Of Gods and Men
Des hommes and des dieux
Xavier Beauvois (2010)
The portentous title is off-putting but this is an unusual and impressive film. Why the English translation of the title transposes the two types of being is a mystery. The English version has a reducing, limiting effect; the French one is both a more accurate and a more suggestive description of how the film’s themes develop. Of Gods and Men is based on what happened to seven French trappist (Cistercian) monks based at a monastery (L’Abbaye Notre-Dame de l’Atlas, founded in 1938) in an Algerian village called Tibhirine. In 1996 the monks were kidnapped and executed. According to the film, they were a group of eight and were joined on the eve of their abduction by a visiting brother. It was the latter and six of the residents who died; the two remaining monks were overlooked by the group’s captors. Whether the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (which claimed responsibility) or the Algerian army (following a botched rescue attempt) were responsible for the monks’ deaths remains a matter of some dispute in France (it’s not clear why, if the Algerian army was responsible, the corpses were beheaded – unless to imitate the other suspects). Xavier Beauvois and Etienne Comar wrote the screenplay, which, according to Wikipedia, draws on writings by two of the monks who died, Christian de Chergé and Christophe Lebreton.
It’s clear from the start that the film is going to move at its own chosen speed. Beauvois presents both the monks’ religious observances and their harmonious interactions with the indigenous Muslim community in a nearly documentary style and at a pace which seems meant to convey the deliberate uneventfulness of this way of life. The elderly Luc (Michael Lonsdale) is medically qualified and we see the locals coming to his clinic. He and Christian (Lambert Wilson), the head of the group of monks, are invited to and attend some kind of religious initiation ceremony for an adolescent boy (it appears to be the Muslim equivalent of a bar-mitzvah). The turning point occurs when some Croatian construction workers in the vicinity are murdered by Islamic fundamentalists. From this moment, the monks know they’re at risk and the Algerian government is keen to see them leave the village and the country. Still not a great deal happens in terms of conventional cinematic incident. Beauvois is more interested in the monks’ spiritual dilemma. (What action sequences there are, although they’re adequately done, look staged – as if Beauvois had to get them out of the way before returning to the heart of the matter. The attack on the Croatians is one such sequence.) It takes a deal of self-discipline to keep your concentration, even to stay awake, but the director’s approach – unrelenting, focused in an arguably narrow way – has some resonance with the mindset of the monks, and it pays increasing dividends.
When the monks start debating their options, you wonder at first if this is really a story for the stage rather than the screen. The group sits round a table: each explains – in some cases with a bit of biographical background – why he’d prefer to leave or stay. Opinions are pretty evenly divided. Some time later they have the same discussion and have all decided to stand their ground. Yet the way the monks’ views develop is more elusive than this makes it sound: Of Gods and Men isn’t a Twelve Angry Men drama. Although each monk is a defined character, they don’t go through decisive, explicit experiences to change their minds or reinforce their positions. Observing the monks in the early part of the film, some of the same thoughts occurred to me as when watching Michael Whyte’s documentary No Greater Love earlier this year. You wonder if it’s these religious orders’ adoption and acceptance of circumscribed, repeated routines that helps them believe in Heaven – because the routines show that it’s possible to subsist with an unending and essentially unchanging focus. At the same time, the monks are, in various ways, much less cloistered than those nuns in Notting Hill. They read widely (newspapers, Pascal, Montesquieu, the Koran). They frequently wear civilian clothes. They’re not merely put at risk by the political turbulence of the country they’ve chosen to inhabit; their modus vivendi implicates them in it more strongly (we see this when Luc treats a wounded member of the mujahideen, who know about the monastery’s medical facilities). What’s most startling and powerful about Of Gods and Men is that, when external events invade this limited, largely contemplative world, the monks, although in one way unprepared for bouleversement, in another come to realise that existing continuously in extremis makes sense of the way of life they’ve chosen. The film conveys a sense of the men’s understanding anew and reinterpreting the tenets of their faith. (I assume this is largely thanks to the writings that Christian de Chergé and Christophe Lebreton left behind.)
