love this period of the Crusades. I used to read this stuff while everyone else read Archie comics and Sweet Valley High. And I wondered why I felt out of place... My brain was full of Robin Hood and King Richard, Guy of Gisbourne, Balian de Ibelin and Saladin, the Old Man of the Mountains and his Hashishiyun (assassins), knights and lances and war horses and tournaments, Ivanhoe, Mamelukes and the Horns of Hattin. So if this movie wrecks it, I shall foam at the mouth.

First Impressions

I've been to see the movie twice now, with different friends; the first time round I was too busy pulling the plot apart, but the second time I could just enjoy the movie as a movie. It is a beautifully sumptious epic, redolent with silks and spices, arms and armour, henna and incense. The horses were stunning - blood Arabians, Turkomens, massive Andulasians and Freesian warmbloods, even the odd palomino (impossible - they were a North American breed, bred and beloved by everyone from Sioux to Commanches), but anyway. It's a world I lived in as a child, but a romanticised version. One doesn't think how nasty, brutish and short the average person's life was, let alone what battle really was like.

The problem with most views of battle, of course, is that they always leave out the intestines (cf Terry Pratchett's Night Watch) and the usual score in any battle is Humans: 0 - Ravens: 1000 (cf Terry Pratchett's Jingo, I think). The movie managed to bring the viewer to a point of total disgusted weariness with the violence and brutality. After a while I just closed my eyes so I couldn't see blood and gore and people's kneecaps flying around - normal stuff. I think on the whole the point was made - war is stupid, and is fought for stupid reasons. And I hate war. The people who start it are seldom the ones who have to hide in emplacements somewhere and dodge handgrenades.

It's a wonderful ride, and I just closed my eyes to the Hollywood-ness. I really wanted a better exploration of fighting styles and how they differed between Frank and Turk. The knights on their heavy horses could scythe through Syrian lines like a wheatfield, so the Turks and their Syrians and Arabs would take advantage of their superior speed, and shower the armoured Franks with arrows. It was thirst and disorganisation which ended Hattin, and Guy de Lusignan's ineffectuality. He was apparently a useless king.

As far as the central character went (historical inaccuracy aside), I felt that the whole approach of the director was to do a Vanity Fair shoot, especially in the desert - open white shirt, beautiful black horse, broadsword and long curly hair. It was The Black Stallion with eye candy. I don't get the point of the whole thing. The only theme was Ignore Organised Religion and/or Stop Insulting Muslims. All very well, but people weren't so nice to each other. Trust me on this.

Where I Got The Background

I have a book called Knight Crusader by Ronald Welch, which covers the era in detail; I borrowed it several times from the Library as a child, but found it last year in a second-hand bookshop and snapped it up.

It covers everything from the point of view of a young squire named Phillip, heir to Blanche Garde, a castle in The Land Beyond the Sea - Outremer. Although nothing like as big as the Templar headquarters, Krak des Chevaliers, and other huge fortresses in the Holy Land at that time, Blanche Garde was huge and luxurious by European standards, and shows the culture and refinement of the Middle East, the influence of which lead ultimately to the Renaissance. But clouds are gathering: King Baldwin, a leper for several years, has died, and Guy de Lusignan has become King of Jerusalem.

Then the King's truce is broken by Reynaud de Chatillon, and the Turks gather for holy war (jihad). Outremer is low on men to garrison its castles, as everyone able-bodied is mustered to King Guy's great army. But Guy is weak, and makes one bad decision after another; in spite of desperate valour, the Frankish army is defeated at Hattin due mostly to lack of water and the desertion of its footsoldiers. Saladin reconquers Jerusalem and, in an act of great clemency, allows all non-Muslims to take whatever they can carry and leave Jerusalem in peace.

The First Crusade

The first Crusade started all the trouble; Jerusalem was emptied of "unbelievers" by killing all of them. Everyone, whether Muslim or Jew, was simply put to the sword. There were so many corpses that they could not be buried in five months; people got tired of living in Jerusalem and moved to the coastal cities - Acre (Accra), Joppa, Sidon. The place was full of marauding Bedouin, unburied corpses and wild animals. [A History of Jerusalem, Karen Armstrong, Harper Collins]

The First Crusade was peopled with Norman barons and their knights, a rough folk who, on the way to the Holy Land, attacked the Jews of Eastern Europe, in the belief that they "killed Christ" (a fallacy: historically, the Romans killed Christ. Theologically, everyone on earth, who will ever live included, killed Christ, as He died for the sin of humanity. And didn't He say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"?) During the Third Crusade, Bernard of Clairvaux had to vigorously condemn another persecution of Jews by marching Crusaders. Every Crusade involved vicious anti-Seminism, with widespread, wholesale murder of Jewish communities. Except the Children's Crusade, of course: the children, after a disastrous march in which many died, were sold as slaves.

