword. It was simply put injustifiable in the light of the Gospel. The Crusades sicken me as a Christian.

Contemporary accounts from the Middle Ages are probably not without overstatement, but you are right in saying that there were many atrocities during the Crusades. There was plenty of heroism and holiness as well though. Nothing is black-and-white.

But the main point I was trying to make is that the film is rubbish.

Michael G

antiskeptic wrote: »

Why not get an unbiased one on the Inquisition whilst your at it?

Indeed. I'd like to find one myself. Unbiased books are for grown-ups who can read without moving their lips.

El_Duderino 09

Onesimus wrote: »

Your quite right actually.

The secularism - anti Christian - atheist/agnostic influence within the film is certainly there alright. right from the beginning where your man kills the priest ( why the priest and not somebody else? lol ). then its on to Jerusalem whislt on the way a Christian shouts '' it is not a crime to kill an infadel'' and it is where he has an affair, and ( agnostic/atheist influence steps in here ) then he doubts in God and goes his own way. Then the bishop in it is the butt of all the jokes near the end. shouting ''blasphemy'' and tellings lies like ''lets just convert to islam and repent later'' and all that blah blah.

But your right, the muslim majority in the film are portrayed as little angels lol. The Christians are the big meanies. There is though I would suspect, even in the professional historian field a lot of myth and made up theories invented by the modern historian which are not true but they sell well because they tell people what they want to hear. Such as ''The Catholic Church is horrid yayyy''

Ah come on now. The Christian warriors who set out did so not to ask the muslims nicely to leave and show them the bible. They set out to kill whoever they needed to take the cities they wanted, or as you put it being 'big meanies'. The Muslims on the other hand included warriors trained to kill and women and children bakers and builders who were not interested in killing anyone. It did happen on their turf so its probably sample population bias. No no actually its the atheists fault the Christians look like invaders.

Michael G

Not sure what your point is. Certainly the Crusaders committed atrocities, though massacres of non-combatants were the norm in mediaeval wars between Christians as well.

The film is still unhistorical crap, though.

Fanny Cradock

There are a few resources here on the Crusades. I can't personally vouch for them.

PDN

The crusades were a very nasty and brutish bit of history that had a multitude of causes (including socio-economic conditions in Europe), not much to do with God, and where few figures behaved creditably.

Bob Fisk posted a review of the film in The Independent newspaper a few years back, detailing how it was perceived by a predominantly Muslim audience in Lebanon:

Why Ridley Scott's story of the Crusades struck such a
chord in a Lebanese cinema

Having lived in Lebanon 29 years, I too found tears of
laughter running down my face

by Robert Fisk

The Independent (UK)
Saturday, 4th June 2005

Long live Ridley Scott. I never thought I'd say this.
Gladiator had a screenplay that might have come from
the Boy's Own Paper. Black Hawk Down showed the Arabs
of Somalia as generically violent animals. But when I
left the cinema after seeing Scott's extraordinary
sand-and-sandals epic on the Crusades, Kingdom of
Heaven, I was deeply moved - not so much by the film,
but by the Muslim audience among whom I watched it in
Beirut.

I know what the critics have said. The screenplay isn't
up for much and Orlando Bloom, playing the loss-of-
faith crusader Balian of Ibelin, does indeed look - as
The Independent cruelly observed - like a backpacker
touring the Middle East in a gap year.

But there is an integrity about its portrayal of the
Crusades which, while fitting neatly into our
contemporary view of the Middle East - the moderate
crusaders are overtaken by crazed neo-conservative
barons while Saladin is taunted by a dangerously al-
Qa'ida-like warrior - treats the Muslims as men of
honour who can show generosity as well as ruthlessness
to their enemies.

It was certainly a revelation to sit through Kingdom of
Heaven not in London or New York but in Beirut, in the
Middle East itself, among Muslims - most of them in
their 20s - who were watching historical events that
took place only a couple of hundred miles from us. How
would the audience react when the Knights Templars went
on their orgy of rape and head-chopping among the
innocent Muslim villagers of the Holy Land, when they
advanced, covered in gore, to murder Saladin's
beautiful, chadored sister? I must admit, I held my
breath a few times.

I need not have bothered. When the leprous King of
Jerusalem - his face covered in a steel mask to spare
his followers the ordeal of looking at his
decomposition - falls fatally ill after honourably
preventing a battle between Crusaders and Saracens,
Saladin, played by that wonderful Syrian actor Ghassan
Massoud - and thank God the Arabs in the film are
played by Arabs - tells his deputies to send his own
doctors to look after the Christian king.

At this, there came from the Muslim audience a round of
spontaneous applause. They admired this act of mercy
from their warrior hero; they wanted to see his
kindness to a Christian.

There are some things in the film which you have to be
out here in the Middle East to appreciate. When Balian
comes across a pile of crusader heads lying on the sand
after the Christian defeat at the 1187 battle of
Hittin, everyone in the cinema thought of Iraq; here is
the nightmare I face each time I travel to report in
Iraq. Here is the horror that the many Lebanese who
work in Iraq have to confront. Yet there was a
wonderful moment of self-deprecation among the audience
when Saladin, reflecting on his life, says: "Somebody
tried to kill me once in Lebanon."

