Rid­ley Scott’s video intro­duc­tion to the Director’s Cut of King­dom of Heaven claims it is more than a merely extended ver­sion of the film. The Director’s Cut rep­re­sents his inten­tions, and is “the best ver­sion” of the film. The most sig­nif­i­cant restora­tion he sin­gles out is a sub­plot involv­ing Princess Sibylla’s son. This ver­sion is long, yes, but always engross­ing and inter­est­ing. It’s incred­i­ble that this much mate­r­ial was shot for one movie. It must have been clear from the length of the script that much of it was going to have be cut, but the expense and ded­i­ca­tion was there to shoot more than was needed in order to be able to shape the story later in the edit­ing room. I might have lost my patience with a three-and-a-half hour long movie in the the­ater, but it’s per­fect for home viewing.

Gal­lic God­dess Eva Green

King­dom of Heaven opens in France in 1184. At the time, Jews, Chris­tians, and Mus­lims were shar­ing Jerusalem not quite in peace, but in rel­a­tive sta­bil­ity. The wise King Bald­win IV and the cyn­i­cal but basi­cally decent Tiberias (Jeremy Irons) are barely pre­serv­ing the frag­ile stale­mate. By and large, Mus­lim char­ac­ters are pre­sented as more sane and civ­i­lized than the Chris­tians. Inter­est­ingly, Jews are men­tioned but are absent from the pro­ceed­ings — evi­dently to this Dork Reporter unschooled in the rel­e­vant his­tory, they had lit­tle polit­i­cal power at the time. Indeed, Chris­t­ian holy men come across the worst of all. Early in the film, a preacher in a ram­shackle Euro­pean lay­over camp along the route to the Holy Land pro­claims to prospec­tive Cru­saders that “To kill an infi­del, the Pope has said, is not mur­der. It is the path to heaven.” Later, as the Chris­t­ian army is about to be over­run by the Mus­lim army, one priest advises every­one to “Con­vert to Islam. Repent later.”

Balian de Ibelin (Orlando Bloom) is a wid­owed French black­smith swept up in vast his­tor­i­cal events. Bloom’s per­for­mance as the real-life his­tor­i­cal fig­ure isn’t bad, exactly, but he’s deadly dull. He is cer­tainly earnest and hand­some, but with­out the sym­pa­thetic star­power of a true lead­ing man. Balian is a largely pas­sive man caught up in key moments of his­tory by the arbi­trary whims of birth and luck, not unlike For­rest Gump. A plot not dri­ven by the actions of the pro­tag­o­nist could be seen as a sign of bad screen­writ­ing, but I’m pre­pared to accept the basic arc if it means it can hold such an inter­est­ing core con­cept together.

Liam Nee­son teaches his young padawan Orlando Bloom the ways of the Force

Balian dis­cov­ers he is the ille­git­i­mate son to the Knight of Jerusalem God­frey de Ibelin (Liam Nee­son). He inher­its the man­tle and is launched on a jour­ney that makes him a knight, friend and coun­selor to the wise King Bald­win (Edward Nor­ton), lover of his beau­ti­ful sis­ter Princess Sibylla (Eva Green), and leader of the doomed defense of Jerusalem. But what’s most implau­si­ble is his sud­den emer­gence as a mas­ter swords­man, mil­i­tary strate­gist, archi­tect of fortresses, civil engi­neer of irri­ga­tion sys­tems, and hon­or­able lord who treats his sub­jects fairly. True, he is estab­lished early on as an “enginer” who despairs have hav­ing fought in mean­ing­less con­flicts and designed war machines for the slaugh­ter of inno­cents. But it is absurd for this largely une­d­u­cated man to wield such knowl­edge and wisdom.

More­over, Balian arguably causes more harm than good. His pride in being a good knight (as per his father’s dying instruc­tion) leads to the slaugh­ter of an entire army and to an evil man becom­ing king of Jerusalem. His piety doesn’t stop him from sleep­ing with a mar­ried princess, but he later hyp­o­crit­i­cally decides sleep­ing with her is no longer morally accept­able when her hus­band Guy of Lusig­nan (Mar­ton Csokas) becomes king. And what kind of man would kick Eva Green out of bed?

This review can’t have enough pic­tures of Eva Green

The vil­lain­ous Guy is car­toon­ishly fey and sneer­ing, and prob­a­bly not coin­ci­den­tally the most obvi­ously French of all the char­ac­ters (per­haps for the best, few other cast mem­bers attempt to affect French accents). It is sug­gested that he knows his son has lep­rosy, and cal­lously banks on him dying and thus allow­ing him to be king. But what exactly does he want? If power, he gets it. So why then spark a holy war? The film­mak­ers’ inten­tions may have been to draw an ana­log to Bush’s mis­ad­ven­tures in the Mid­dle East, but Guy doesn’t seem to be the pious sort who believes it is his duty as a Chris­t­ian to purge the Holy Land of infi­del Muslims.

Spe­cial men­tion must go to Edward Nor­ton, excel­lent as King Bald­win IV, whose advanced lep­rosy left him a face­less man in an iron mask. I don’t mean this praise as a back­handed slight to Nor­ton; he expertly con­veys intel­li­gence and wis­dom through his voice and body lan­guage alone.

Edward Nor­ton as the orig­i­nal man in the iron mask

Inter­est­ingly for a Hol­ly­wood epic, King­dom of Heaven actu­ally fea­tures very few of the grand bat­tles usu­ally required for the genre. The tension-and-release struc­ture of William Monahan’s screen­play is almost musi­cal. After a long buildup, the first con­flict is cur­tailed before it begins. King Bald­win can­nily nego­ti­ates for peace by per­son­ally show­ing up despite his advanced (and known to the enemy) ill­ness; also, his rep­u­ta­tion as in intel­li­gent man pre­cedes him. The sec­ond bat­tle hap­pens mostly off-screen. Finally, very late in the film, we see the spec­tac­u­lar defense of Jerusalem against the Mus­lim army. Other direc­tors might not have been able to resist wow­ing us with spec­tac­u­lar bat­tles for so long, but Scott and Monahan’s inter­ests are admirably else­where: in the characters.

On release in 2005, King­dom of Heaven was lumped in with Wolf­gang Petersen’s Troy, only inso­far as they were both his­tor­i­cal epics. It’s a dou­bly unfair com­par­i­son in that Troy, a far infe­rior film, is set hun­dreds of years ear­lier and based on a work of lit­er­a­ture. King­dom of Heaven was inter­preted as a direct com­men­tary on US incur­sions in the Mid­dle East, not least because one of George W. Bush’s most breath­tak­ing gaffes (in a pres­i­dency full of them) was to cast his war on ter­ror as a “cru­sade.” If he ever screens King­dom of Heaven, per­haps he will gain a lit­tle per­spec­tive and be inspired to read up on the long, com­pli­cated three-way reli­gious con­flict in The Mid­dle East.

Offi­cial movie site: www.kingdomofheavendvd.com

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