Historical inaccuracies aside, which can be excused for dramatic purposes, Kingdom of Heaven can serve as a very real mirror of how the modern world wants to view history.
A lot of modern day, some would say liberal, theology found it’s way into the film. The Christians theology isn’t so much Catholic teaching of the twelfth century, but catholic thinking of the 22nd century world.
A knight Hospitaller, played by David Thewlis, gives the hero a speech that religion a worldly creation that gets in the way of faith. The crusader’s shown in the film, the good ones at least, are out to make the holy land a Camelot, “A Kingdom of Conscious.” While I think this might possibly be true, from what I’ve read it most likely wasn’t.
The biggest character flaw comes at the climax of the movie where Balian of Ibelin has parlay with Saladin, the great Muslim general and leader after the city’s walls had been breached.
In the movie Balian, played by Orlando Bloom, walks out and says “You may take Jerusalem, but I will burn it to the ground first, every holy place, Muslim and Christian, everything about Jerusalem that drives men mad.”
From what I read the actual quote more likely goes something like this: “You’re going to take Jerusalem, but before you do I will kill every Muslim woman, child and man within the walls and desecrate every Muslim holy place.”
In the movie Saladin allows all the Christians to go free. In reality he and Balian negotiated a deal where 7,000 of the estimated 20,000 Christians in the city could go free in exchange for 30,000 dinars. More were freed but still several thousand were sold into muslin slavery.
It’s one of those situations where actual history doesn’t lend itself to a good movie making and the actual people don’t make good movie characters.
Article comments
1 - Dair
You wrote -
In the movie Balian, played by Orlando Bloom, walks out and says “You may take Jerusalem, but I will burn it to the ground first, every holy place, Muslim and Christian, everything about Jerusalem that drives men mad.”
From what I read the actual quote more likely goes something like this: “You’re going to take Jerusalem, but before you do I will kill every Muslim woman, child and man within the walls and desecrate every Muslim holy place.”
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I don't know where you read that, but the actual quote, translated from the account of Ibn al-Athir, is this -
'Know, O Sultan,that there are very many of us in this city, God alone knows how many. At the moment we are fighting half-heartedly in the hope of saving our lives, hoping to be spared by you as you have spared others; this is because the nature of horror of death and our love for life. But if we see that death is inevitable, then by God we shall kill our children and our wives, burn our possessions, so as not to leave you with a dinar or a drachma or a single man or woman to enslave. When this is done, we shall pull down the Sanctuary of the Rock and the Masjid al-Aqsa and the other sacred places, slaughtering the Muslim prisoners we hold " 5,000 of them " and killling every horse and animal we possess. Then we shall come out to fight you like men fighting for their lives, when each man, before he falls dead, kills ten of his equals; we shall die with honour, or win a noble victory!'
2 - Matt Schafer
Isn't that effectively true to what I said. I'm using a paraphrase from John Robinson's book. Notice how Balian said the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque but didn't mention any Christian place in Jerusalem.
Also it doesn't change the point that a lot of historic figures acted a lot less heroic then hollywood and many writers are willing to portray them.
3 - Dave Nalle
The translated speech sounds pretty damned heroic to me by medieval standards.
Dave
4 - Dair
Your paraphrase made it sound as if Balian said he would only kill the Muslims in Jerusalem. He said they would kill ALL of their own women and children and then the Muslim prisoners.
When Balin said "we shall pull down the Sanctuary of the Rock and the Masjid al-Aqsa and the other sacred places", the other sacred places would have been understood by Salah al-Din to be the Jewish Western Wall and the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
5 - pat
In historical movies, novels or plays the important issue is not the detail it is the message. History is wrapped in ignorance and ambiguity. An author or producer or director is always presented with a wide set of events, actions and characters that they may emphasize or eliminate. In no case has there ever been a historical play or movie that was very accurate to the actual history. Novels can come closer because they have fewer constraints.
For example the movie Braveheart portrays the Battle of Sterling Bridge without the bridge. Gibson just ran out of money to build the bridge.. Gibson himself was about a foot too short to be Wallace just as Peter O'Toole was about a foot too tal to be Lawrence. It doesn't matter. The movie's message was true to history or the legend (even if the legend of Lawrence was itself mostly fiction).
The events and characters of the "Kingdom of Heaven" are quite accurate by movie standards - certainly much more accurate than Scott's earlier film "Gladiator". What however is the MESSAGE of "Kingdom of Heaven"?
The message is:
- Christians are evil and venal
- Muslims are good and noble
- It is good to surrender
- Osama bin Laden is a hero
Notice that the priests in the film are weak, treacherous and evil. The first one is incinerated on a whim of Balian. This scene is designed to make us sympathetic to Balian. Huh?
Muslims are shown as good and noble. The first muslims Balian meets in the desert are noble and honorable. So are all the subsequent muslims. Balian inhabits a city filled with rotten scheming Christians where he and few others are exceptions - they act like muslims.
The historical Balian is famous as the man who surrendered Jerusalem to Saladin. This action - a defeat - is celebrated in the movie as the happy ending. Braveheart celebrates the rise of Scottish freedom. Lawrence of Arabia celebrates the triumph over the Turks. This movie celebrates giving up in the Middle East and going home.
Osama bin Laden is known in the muslim world as the new Saladin. Scott chose an actor for the part of Saladin who looks remarkably like Osama bin Laden. This is rather like the casting of the evil Vice President in "The Day After Tomorrow" with an actor who looked like Dick Cheney. "The Kingdom of Heaven" reputedly is popular in the Middle East among muslims - anti-Christain, anti-Western political propaganda always is.
6 - jbettym
I just saw "Kingdon of Heaven", and it has led me to research that time.
I have read in the past books about the crusades and know it was a terrible and shameful time in world history, and don't know what good ever came from it. The visuals in the movie were chilling.
It is new in my mind, but I don't think Balian killed the first priest on a whim (perhaps my definition of a whim is different than the contributors). The priest had taken the cross from his dead wife's neck and seemed to take pleasure in telling him she would be headless in hell.
These seem to be pretty strong things to tell a man who just lost a child and a wife in any period of time. Especially when the wife had done something totally unacceptable like kill herself. It was a movie, based on something that happened long ago. I do think Pope John apologized for many things the church did in the past, I don't know if the crusades were one of them, but they should have been. It was a thought provoking movie, just as the Joan of Arc movie "The Messenger" was.