The house came down. Everyone believed that Massoud
must have inserted this line to make fun of the
Lebanese ability to destroy themselves and - having
lived in Lebanon 29 years and witnessed almost all its
tragedy - I too founds tears of laughter running down
my face.

I suppose that living in Lebanon, among those crusader
castles, does also give an edge to Kingdom of Heaven.
It's said that Scott originally wanted to film in
Lebanon (rather than Spain and Morocco) and to call his
movie Tripoli after the great crusader keep I visited a
few weeks ago. One of the big Christian political
families in Lebanon, the Franjiehs, take their name
from the "Franj", which is what the Arabs called the
crusaders. The Douai family in Lebanon - with whom the
Franjiehs fought a bitter battle, Knights Templar-
style, in a church in 1957 - are the descendants of the
French knights who came from the northern French city
of Douai.

Yet it is ironic that this movie elicited so much
cynical comment in the West. Here is a tale that -
unlike any other recent film - has captured the
admiration of Muslims. Yet we denigrated it. Because
Orlando Bloom turns so improbably from blacksmith to
crusader to hydraulic engineer? Or because we felt
uncomfortable at the way the film portrayed "us", the
crusaders?

But it didn't duck Muslim vengeance. When Guy de
Lusignan hands the cup of iced water given him by
Saladin to the murderous knight who slaughtered
Saladin's daughter, the Muslim warrior says menacingly:
"I did not give you the cup." And then he puts his
sword through the knight's throat. Which is, according
to the archives, exactly what he did say and exactly
what he did do.

Massoud, who is a popular local actor in Arab films -
he is known in the Middle East as the Syrian Al Pacino
- in reality believes that George Bush is to blame for
much of the crisis between the Muslim and Western
world. "George Bush is stupid and he loves blood more
than the people and music," he said in a recent
interview. "If Saladin were here he would have at least
not allowed Bush to destroy the world, especially the
feeling of humanity between people."

Massoud agreed to play Saladin because he trusted Scott
to be fair with history. I had to turn to that fine
Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf to discover whether
Massoud was right. Maalouf it was who wrote the seminal
The Crusades through Arab Eyes, researching for his
work among Arab rather than Crusader archives. "Too
fair," was his judgement on Kingdom of Heaven.

I see his point. But at the end of the film, after
Balian has surrendered Jerusalem, Saladin enters the
city and finds a crucifix lying on the floor of a
church, knocked off the altar during the three-day
siege. And he carefully picks up the cross and places
it reverently back on the altar. And at this point the
audience rose to their feet and clapped and shouted
their appreciation. They loved that gesture of honour.
They wanted Islam to be merciful as well as strong. And
they roared their approval above the soundtrack of the
film.

So I left the Dunes cinema in Beirut strangely uplifted
by this extraordinary performance - of the audience as
much as the film. See it if you haven't. And if you do,
remember how the Muslims of Beirut came to realise that
even Hollywood can be fair. I came away realising why -
despite the murder of Beirut's bravest journalist on
Friday - there probably will not be a civil war here
again. So if you see Kingdom of Heaven, when Saladin
sets the crucifix back on the altar, remember that
deafening applause from the Muslims of Beirut.

Sorry about the formatting. That's cut and paste for you!

Fanny Cradock

Gotta love a bit of Fisk!

Onesimus

antiskeptic wrote: »

Why not get an unbiased one on the Inquisition whilst your at it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J14QdG9UZC4

here is a book you all might like.

Splendour

Spare a thought for the innocents who got involved with the Children's Crusade-now there's a subject that'd make a great film...

Seaneh

Splendour wrote: »

Spare a thought for the innocents who got involved with the Children's Crusade-now there's a subject that'd make a great film...

The vast majority of what was written about the two events is either greatly exaggerated or totally fictional.

It wasn't children either, as in, it wasn't groups of 5-14 year olds, more likely groups of older teens and early twenty-somethings, and none of them made it past Genoa (the group from Germany) or Paris (The group from France).

The stories of thousands of children being sold into slavery in Tunisia is a fairytail.

Glenster

You should see the director's cut, it makes 100% more sense than the theatrical version.

As for the quote about blood flowing through the streets, all that 'up to their bridles' talk, that's a quote from the bible about what would happen when jerusalem was recaptured from the infidel, no proper historian accepts it as reliable reportage.

As for whether the Christian States or Muslim States were 'worse' than each other, that's a silly circuitous discussion.

Splendour

Seaneh wrote: »

The vast majority of what was written about the two events is either greatly exaggerated or totally fictional.

It wasn't children either, as in, it wasn't groups of 5-14 year olds, more likely groups of older teens and early twenty-somethings, and none of them made it past Genoa (the group from Germany) or Paris (The group from France).

The stories of thousands of children being sold into slavery in Tunisia is a fairytail.

I always assumed it was 12-16 year olds which is not beyond the realms of belief considering it was the 11th century. It is the passion and beliefs of these children which made them want to join in the fervour of the crusades that really intrigues me.

A song of the crusades: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6SkaFMTihI