As Vivekananda has said, “The intensest love that
humanity has ever known has come from religion, and the most diabolical
hatred that humanity has known has come from religion.” Both of these
elements are present in Xavier Beauvois Of Gods and Men, the story of
seven Roman Catholic French Trappist monks kidnapped by radical
Islamists from their monastery in the village of Tibhirine in Algeria
during the 1990s Algerian Civil War. The film depicts the sacrifices
people of good will in both religions are willing to make for each
other, and that the separation between religions is not an unbridgeable
gap.
Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Of Gods and
Men stars Lambert Wilson as Christian, Prior of the monks, and
79-year-old Michael Lonsdale as a world weary medic who treats up to
150 Moslem villagers each day. The film derives its title from the Book
of Psalms, Psalm 82:6-7 quoted at the beginning of the film: "I have
said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye
shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes." Filmed in
Morocco, the film shows the daily life of the Trappist monks before the
terrorist threat becomes real.
Though a large part of their day consists of contemplation and
devotion, living in close contact with the Muslim population allows
them to interact with them in a positive way, healing the sick, selling
honey in the nearby markets, and caring for the aged. In addition,
daily chores such as cooking, gardening, loading wood for the
fireplace, and cleaning take up a large part of the day. Soon word gets
around about the murder of European workers on a construction site by
the terrorists and the monks recoil in horror when they learn about the
stabbing of a woman riding on a bus by Islamic fundamentalists simply
because she was not wearing a veil.
The Algerian government asks the monks to leave for their own safety
but Christian tells them that their calling is to serve the people of
the community and he insists on remaining, though he is willing to let
the other monks decide. The issue becomes suddenly more immediate when
a group of fundamentalists show up at the monastery on Christmas Eve
demanding medicine for their wounded colleagues. Though the request is
refused, Christian quotes the Koran to their spokesman Ali Fayattia
(Farid Larbi) and they end up shaking hands, though the Prior senses
rightly that they will be back.
When all agree that they will not abandon the monastery even at the
risk of death, the dramatic high point of the film is reached when the
monks recreate the Last Supper by sitting around a small table drinking
wine and listening to a recording of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet. As
the camera pans from face to face, we can observe a beatific smile on
some faces and tears on others, demonstrating an inner poetry and
reverence for life. The monks are not Christian moralists but
spiritualists confronting the extremes of the human condition,
characters who point the way to overcoming despair.
The monks, like the Curé de Torcy in Bernanos’ Diary of a
Country Priest, "love poverty with a deep, reasoned, lucid love as
equal loves equal," expressing the eternal struggle of the spirit to
know Christ and to come to terms with his anguish. The heroes of the
film are not saints. They are flesh and blood human beings, full of
ambiguity and fear, but never far from compassion and humility, willing
to offer us the possibility of a world transformed by grace.
GRADE: A-
