DVD: “Of Gods and Men”
Boy oh boy, did this 2010 French film make me feel shallow! Of Gods and Men, directed by Xavier Beauvois, was, after all, the winner of the Grand Prize, or possibly Prix, at the Cannes Film Festival. The Wall Street Journal said it was “sublime.” Time magazine said it was “a luminous tale of faith and heroism.” Leonard Maltin said it was an oversight that it didn’t win the Oscar.
Tres lent.
And all of that is true. The film is a beautifully acted, beautifully filmed, deeply intelligent evocation of the triumph of the human spirit over fear and hatred.
But it’s also really, really slow. Really. Slooooow.
After about an hour of it, I found myself thinking, “Wow, this is a luminous tale of faith and heroism. I wish it were over now.”
Based on a true story, the movie tells of a community of Trappist monks who serve and love an impoverished Muslim village in the Algeria of the 1990′s. Then there is an uprising of brutally murderous Islamists who, as we all know, can be almost as dangerous as right wing bloggers. The monks have to decide whether to high-tail it out of there or stick to their post and face near certain death. And they do decide. Slowly.
There are some absolutely amazing scenes. Amazing, slow scenes. Like the one where the camera simply travels over the monks’ faces as they sit at dinner and we can read in each man’s expression the outcome of his struggle with fear and faith. “Man,” I remember thinking, “that was a brilliant scene. I wonder if Craig Ferguson is on.”
Okay. I’m being shamelessly snarky. And the reader should know that many people whose opinions I respect really liked this movie. And I really admired and appreciated it and thought it very deep and richly textured. But I would have enjoyed it a lot more if there’d been, like, a monk car chase or something. Or anything. Because – have I mentioned this? – it’s really slow.
A monk car chase…leave it to a thriller writer- but you’re right. I felt the same way exactly, after reading all those glowing reviews and expecting something…sublime, as the reviews kept saying. I’m an open air evangelist- one of the sane ones, who tells Bible stories in a foreign country using their language, a sketch board, and water colors- and I still get rocks thrown at me. That’s when my life is really exciting. It’s boring when I sit around the house thinking of getting rocks thrown at me. We didn’t even get to see the monks bumped off- they just kind of disappeared in the snow. Reminded me of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
I got excited for a second and thought you were reviewing the Star Trek fan film, Star Trek: Of Gods and Men (starring such Trek celebrities as Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, Garrett Wang, and Alan Ruck).
Oh well.
I saw it too, they decided to stay and continue to serve christ as they understood that to be and to which they had devoted so much prayer, meditation and service to the poor and the exploited. And they went like sheeps to the slaughter when the “militants’, you know the Michael Moore “freedom fighters” needed some more blood to flow. It was disgusting to think of all of what was destroyed by a bunch of drug addicted killers, no matter how beautiful it once was.
O.M.G., Andrew! You’ve got to slow down, buddy!!!
My husband and I have seen Of Gods and Men twice (we took one of our daughters, as we wanted her to see a Christian witness that is authentic — and doesn’t end so happily, as many, many heroic stories don’t — at least, till much later.)
I guess “sublime,” Wemedge, and “slooooow,” Andrew, are in the eye of the beholder. I loved the slowness — the “real time” — of the film — well, maybe I didn’t exactly love it, but it helped me to enter into the situation. I’m sure as these monks were making their decision to stay or not to stay — and if they decide to stay, they know that their lives are entirely in jeopardy — time slowed down to almost a standstill for each one of them.
The suspension of time, the slow motion, IMO, adds to the very real tension and the agony of the situation. My sense is that we’re supposed to feel uncomfortable, exactly the discomfort the monks felt as they weighed the pros and cons of leaving or staying with the Muslim people they had grown to love.
As for a car chase: Gee, Andrew! The monks drove a wreck of a beater! It’s a small miracle — but one, nevertheless — that it was on the road at all!
You need to watch a few seasons of Mr. Rogers, Andrew. Now, there’s a guy who will slow you down!!
(I’ll talk to you about this on the cruise in November!!
This calls to mind a major trauma in my own life: going to University Film Society and watching “Last Year in Marienbad.” Being stuck in the middle of a row of wooden chars, I could not escape! Lemme tell you, it’s tough being an intellectual.
Well, there’s hope for you, Andrew, even if you missed the point of the film’s transparent spirituality. These are monks. The film’s tempo is dictated (a conscious artistic decision, no doubt) by the slow, quiet, relentless ritual celebration of the Hours in daily monastic life, a life of work and prayer. A fact of life in a monastery that this film captures with uncanny realism. Sorry, no Tom Cruise, Mr Lonsdale will have to suffice! Just simple daily communal life. Bottom line: you seem to get the truth embedded in this film, and are probably no “snarkier” than Ann Coulter, but you are no candidate for life in a monastery. Not everyone is. And that’s okay. This film isn’t for everyone, it’s not to everyone’s taste. But, hey, that’s okay too.
Just so, Mr. Gorski.
You need to watch a few seasons of Mr. Rogers, Andrew — or hie thee to a monastery to “get” the pace of monastic life!
A great insight into living the Hours is Kathleen Norris’s book The Cloister Walk and An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World’s Most Austere Monastic Order by Nancy Klein MaGuire.
Both are fascinating reads.
I have to agree with 6. I was really feeling the “slowness” until (duh!) I realized it was the ONLY way to communicate what their life was like.
If Hollywood ever re-makes it for American TV you can be sure there would be monk car-chases – except that Hollywood would have changed the monks to nuns. (The majority-female U.S. TV-viewing audience cares about females, not men.) And the opening titles would include the words “Based on a true story.”