Kingdom of Heaven

It's been a while since the last time I wrote a movie review, and in the particular case of Kingdom of Heaven there are certain elements that may affect the equanimity of my comments. In order to keep a balance I decided to divide my review in two parts. This, the first one, was originally published in Spanish in La Hoguera de las Necedades and is where I tried to remain as objective as possible; the second one, which will follow this text, was published in the Spanish version of this blog and it presents a more personal and subjective view of the movie.

Kingdom of Heaven it's the title of the most recent work by Sir Ridley Scott, and represents the most recent adition to the once-again-favored genre of epic movies, where Scott had previously ventured with Gladiator. Kingdom of Heaven it's a clear example of the skills that have made Ridley Scott one of the most reliable directors in Hollywood. In recent times he seemed to have lost the sensibility required to tell stories from a personal viewpoint, which was one of the most important aspects of some of his best movies, such as Blade Runner or Thelma and Louise. Despite having remarkable cast on movies like Hannibal or Gladiator, the resulting films felt distant and cold. Hannibal relies too heavy on visual shock or spectacular cinematography to capture its audience, but the story seems cold and without a soul. Gladiator suffers from the same ailings. The characters never make it past rigid archetypes devoid of personality, and the excessive amount of CGI used to recreate Rome don't help either, resulting in a film valued only for the talent Scott displays for composing battle scenes.

Fortunately Scott seems to have catched on the problem with those films. Blackhawk Down it's a story based on real events and he manages to tell the story without taking a side and making a propagandistic film, which would have been far easier given the current state of the world and the discussions about U. S. military interventions in different parts of the world. Instead, Scott focus his efforts in telling the story of a group of people coping with a hard situation, showing their reactions and motivations without trying to patronize his audience. The film ends up being a story about the human spirit instead of another take on how the U. S. Army always overcomes adversity.

And Kingdom of Heaven works in very much the same way. Instead of making a recount of historical facts surrounding the time of the crusades, Scott chooses to tell a tale of inner quest, the personal crusade of a young blacksmith trying to find himself after suffering the loss of his wife and stillborn child. Balian, the young blacksmith, is contacted by Godfrey, Baron of Ibelin, a noble knight with residence in Jerusalem, who has come to reveal than he is his father and would like Balian to acompany him back to the Holy Land, where he will be able to start a new life and seek atonement from his past. Balian accepts to go, hoping to find inner peace in the place where Christ died.

The movie has been widely criticized for the lack of depth in some of the characters and Scott has been accused of underusing actors like Liam Neeson or Jeremy Irons, but I think that the problem is that he lets their characters fade into the background to fast to show their impact in Balian's life. They are his father and his mentor, after all. Orlando Bloom's work is the best of his career without being extraordinary, as he manages to portray Balian as a believable character. But a special mention should go to Edward Norton, who manages to build a character using only his eyes and voice as he appears all the time hidden behind a silver mask.

Perhaps another fact to be used in defense of Scott it is than the original cut of the movie lasted more than three and a half hours, meaning than the studio took away more than an hour of footage. We´ll have to wait for the Director's Cut DVD to know if Scott's original vision was more profound than the one that reached theaters around the world.

Anyway, just the cinematography in the film is well-worth the ticket. The sheer beauty of the locations and sets it's breathtaking, and that as well as the precisely mounted battle scenes are reason enough to watch this movie. In short, Kingdom of Heaven it's an epic film with historic overtones, and without being the best of its type it is by far better and most accomplished than works like Gladiator, Alexander, or King Arthur; and from a personal viewpoint -more on that later- most of the negative comments come from people upset because the movie doesn´t agree with their religious beliefs, wether christian or muslim. I guess than Roger Ebert sums it up quite well: "If you are upsetting both sides, surely you are doing something right".