Based on a true story of the slaughter of seven monks in Algeria, Xavier Beauvois' film meditates on the nature of true faith. Mike McCahill lauds one of the finest films of 2010.
Xavier Beauvois' new drama takes a senseless real-life atrocity – the slaughter of seven Cistercian monks in Algeria in 1996 - and shapes it into something altogether more meaningful: a philosophical meditation on the nature of true faith, and grace (in all senses of the word) under pressure.
One of these seven will be given cause to turn to Pascal's Pensées, therein finding the axiom "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction". Yet Beauvois' project over these two hours is to demonstrate how the reverse is just as easily true: that religious conviction can equally, in certain circumstances, engender acts of the utmost selflessness.
These monks are by no means silent recluses; rather, they're defined by the extent to which they've become integrated into their North African surrounds. In early scenes, we see the venerable Brother Luc (the ever-watchable Michel Lonsdale) dispensing medical and romantic wisdom to the locals, while his confreres take the monastery's own-brand honey to market. Together, they attend an Islamist prayer meeting: as the group's nominal leader, the aptly named Christian (Lambert Wilson) underlines during his own prayer rituals, "we make no distinction between any of His messengers".
Fundamentalist activity has, however, come to creep ever closer. Reports filter through of a schoolgirl knifed for not wearing the hijab, an imam shot down for being too liberal in his teachings. Then the gunmen themselves arrive at the monastery, none too enlightened ("Are you the Pope?," one of the younger interlopers asks the first monk he sees), but deadly keen to mark their territory.
We've seen several monastic items upon our screens of late – the documentaries Into Great Silence and No Greater Love, plus the feature In Memory of Me - each one attempting to make compelling such devotion as perhaps now might seem alien or exotic to the majority of cinemagoers. Yet Beauvois and co-writer Etienne Comar are less interested in the monks' chosen path than in the character of these men.
For all the hosts and cassocks, its unavoidable iconography, Of Gods and Men plays equally well as a secular study of individuals reacting to a desperate situation: Wilson's nervy Christian is forced to weigh his principles against the needs of those whose lives and souls he's been entrusted with; Lonsdale's Luc, who claims to have fought both the Nazis and the Devil, is all bluff stoicism masking growing fatigue; the tortured Christophe (Olivier Rabourdin) cries out for salvation in the night.
As in Claire Denis’ White Material, we come to watch a state of siege playing out, though here the monks' decision to stay is less a statement of defiant independence than a test of collective faith. These brothers stand together, and as such, it's yet another French film to be concerned at an essential level with the idea of community.
Throughout, Beauvois groups the monks in spare, unflashy tableaux, the one exception being during a last supper, in which Brother Luc busts out the communion wine and - to the strains of Swan Lake - the reality of what's likely to happen to them over the coming hours finally hits home. It isn’t just numerical coincidence that makes one recall the heroism located in the last reel of, say, The Magnificent Seven.
In its own austere fashion, the film serves as a very fine, highly affecting tribute. Through such moments as these, through the superlative ensemble performances, these monks live on. The movie gods, as ever, have the last laugh.
'The Victims of Tibhirine: A Further Inquiry' documentary
Theatrical trailer
Film Description
Of Gods and Men is set in a monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. Eight French Christian monks live there in harmony with their Muslim brothers.
When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realise that they have no choice but to stay, come what may.
This film is loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, from 1993 until their kidnapping in 1996.
Of Gods and Men is, visually, a beautiful film. It is set in a landscape that is ravishingly beautiful and it turns on the rhythm of monastic life, which has its own b... more >
Of Gods and Men is, visually, a beautiful film. It is set in a landscape that is ravishingly beautiful and it turns on the rhythm of monastic life, which has its own beauty (despite the dreary melodies that the modern French Roman Catholic Church uses for its offices). The acting is restrained and subtle. We see very convincingly portrayed the growth of fear and anxiety as the monks realise the danger they are in in the atmosphere of terror that prevailed in Algeria in the 1990s. The theme of the film is how that fear turns into the recognition that, as monks who have chosen to die to the world, they cannot run away from death. It is a great theme that of itself would justify the making of the film.
But my admiration for the film was still accompanied by a certain feeling of disgust.
In the 1990s, the Algerian people lived through a trauma that destroyed many thousands of lives and still remains without any clear explanation. In the aftermath of independence, Algeria was a flagship to the Arab world. It looked like a success story, a model of what Socialism could do to create a sense of national purpose in what had previously been a morally devastated French dependency.
Then the Algerian government embarked on a liberalisation of the economy (very profitable as these things tend to be for members of the government) followed by what were supposed to be democratic reforms. Then the country collapsed into chaos, partly (but this is by no means the whole story) fuelled by Muslim groups who had received their intellectual and military training in the context of the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.
I'm not suggesting that the film needed to present any sort of political overview of the events it shows but this was a huge, and specifically Algerian drama. The fate of the French monks, while certainly attracting a lot of attention in France (I happened to be living there at the time) was marginal to it, a horrid event among a huge number of horrid events. Of Gods and Men leaves us with the impression that is conveyed by so many western films concerning dramas in other parts of the world. Real human life is western, in this case French; and the life and traumas of the natives is contingent, a backdrop.
In fairness it has to be said that the film avoids a simple characterising of the Islamists as villains. If anything, they are portrayed quite sympathetically and it is the Algerian army that is shown unfavourably - notably and powerfully in the scene when the monks attempt to continue their prayer life while an army helicopter hovers noisily overhead. Happy, though, the monks who only had to endure that for what appears to be a few minutes as opposed to, say, the people of Gaza who have it as the permanent accompaniment of their lives.
Even this - army bad, Islamists not so bad - is a rather facile oversimplification. I was living with Algerians in the early 90s and at that time establishing the responsibility of the army, including responsibility for atrocities attributed to the Islamists, was a difficult thing to do. The French media began to discover the wickedness of the army once the situation had begun to settle a bit later in the 90s, and government and army were behaving more responsibly.
So although the film avoids the caricature we may have expected from the publicity ('In the face of terror their greatest weapon was faith') it is still caricature. The Algerians fall into three broad categories: Islamists who even appear rather noble and are surprisingly susceptible to the spiritual courage and charisma of the monks - leaving their undoubted viciousness in other circumstances difficult to explain; state forces who are corrupt and become threatening once their offers of help are refused; and ordinary villagers who seem to exist for the purpose of expressing their humble appreciation of and dependence on the goodness of the monks. Which is the main theme of the film. The goodness, humanity and heroic struggle of the only characters in the film who happen to be French.
We learn, incidentally, from a documentary that comes with the DVD, that the monastery had an Algerian doorkeeper. He seems to have been airbrushed out of the movie.
In sum, then, a beautiful and moving film that leaves a bit of a bad aftertaste when you start thinking about it.