Near the end of the film, the monks sit down to their evening meal together, enjoying the wine that the visiting monk has brought as part of the group’s provisions. They don’t converse but listen to Swan Lake on a radio-cassette player. It’s as if Xavier Beauvois, having disciplined himself for this long, feels that he and his actors (and perhaps the audience too – we may well feel this anyway) deserve an emotional climax and outpouring. The cast’s self-control is exemplary. Here too there’s a kind of marriage of the behaviour of the characters and those involved in making the film – although, as a result, there are perhaps a few too many occasions when the actors can do no more than register a troubled mind with a sigh or anxious look. There’s no doubt that Beauvois overcompensates at this point. He wants this sequence to mean too much and, as the camera slowly pans round the faces at the table, the expressions change from fraternal conviviality to grievous awareness of their perilous situation in a way that’s contrived. But the faces are so great that they transcend the conception of the scene (and when, after going from happy to sad, they settle into something less easy to read, it’s intriguing). The fragment of the last movement of Beethoven’s eighth symphony that was used in the trailer for Of Gods and Men made it perhaps the most memorable preview of the year but the Tchaikowsky is oddly effective in this scene because it’s so obviously emotional. (The Beethoven doesn’t feature on the actual film soundtrack at all.)
The monks’ last supper is already the most commented on scene and, love it or hate it, will doubtless be the best-remembered scene in Of Gods and Men. The Christmas Eve sequence is the finest, though. Brother Célestin (Philippe Laudenbach) moves through the chapel, singing a Christmas song to himself and preparing the place for the brothers’ midnight vigil. A group of mujahideen burst into the monastery. The shifting tensions in the exchange that follows between Christian, who’s on a knife edge between fear and quietist determination, and the leader of the Islamist group (Farid Larbi), whose monocular aggression is disrupted by respect for Christian, are wonderfully realised. The Muslim apologises for the invasion of the monastery on a night of special spiritual meaning to the monks; he and his men depart. Once they and the threat have gone, for now, we share Christian’s stunned mixture of shock and relief. Then the Christmas Eve service takes place with all the monks singing the song that Célestin sang solo in the earlier scene. The before-and-after impact of this passage is tremendous.
Christian is a richly complex individual. It’s he who, when half the monks want to leave Algeria, advises them to take more time to decide; once they’ve all agreed to stay, he’s become the most doubtful about doing so. Lambert Wilson does the character of Chirstian more than justice: he brings to life, subtly and strongly, a man fighting to seem courageous and purposeful when he’s privately riven. He leads the monks’ chanting in a beautiful voice: it comes as no surprise to find that Wilson has a background in musicals. He’s superbly partnered by Michael Lonsdale, a master actor: the balance in Lonsdale’s Luc between physical vulnerability and a strength of conviction that borders on intimidating certainty is a marvel. The other monks are played by, as well as Philippe Laudenbach, Jean-Marie Frin, Xavier Maly, Olivier Perrier, Loic Pichon, Olivier Rabourdin and Jacques Herlin who, as the oldest of the group, is especially memorable. (This octogenarian, who wriggles under his bed like a kid playing hide and seek when the kidnappers arrive, was one of the two survivors and, according to a closing legend on the screen, died in 2008. The other monk who survived is still alive.)
The film is beautifully photographed by Caroline Champetier. The pacific look of the landscape is at odds with the strife going on in it throughout. The final shot of the kidnapped priests climbing a snow-covered hill and gradually disappearing into an ambiguous whiteness will, I think, be hard to forget. Of Gods and Men is the second film I’ve seen this year about French tenants who think they’re in Africa for a purpose and decide to ignore warnings from the authorities to leave for their own good – it’s incomparably better than the visually accomplished but intellectually lazy White Material. There are moments when you think, about the monks’ determination and about sitting through the film, why bother? At the end you’re in no doubt both were worthwhile.
6 December 2010