OF GODS AND MEN
Directed by Xavier Beauvois
Produced by Frantz Richard
Written by Étienne Comar & Beauvois
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
French & Arabic with English subtitles
France. 120 min. Rated PG-13
With Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, Jacques Herlin & Loïc Pichon
 

Of Gods and Men, Xavier Beauvois’s impassioned and compelling drama, is based on a true story about French Cistercian Trappist monks in Algeria caught in that country’s civil war in the 1990s. Although Beauvois’s film has heart-pounding suspense, it’s far less a didactic thriller than a candid and meditative character study of a group of men who have decided to live austerely at the behest of their fellow man: they help the poor, heal the sick, and, most importantly, give much-needed hope to the destitute.

Indeed, much of the film’s leisurely two-hour running time is taken over by snapshots of the monks going about their everyday existence in an unnamed mountain village, from planting and harvesting on the monastery’s farmland to running a free health clinic and attending Muslim ceremonies, winning hearts and minds—in the familiar parlance of wartime—in the process. Even so, for all their good works, these moral men are no match for the ruthlessness and brutality of a fundamentalist Islamic group that’s beginning to flex its muscles.

First, several Croatian highway workers are slaughtered, then there’s talk about the killing of a young woman because she refused to conform to a conservative dress code. The terrorist threat becomes palpably real after a militia and its charismatic leader come to the monastery for medicine for their own wounded. Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson), the monks’ spiritual leader, outright refuses to give them medicine, telling them they have invaded a peaceful sanctuary on Christmas, the holiest day of the year, for which the terrorist leader profusely apologizes. This unsettling incident leads to much soul searching from the brothers, who have a difficult choice: should they abandon the needy and their own calling or return to France?

Since the film’s tone is so restrained, the few facilely brilliant but overtly symbolic sequences stick out like sore thumbs. For example, inside their chapel, the monks’ prayers and hymns are drowned out by an overhead army helicopter, out of which ominously protrudes the barrel of a machine gun. In defiance, the men remain inside, join hands, and lock arms as they continue their joyful singing. The film’s least effective moment is the climactic scene. It’s quite enough that the men go through the motions during a meal as if they all know what will happen to them, but topping that is Brother Luc (Michael Lonsdale) playing a cassette tape of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake during the dinner. As the overused music is heard, Beauvois cuts from one man to another, registering their looks of resignation and sadness as each realizes that martyrdom might lie ahead.

Other than that obvious and overly-symbolic misstep, Beauvois wisely refrains from heightening emotions on the soundtrack. Aside from Swan Lake, the only music in the film is the brothers’ a cappella singing in the chapel, and there’s a refreshing lack of over-editing. A lot of single, long takes dominate, and the rare instances of quick cutting—from the monastery’s serenity to the roaring vehicles carrying the Croatians’ killers—are infrequent and highly effective.

The final shot of a snowcapped landscape with a line of trudging men receding into the whiteness adroitly sums up the artfully understated cinematography of Caroline Champetier, and also serves as a précis of a film which, though somber, is also spiritually exhilarating. Kevin Filipski
February 25, 2011