Seven of the nine main characters in their chapel huddling as a helicopter gunship hovers outside -- one of the scenes that makes for suspense sans any 'real' action.
Never from this movie would I have expected suspense, but for most of its two hours “Of Gods and Men” made me feel like I was watching a Jason Bourne flick instead of one about a gentle group of French monks. Never mind it had no action hero. Actually, there was no action – and only the faintest insinuations of graphic violence.
Instead the movie, in French with subtitles, makes high drama out of the inner agonies of nine mostly aging French Trappists in a setting that barely strays beyond the walls of their simple Algerian monastery.
And that’s why I’m recommending it to friends as a must-see film. It shows the meek have a shot of inheriting the Earth and Hollywood too.
Maybe I remained so riveted because I knew the outcome. It’s not a happy one. The movie is based on a true story. Caught between a corrupt but pro-Western government and Islamic fundamentalists during the Algerian Civil War, the monks, despite the obvious risks, refused to leave their monastery. In 1996, seven of them were taken hostage by fundamentalists and beheaded.
You know from nearly the start that the monks were in mortal danger. Early in the movie, the insurgents slit the throats of some Croatian heavy machinery operators. But that’s as gory as it gets. After that, the movie never fires a shot. It never explodes any bombs. Blood only tinges a frame here and there. Yet, it kept me sitting up and leaning forward, thanks to two things.
The first is the inner agonies played out by the monks as each one confronts a very personal dilemma: Fidelity to their professed beliefs and the poor villagers who have come to depend on them or to leave in obedience to survival. As one monk puts it, they didn’t vow to commit suicide. We’re given witness to the unfolding internal process that brings each and every man to the decision to remain, and it’s mesmerizing.
The second was the way the movie insinuates the specter of death in even the most innocent of scenes. As two monks drive along a lush countryside road, you expect the IED that never ignites. As one monk lights candles in a chapel, you expect an assassin’s bullet that doesn’t come crashing through the stain-glass window. As the monks are celebrating mass in their tiny chapel, you hold your breath as a rumbling helicopter gunship doesn’t pulverize the place.
“Of Gods and Men” was released in 2010, but didn’t reach U.S. theaters until just this past spring.As SF Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle notes, it’s a beautiful movie, shot with exquisite attention to detail. But its achievement is that it simultaneously manages to be intensely suspenseful and intensely contemplative.
I loved it because it satisfied my most guyish super-hero fantasies through the uncommon faithfulness of a few gentle monks.
