puppetmaker | Kingdom of Heaven

I took Ariel to see Kingdom of Heaven yesterday so she could get her Orlando Bloom fix. It was much better than I expected from the film. It sure has had me thinking about the Crusades. My longer review with possible spoilers is behind the cut.

Ariel found out that one of her school chums had died the day before due to head injuries sustained after being hit by a car. Raquel had been crossing the street with a couple of other people against the light and was hit. This was a group of middle school kids and a couple of high school kids on their way to McDonalds and they made the choice to try to cross a busy service road for a local highway to get to the Mickey D’s. They made the bad choice to cross below the crosswalk and against the light. About 15 feet from where the accident occurred is a crosswalk with a pedestrian light to cross safely. A little more walking and some patience and I would not be writing about this. The kids who were with her have to live with what happened for the rest of their life.

Raquel was in sixth grade. She participated in school activities and was a good student. Ariel said she was a good kid. She was in the school play that Ariel had the lead in. She probably wore one of the aprons I made for the chorus. Who knows what she might have become. She died Monday afternoon after she was taken off life support since she was brain dead due to trauma.

Ariel wants to go to synagogue on Friday to say the mourner’s caddish for her friend. One of Ariel’s buddies was raising money for flowers for Raquel now her goal is to raise $500.00 for the insurance deductible for Raquel’s parents. As of this morning she has reached that goal. The principle is going to give the money to the family on behalf of Raquel’s school friends. None of this should be necessary but for a bunch of wrong impulsive decisions.

I enjoyed it for the most part. I had major problems with the script and everything that happened after the fall of Jerusalem. It was a film that didn’t know how to end or wasn’t sure what they wanted the final message to be. Or it got too many comment cards that made them go in and change the end. However it happened the end is a mish-mosh that is not very satisfying and has to have a final text card to tell the audience what they just saw happen on screen. Also we never know what happened to Guy and whether Sibylla was free to marry Balian or if they ran off to live in sin.

Orlando was good at brooding and being noble but those two emotions seem to be his strengths anyway. Ed Norton put in a surprisingly good performance considering all the limitations he had as King Balwin the Leaper King of Jerusalem. He had to play the whole thing with a mask over his face with a frozen expression. Liam Neeson is spending a lot of times this year playing mentors. Jeremy Irons was well cast and a solid performance. The villains are well played by Marton Csokas and Brendan Gleeson as Templar Knights and Christian fanatics.

Apparently there has been some talk that the film is Ridley Scott trying to push his point of view about the Middle East through his film. He makes the fanatical Christians the villains of the piece and the Moslems the ones in the right so he is anti-American. Bull I say. Historically he was pretty accurate as to what broke the truce at Jerusalem. The Christians broke the rules and where thrown out of the Kingdom of Heaven. Saladin did grant safe passage for any and all Christian that wanted to leave. The crusades were a mess anyway.

I am grateful for movies that make me think.