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Of Gods and Men (2010)
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Movie review
From Time Out London
Should I stay or should I go? That’s the dilemma facing the eight French Cistercian monks in French writer-director Xavier Beauvois’s ‘Of Gods and Men’, which imagines life in an Algerian monastery in the mid-1990s as its inhabitants face a threat of violence from Islamic fundamentalists in their serene corner of the Atlas Mountains.It’s a true story, the outcome of which would have been familiar to many, if not most, of the three million filmgoers who have flocked to see this quiet, thoughtful film since it opened in France in September. Outside France, there will be more of an element of surprise as these monks deliberate their future, negotiate with authorities, discuss their situation with villagers and maintain tense relations with members of the Islamist militia, all the while praying, singing, gardening, keeping bees and staying friendly with their rural neighbours.
‘Of Gods and Men’ deals in peril and danger and maintains a friendly grip on you over two hours as a thriller in a very minor key, but mostly this is a film about the journey, not the destination, as confirmed by Beauvois’s final, open image of the monks walking in the snow. It’s about ageing French men, removed from home, in a strange and comforting landscape, going about their rituals and trying to find a common response to a common problem. The way it dramatises anxieties, expressed and unexpressed, is enthralling and quietly provocative, and although the film mostly operates within a strictly realist framework, it offers the odd hint of greater powers at work such as when we see a monk praying by a lakeside and a flock of birds sweeping above him or a threatening army helicopter disappearing as the monks resolutely sing indoors, as if, somehow, repelling the chopper above with their strength and faith.
Lambert Wilson heads a largely grey-haired and finally very endearing ensemble cast as Christian, the monks’ practical, strong leader. The group’s singing and praying punctuate the film, yet Beauvois and co-writer and producer Etienne Comar make strong efforts to sketch a portrait of each monk. Among them, there’s Luc (Michael Lonsdale), a doctor who holds surgeries for villagers and has a wry, sensitive manner; Christopher (Olivier Rabourdin), the youngest of the bunch and the least sure of his faith; and Amédée (Jacques Herlin), the oldest and a gentle, fragile presence.
So sober, so measured is most of the film, similar in its meditative air to Philip Gröning’s documentary ‘Into Great Silence’, his 2005 portrait of a French Carthusian monastery, that you feel as decadent as the monks when, near the film’s end, they enjoy wine and listen to a tape of the Dying Swan from ‘Swan Lake’. Beauvois, too, lets his hair down for this scene, indulging in a series of close-ups of the monks’ faces, some smiling, some tearful.
It’s a curious scene. Inevitably, we think of the Last Supper, but it’s also striking that the monks combat their fear with the secular pleasures of wine and music alongside prayer and song. It stresses that Beauvois and Comar want to show these monks as men, with human fears and desires. They’re neither sages nor heroes. They waver, they worry, they have pragmatic, as well as spiritual, reasons for staying in Algeria, and one or two may even hide under the bed when danger comes knocking. The wine-and-music scene is also the final stage in the film’s portrait of the coming together of these monks whose main struggle, the film suggests, is finding a way of agreeing and collaborating in the face of danger.
‘Of Gods and Men’ is a parable that has as much to say about life within a community as it does about relations with those outside it, such as the Muslim villagers, the fundamentalists and the authorities with whom the monks try to find an accord. Beauvois and Comar have made a realist piece, with documentary stylings and spiritual leanings, and one which hints at a wider relevance without laying on thick its message of brotherhood and reconciliation.
Author: Dave Calhoun
Time Out London Issue 2102: 2 – 8 December, 2010
Cast & crew
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Cast: Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin
Genre(s): Drama
Duration: 120 mins
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