The Movie: plot holes and murder

The movie starts within medieval France, where Balian de Ibelin (Orlando Bloom) is a young blacksmith, who subsequently is found by his natural father and steered on a course for Outremer and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Of course, the problem with using a real character is that there is documentation about him, and we know that at the time of the movie's depiction, Balian was approximately forty. There goes my suspended disbelief already. One has to make allowances in movies, however, and if that had been the only inconsistency, I wouldn't have minded quite so much.

But noooo; the writer and director decided to make Guy de Lusignan into a Smarmy Bad Guy and Mad Templar to boot. To start with, Templars weren't allowed to marry! Guy was never a Templar to my knowledge, but a cultured and urbane member of Baldwin's court. When Baldwin died, Guy was elected   King of Jerusalem - and had to rule by the consent of his barons, not that you see many in the movie. Reynaud de Chatillon was as nasty and evil as the movie portrays him, but he wasn't a Templar either; he was also married, I think. And a dark man, apparently. (So the actor who played Guy should have played Reynaud, and I really think that Jeremy Irons would have made a better Guy de Lusignan, but playing him as a weak-willed vacillator who just couldn't make a decision). I got tired of their clown double-act, really. There's nothing worse than the "we're evil thugs who enjoy pointlessly killing people for the sake of the script" routine.

David Thewlis just doesn't look like Hospitaller material. Or Catholic priest material, at least the kind of priest he was playing (ie wise and devout, but with a bit too much pop theology). That crooked smile just gives him away - I still see him and Leo DiCaprio pulling horrible faces on a train in Love and Eternity, and sticking their fingers as far up their noses as possible. Mmmm. Yummy.

In the movie, the Hospitallers (black cloaks, white crosses) were the Good Guys and the Templars (white surcoats, red crosses) were the Stupid Warmongering Idiots. In reality, it was the rabid Roger de Moulins, head of the Hospitallers, who persuaded King Guy to march to Lake Tiberias (ie Galilee) and so destroyed the army at Hattin. Both orders were there to kill 'heretics' and 'infidels', after all. Saladin swore to destroy both orders, which was why all the knights belonging to the Military Orders were executed after Hattin.

Saladin did say "Kings do not kill kings" to Guy de Lusignan after Hattin. He set up a table and gave sherbet to all the captured knights, except the ones he was executing - if you give food or drink to someone in the middle east, you are officially offering to protect and befriend them. They are your guests. After Jerusalem fell, Guy de Lusignan went back to being a baron, and Conrad de Montferrat claimed the (non-existent) throne. The problem with the movie is that it doesn't understand feudalism: every knight owed fealty to a baron, and the barons owed fealty to the King. In practice, however, there was always rebellion and intrigue.

Balian was not a commoner, and he did not need to "take the cross" and journey to the Holy Land, as he was already there, and he was already a baron of Jerusalem. His father, Balian the Old, was a baron of Outremer, as were his sons, Baldwin and Balian. It was Baldwin who was romantically involved with Sybilla. After Jerusalem fell, he retired with the other dispossessed Outreman nobles to Lebanon (ie Tyre and Sidon) to try to whip up support for a reclaimation of Jerusalem. He was a pious man, given to attending Mass instead of fighting battles, a product of his age. He wasn't an agnostic, and he did fight at Hattin. He apparently led many charges against the Turks to try hold them off, but even he succumbed at last to thirst. He did defend Jerusalem, and did wring concessions out of Saladin, who permitted Christians to leave, but only if they were ransomed. He ransomed several commoners out of his own purse, as they would otherwise have become slaves. If you want to read more, I got all this from Christian History Today, which you can access at www.christianitytoday.com

All that dangerous political stuff...

I found that everyone was simply too polite to each other in the movie. The Franks, especially the new arrivals to Jerusalem, wanted to kill every non-Christian they could find, while the naturalised Outremans (er, if you can call them that) were much more tolerant. The Outremans intermarried with Syrians and Turks, and their half-breed children were called Pullani; thus Outreman society was quite diverse, and not really keen to fight their distant relatives, in some cases. But it wasn't just the "evil" characters who wanted to kill Jews and Arabs, of course; very pious and sincere people firmly believed that the only good Turk was a dead Turk.

