May 15, 2005
Orlando’s Magic “Kingdom of Heaven”
 by Honora Howell Chapman
Private Papers

This week I was trapped for half an hour at a haircut place while a nice woman tried to remove three inches from my son’s retro-’70s mane. After biding my time with Marie Claire, I turned to the meatier material. US Weekly, which makes People magazine look like The Economist, did a poll of 100 people asking who of the three stars Orlando Bloom, Colin Farrell, and Brad Pitt (in alphabetical order, lest any of you accuse me of showing preference here) looks like the biggest “hunk on horseback.”

From the photos they provided in the spread, I’d have to agree with the 57% who picked Bloom in the new “Kingdom of Heaven,” since Pitt (who garnered more than 30%) looks vaguely maniacal in his helmeted shot from “Troy,” and Farrell…well, I don’t care how many hours he spent with paramilitary experts learning how to mimic Alexander, he still looks god-awful as a blond and came in justifiably at under 10%.

Using this scientific measure, I’d have to apply it now to the three movies in their entirety and scientifically conclude that “Kingdom of Heaven” is, indeed, the best of these three epics of the past year. I’d have to add, however, that all of this makes a person long that much more for Russell Crowe, the indisputable master of creating a character for a sword-and-sandals film over the past five years. Even half-dead on horseback on his way to Spain, he’s more a man than any of these three dandies.

Ridley Scott keeps making my “favorite” films—first “Blade Runner” and then “Gladiator.” “Kingdom of Heaven” follows suit with a compelling script, fine acting, and fantastic sets and costumes. At certain moments it’s even magical, as when one catches sight of Jerusalem for the first time, though at another I could swear the actors had wandered into “Gladiator”’s mythical Zuchabar — such things must happen when roving around the Moroccan desert.

I do wish Scott had consulted me, however, before making the final editing cuts for his 2.5-hour screen version, because any grown woman (or man) could have told him that we needed more Liam Neeson — after all, all three of the “Lord of the Rings” movies went on forever, and no one minded. Orlando Bloom is fine for the teenyboppers in the summer audiences, but Eva Green as Sibylla looked for most of the film like she’d normally have had Bloom’s Balian as an appetizer but then gone prowling around for Neeson’s Godfrey of Ibelin as the main course. And who let Brendan Gleeson (playing Reynald) do his own hair-dye job? Agamemnon never would have stood for such tresses. I suspect that the full-length, 4-hour version will be a better film.

I asked my students in Roman Humanities the other day which scene they enjoyed the most, and Amalia immediately replied the one where Balian makes knights of all the common folk of Jerusalem in order to mount a defense against Saladin’s besieging army and uses the same technique his father Godfrey had in order to make the vow memorable.

This is the dream, isn’t it? That we as ordinary people suddenly find ourselves asked to give more and to rise above the ordinary when a crisis is at hand? I doubt that any adult in the audience could watch that scene and not think of the “ordinary” heroes of 9/11. It’s a metaphor for the American way under duress.

This film repeatedly asks us to ponder religious, political, and social ideology, and the results are not black-and-white, nor do they map necessarily onto today’s problems. The noble Balian who enters his crusade in an attempt to save the soul of his dead wife and ends up also saving a large civilian population isn’t very “religious” nor is he motivated by righteous vengeance against Muslims. Furthermore, Saladin (who, as the guides on al-Haram al-Sharif / the Temple Mount in Jerusalem will say to this day, “was a great man”) is hardly Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, though the latter—from Tikrit like Saladin—dearly would have liked Iraqis to think so back in the days when he was killing Kurds, who were ironically Saladin’s kin.

For those of you who would like to read more about Jerusalem and Saladin’s conquest during this period between the 2nd and 3rd Crusades, I would highly recommend Eric Cline’s new book Jerusalem Besieged, which covers the three millennia of the city’s history—from King David to the intifadas in a highly readable fashion. Here you can learn more about the devastating Battle of Hattin fought not far from the Sea of Galilee remarkably on July 4th, 1187, when the main crusader army was slaughtered. According to Ernoul, one of the Franks who wrote a chronicle, “Pope Urban who was at Ferrara died of grief when he heard the news.” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1187ernoul.html) [After seeing “National Treasure” should one now wonder whether the crypto-Masonic Founding Fathers chose that date specifically for their day of liberation? Oliver Stone must look into this.]

From Cline’s book you’ll also learn that Guy de Lusignan was King at that time, not the leprous Baldwin IV (who had died two years earlier — I don’t mind this liberty with the facts, though, since it makes for excellent theater with that spooky mask). Saladin then took Jerusalem on October 2nd, the same date as Mohammed’s Night Journey to heaven—very propitious, indeed.

I’m not certain that Ridley Scott will enjoy the same success with “Kingdom of Heaven” as he did with “Gladiator.” Perhaps, as I said before, the uncut version will be more satisfying as a whole. But one thing I can be sure of about this film is that its co-star Ghassan Massoud, though playing a strong and clement Saladin, will nevertheless not make it into the “hunk on horseback” contest in the next issue of US Weekly.