Of Gods and Men Dir. Xavier Beauvois

[Sony Pictures Classics; 2011]

Styles: drama
Others: Essene

In March 1996, seven French Trappist monks from the Algerian monastery of Tibhirine were kidnapped and beheaded by the GIA, a Jihadist organization seeking the creation of an Islamic state in Algeria. According to a French military attaché, the monks may have been killed accidentally by the Algerian army during a rescue attempt, but of course that it would have been an accident is above suspicion, seeing as they were beheaded. Nevertheless, the GIA claimed responsibility for the deaths, and that became the main historical line on this grim page of postcolonial Algerian history. Events such as these can be said to carve indelible channels in the collective consciousness of a people, channels through which streams of conjecture, rumor, myth, and historical fact will course, fueling broad cultural notions of hostile “otherness.” It can also be argued that such notions comprise a significant portion of director Xavier Beauvois’ research for his latest film, 2010 Grand Prix-winner Of Gods and Men, a docudrama of the aforementioned events. Unsurprisingly, the “assassination of the monks” is still a widely discussed issue in France, as for many it is both a philosophically challenging and theologically reaffirming historical moment — an act of pure evil on the part of the aggressors, a contemporary martyrdom on the part of the monks.

If Beauvois and his co-writer Etienne Comar consider the monks’ choice to stay in Tibhirine to serve their fellow man and woman, regardless of faith or creed and despite the looming threat of violence, an unimpeachable act of grace, then it could be argued that the film’s fast and loose handling of the political, theological, and Algerian-cultural implications of that choice is justified: there is no implicit conceit of a film such as Of Gods and Men that it must offer the most complete and rigorous account of the historical event it depicts. And from an dramaturgical perspective, it may have been more important to subordinate any political implications of that event to its potential as a modern tragedy. On the other hand, their choice to imagine each of the film’s principal characters as living signs, broad symbols of either pure magnanimity or abysmal evil, implies a story perhaps too thoroughly grounded in the potentially harmful, obfuscous notions touched upon in the previous paragraph. The choice to depict Christian (Lambert Wilson), the de facto leader of the monks, as a sort of Trappist-Henry Fonda, an unflinching, even-handed “muscular Christian,” could be regarded as a bit naïve, nay even cloying: we can’t confirm that the monks accepted their fate this blissfully, nor that only one of them ever questioned his faith (and briefly at that). But, were this not the case, then the film’s most bathetic sequence, what Beauvois has called the monks’ “last supper,” in which they wordlessly, to the tune of “Swan’s Theme,” concur that they must die (swans symbolizing, as in the Tchaikovsky ballet and most European mythologies, both purity and innocence) would simply not work. Of course, it does, and it’s a beautiful, affecting moment.

But equally vexing is the film’s facile dichotomization of the “good” and “bad Muslims,” the former, embodied as two wizened confidants of the monks expressing utter bewilderment as to the cause of the violent extremism of the latter, the inexplicable “new” militarized Islam, which the filmmakers presume did not exist before the Algerian Civil War. Beauvois seems to be fascinated by (a notion of) the minutiae of life in a monastery, but instead of focusing on self-mortification, poverty, and solitude — especially that of the Trappists, whose order is known to discourage idle talk, so much so that the monks have developed a monastic sign language over time — he shifts his attention to their tightly coordinated, balletic daily rites, his depictions of which are, at the risk of sounding like “the only person in the world not out of step,” quite campy, silly, and clearly filtered through the imagination of one who can only imagine such rituals as glitzy dance numbers devoid of any solemnity. To make matters worse, singing their characters’ daily rounds in clear, pitch-perfect, three-part harmonies, the troupe sound a bit like a smug barbershop quartet.

Regardless of what he may represent, either politically, culturally, or narratively, it cannot be denied that Wilson is a gifted actor, delivering highly adequate work here as ever. Although legendary actor Michael Lonsdale (Luc) may occasionally fall victim to the honeyed cuteness befitting a sainted role as “caregiver to the weak children,” he delivers an equally powerful performance, communicating warmth, wisdom, and true courage in the face of weakening. But I think these performances, when conceptualized as expressions of Beauvois and Comar’s two main hero figures, also provide an interesting contrast of martyr-identification: while Wilson’s Christian may be outwardly composed yet harboring some seething, borderline un-Christian rage at the thoughtless atrocities surrounding him, Londsdale’s Luc is resigned to his fate from the moment we set eyes on him, as though he is already aware of it. The viewer is effectually “sold” on this when, in the film’s final scenes, Luc reveals his belief that if escaping certain death means abandoning the work, there will be a far worse fate.

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