Likewise, not all Arabs and Turks were as cultured as Saladin (Salah Ed-Din) or as forgiving. It was a much more savage time. People killed each other without a second thought. And anyone mouthing the "heresies" Sir Balian supposedly did would have been hanged for his "blasphemy". You never questioned "Mother" Church. She had this thing she did, with stakes and burning in fire. . .

I was extremely peeved that I saw not a single Jew in the whole movie. There were Jews in Jerusalem at the time - what's so inflammatory about that? It is David's City. Some people in long Hassidic ear-locks and a few yarmulkas around the place would've been more . . . realistic. Why, even a Torah or two would've been interesting.

Some religious stuff. Just for fun.

It's sad that there is such a discrepancy between medieval Catholic beliefs and actions, and real biblical Christianity. So people think that they are scoring a hit against Christianity in general when they decide to ream into issues like the Inquisition and the Crusades. The Reformation led to a revival of the Bible, and true Christian teaching; the Counter-Reformation was vicious and violent ... and directed against Christians! Dutch Huguenots were made to drink broken glass or recant their faith (a horrible way to die); people were burnt at the stake; butchered wholesale in the streets (eg on St Bartholomew's Day in France); and generally murdered just because they dared to read God's Word and apply the truth therein. So don't talk to me about the Crusades. Anyway, now that I've vented my spleen all over the keyboard, on to everthing else...

Suicides don't automatically go to hell. Some people are just unable to cope, sometimes. God isn't cruel or unjust. And I think the most rounded and stunning character was King Baldwin, in his beautiful cold steel masks. I ached for him. The medieval church was very gentle towards lepers, saying that they were under God's special protection; they were installed in lazar houses all through Europe, but their lives were still wretched. Baldwin was closest to the real person, although I don't see someone in such an advanced state of leprosy riding a warhorse from Jerusalem to Kerak.

Why did Balian have to go onto Golgotha hill to talk to God? I think this is what weirds me out about attitudes to the Holy Land, that somehow you need to be there for God to hear you. He is always only a breath away: God will never put you on hold. That's the nice thing about God; He always answers immediately, with no message service and no automated switchboard. Of course, sometimes God says no. This makes people think He doesn't answer prayers. But there's yes, or no, or wait. There are times and seasons, and sometimes it's the things God doesn't give us that helps us most. He will always do what's best for us - and I doubt that His "best" is porsches and wide-screen TV's.

Jesus, when talking to His disciples, said: "Where I go you cannot come. . . you know the way to the place where I am going." The disciples asked Him how they could possibly know how to get somewhere if they couldn't get there. He replied, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." This is what gets people about Christianity, and yet I can stand on the other side of the fence, knowing it's true. I dunno. Sometimes one just has to let God do the arguing. . . I found the moralism of the film a little bit silly. "Do what's right every day and you will be a good person". It sounds great, doesn't it? But if people actually could live perfect lives, would people need to invent so much sedating ritual? Would they feel less secret guilt?

There's a bizarre myth that one must give up all one's vices and live an exemplary life before one can become a Christian; that you must please God by your good works. People don't realise that we, as an imperfect species, can never be "good enough" to impress God. After all, He knows our frame, he made us - he loves us for who we are, not what we do. God doesn't look at people's deeds, but at their hearts. If we come to Him acknowledging that we desperately need His love and gracious compassion in our lives, He will enter our hearts and we say in faith that we are saved, for "whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved". That's why Christ died, to pay the penalty for our sins. God therefore doesn't look at our sins, but our belief. It is in believing God that we are credited with "righteousness", of being right with God. Only to believe in Him; our good deeds are like shabby, dirty rags in God's sight, because our motives aren't pure.

When I say "the LORD", I capitalise all the letters on purpose. There is another Hebrew name translated "Lord", but the capitalised one is the covenant Name; God interacts with human beings as YHWH, wrongly translated Jehovah. It is rightly pronounced Yar-way. (I ask forgiveness of any Jewish readers I might have; I would never debase the Name of God, yet I know that I can confidently use His name). It is this name that God revealed to Moses in the burning bush - that He was the eternal 'I Am'. He made unbroken covenants with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and various other biblical figures using this covenant name, which He only uses in relationship with His people Israel, and those who come to him through his promised Messiah Jesus Christ. When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, they demanded: "Which of you is Jesus of Nazareth?". He replied with His ancient covenant Name; He said, in effect, 'I Am'. The Greek is ego eimi, not just "I am", but "I Am That I Am"; it is emphatically stated. The soldiers had no idea who He was, but when He uttered His covenant Name, to emphasise His unbreakable love-relationship with His people, all of them drew back and fell to the ground. He then told them that they were to allow His disciples to go free! Now that's chutzpah.

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