Movie to See: Arn: The Knight Templar
The Crusades is an interesting topic for a movie scenario. Religious zealotry, brutal combat, political intrigue,
fighting against impossible odds -- there are a lot of potential avenues for exploration. Not surprisingly, a lot of these
stories are pretty hit or miss. The 2005 Orlando Bloom film, Kingdom of Heaven, while not perfect certainly had a lot of
bling and sand to throw in your face, which made it a fun film (in my opinion). Like Kingdom, Arn
also centers
around the Knights Templar and the potential fall of Jerusalem to the
superior military strategist Saladin. And also like Orlando
Bloom's character, our hero in Arn also meets with Saladin prior to the fall of Jerusalem and earns his respect (and a
potential way out of the slaughter to come). But for all their similarities, Arn was the superior film.
While Arn was a huge budget film like Kingdom, the money wasn't spent on cgi and blockbuster names.
Arn was filmed in the desert on location. This means that the actors got dirty, things were gritty, and your sense of
scale didn't come from a model. There was a very authentic feel to the set and the scenery which you don't get with a cgi
film. Further, the characters were also very real. There were no over-the-top good guys or
bad guys. The Ridley Scott
film had a megalomaniac in charge of the Templars that allowed the city
to fall because his pride would not allow him to do what
was best for the people that lived there. In Arn, the same kind
of megalomaniac was in charge, but he wasn't acting solely
out of pride -- he was also just genuinely inept as a military leader,
which gave him a slightly softer edge, and his actions
(however stupid) actually made a certain kind of face palm-ing sense.
Further, our main character was not without his own
foibles. Unlike Bloom's character, who goes into the mouth of Hell out
of an over-wrought sense of courage and an unwillingness
to abandon his post; Joakim Nätterqvist's character (Arn) only heads
into that final pivotal battle because he has no other
choice! Arn, unlike Bloom's character, Balian, is a pragmatist; a brave
and courageous pragmatist, but he wasn't about to throw
his life away simply because it was the noble thing to do.
Arn was also the superior film because it had a truly epic path for the main character to follow. Instead
of 10 minutes of being a blacksmith (and another three or four minutes showing us why he has a broken heart and a chip on his
shoulder) and then the rest of the movie spent in the desert, Arn shows us the entire life of our hero. We see the childhood
and education of Arn. We see him rise through the ranks of the Templar, and we see what happens to him when the Crusade is
over. Unlike Kingdom, the point of this movie isn't the Crusade; it is the story of how an educated boy becomes a man
in the forge of war and then takes his new found skill and courage to make a better life for his people in Sweden.
Oh, and did I forget to tell you that this is a Swedish film? Yep, the majority of the dialogue has to be read,
although I will happily point out that there is a fair amount of English spoken (as Arn is educated under the tutelage of a
British priest), and even the Swedes have to read a fair amount of dialogue in Arabic...
Arn is an epic film, both in quality and in scope. If you're in the mood for a quality medieval film, this one probably won't disappoint.
Movie to Skip: Zulu
To be fair, from the standpoint that this was the story
of some very brave men who fought outrageously superior
numbers, against an admittedly tactically superior commander, and
managed to 'scrap it out' and fight with amazing bravery: this
was definitely a story worthy of telling. It's just a shame that it was
painted on a canvas that was so starkly black and white.
Perhaps that made it more authentic, I guess, but it just feels like the movie was lacking any serious soul searching.
That was really disappointing. (It's kind of like watching a US Western circa 1950-65; although with at least a little
more respect for the natives. At least the British soldiers see the enemy as a foe to be feared and respected and not just a
reason to break out the six guns...)
Ultimately, however, this was a movie about the British Alamo. If you're into that kind of fatalistic courage,
then you'll probably like this one. However, if you can't get beyond a storytelling style that feels like unnecessary propaganda, and an obvious uncaring eye towards the political motivations that were so prevalent (but ultimately dismissed)
in the movie... then you'll probably want to pass. I watched this one because it's a classic that felt like I had to
see. But if it hadn't been for that, I probably could have skipped it and would have been perfectly happy to do so.
