First of all, let me say that I like Ridley Scott's movies (with the odd exception) and Kingdom of Heaven not least. A movie about the Crusaders was long overdue and Kingdom of Heaven doesn't stint on any of the more familiar historical subjects from that period: knights, kings, Saladin, Saracens, Templars, Hospitallers, Jerusalem, Damascus, sand, sin, apocalyptic battles... the list goes on.
In the movie Scott does what he does best: he delivers a sumptuous feast for the eye, a cinematic experience, and the movie contains some truly sublime moments. But (and that's a very large "But") the movie is fatally flawed. It's not flawed because of historical inaccuracies per se - there are many, and most of them, in the interests of dramatic effect, are understandable (if rather clunky) - no, the movie is fatally flawed because scriptwriter and director couldn't resist making very partisan (and fatuous) 21st-century points using 12th-century events. And what is worse, if the 12th-century facts didn't fit the required idea of truth then they were changed. Sorry guys, you just can't do that. Rewriting history to suit yourselves is called propaganda.
Yet we can easily see what the idea behind the movie was. A superficial comparison between the events in the Holy Land in the 12th century and events on the ground today in the Middle East and in Afghanistan shows similarities: "Western" ideologies are being forced on a less-than-receptive Muslim population whose own ideology is consequently being galvanized to strike back. How easy it would be to craft a historical epic that encapsulates the lazy (but comfortable) prejudice of the chattering classes: West bad; Everywhere-else good.
But there was a problem. History, inconveniently, records that the Crusaders were not all bad and the Saracens were not all good. The solution proved surprisingly easy: History just needed to be altered a little. Once that was agreed then the script could be written in the sure knowledge that factual alterations, while being, perhaps, a little unseemly, were all for the greater good. The chattering classes are always right, after all, even if facts need to be changed in order to "prove" that rightness.
What the script required above all was a host of baddies so irredeemably nasty that audiences would boo and hiss with such happy abandon that they would fail to notice the implausibility of such black-and-white (and cynically presented) ideas of good and evil. And what baddies did the scriptwriter come up with? Step forward the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon, better known to most of us as the Knights Templars. Yes, my friends, nothing bad happens in the movie without the Templars being behind it: they rape and pillage; they massacre the innocent; they lust after Muslim blood; they provoke war, war, war; they drink lots of wine; and last but not least, they are all very stupid.
Such Templar nastiness is encapsulated in the makeup of the two baddest characters in the movie, Guy of Lusignan and Reynald of Chatillon. Both men were real historical figures and both figured prominently in the fight against Saladin, but (and this is another very large "But") a cursory glance at the history books shows us that Guy of Lusignan was NOT a Templar and Reynald of Chatillon was also NOT a Templar. To add fictitious traits to historical characters simply to make them fit a required prejudice is hardly the way to credibly enforce a point.
Fearing that too much of a good thing is perhaps NOT such a good thing the scriptwriter gives us a few "nice" Crusaders in order to feign objectivity. Chief among them (for the purpose of this article) are the central character, Balian of Ibelin (played by Orlando Bloom) and an unnamed Hospitaller chaplain-brother (played by David Thewlis). It is through these characters that the "message" of the movie is delivered: We should learn to love and understand each other; fanaticism is bad; religion is worse; Catholic priests are even worse still; and always stand up for your principals (but only if those principals satisfy the dictates of political correctness). These are noble sentiments perhaps; but they are also entirely obvious and about as profound (and effective) as the warblings of a hippie in a flowery meadow.
And yet I like both characters. Bloom carries off his role as the cleverest blacksmith in Christendom very well. His Renaissance skills are a little implausible in a man of the forge, to be sure - he reads Latin; he becomes an expert swordsman after only one lesson; he is a skilled mathematician AND civil engineer; he skillfully woos and beds princesses; and he leads armies and defends cities with aplomb - but if we suspend belief completely he makes sense, completely. He bears almost no resemblance to his historical namesake but that doesn't really matter. His chief purpose is to be a sort of Bono in chain mail, and when all is said and done, he looks good.
