Of Gods and Men/Des Hommes et des Dieux (2010) - Creeds at odds in powerful and deeply moving true-story drama

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Two monks embrace under an overwhelming, bright sky on this effective poster for Xavier Beauvois' Of Gods and Men

The French Catholic monks in a monastery in Algeria are threatened by Islamic fundamentalists, when the civil war that broke out in 1991 comes to their area in 1996, but what does one do in such a situation?

 

Of Gods and Men is written by co-writer/co-producer Etienne Comar (Haute Cuisine (2012)) and French master filmmaker, co-writer/director Xavier Beauvois (Nord (1991)), whose 6th feature it is. It is based on a real life chapter of the Algerian Civil War, which ended in 2002. The original French title translates to 'of men and of gods' and refers to a line in the Bible's Book of Psalms.

It is an eminent and sober portrayal of a true tragedy from our recent past. The film bares with clarity and anguish the way that Islam demands blood sacrifice again and again.

The film is acted with sensitive empathy and humanism from a set of excellent French actors, whose characters do not stand unified or without doubts as to their worrying predicament, giving the strong film a wealth of nuances. Of Gods and Men is, in short, masterly.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 4 mil. €, approximately 3.89 mil. $

Box office: 43.8 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned 11.25 times its cost)

[Of Gods and Men premiered 18 May (Cannes Film Festival, main competition) and runs 122 minutes. Beauvois stayed 6 days at the Tamié abbey in Savoie as research, consulted a theologian and sent the screenplay to the families of the monks, getting positive response from most. The actors trained chanting for a month and were also sent for a week to the Tamié for preparation. 10 companies and support bodies collaborated in the financing and production of the film. Shooting took place from December 2009 - February 2010 in Morocco. The film opened #26 to a 308k $ first weekend in 33 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #22 and in 120 theaters (different weeks), grossing 3.9 mil. $ (8.9 % of the total gross). The film was a massive hit in France, where it was #1 for 4 consecutive weeks and grossed 27.2 mil. $ (62.1 %). North America was the film's 2nd biggest market and Germany the 3rd biggest with 2.1 mil. $ (4.8 %). The film was nominated for a BAFTA, won 3 prizes at Cannes, including the Grand Prix, 3/11 César awards, was nominated for a David di Donatello award and 2 European Film awards and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to 2 notches under this one. Beauvois returned with The Price of Fame/La Rançon de la Gloire (2014). Lambert Wilson (The Belly of An Architect (1987)) returned in a music video prior to his theatrical return in À l'Aveugle (2012); Michael Lonsdale (The Suspects/Les Suspects (1974)) in Hitler à Hollywood (2010). Of Gods and Men is certified fresh at 92 % with a 8.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Of Gods and Men?

The Name of the Rose (1986) or, The Monk Dective and the Monestary Horrors

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Adventure springs to mind from this neat, painted character-poster for Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose is an adaptation of Italian writer-philosopher-semiotician Umberto Eco's (The Prague Cemetery (2011)) first novel and the fourth movie from French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear (1988)).
Annaud had developed and nursed the project for 4 years and taken his time with studies of the novel, the medieval portrayal and facts presented. And with the casting of all the monks in the film that all have very distinct and interesting faces.
Rose is a whodunit crime thriller set in the very unusual place of a 13th century monastery in Northern Italy. Here, a monk has thrown himself off the roof of the monastery in a hailstorm, and soon other eerie irregularities follow. William of Baskerville is a learned monk from another, more liberal order, who is called upon to solve the mystery. And he does so with the aid of his young apprentice, Adso.
Sean Connery (Time Bandits (1981)) is a major reason to watch Rose, although his casting wasn't obvious at the time of production, when his career was in a slump. But seeing him tackle the Sherlock Holmes-inspired character (Holmes is also referenced in a few lines in the film) is a joy. He has the warmth and humor that takes some of the gruesomeness out of the film, and the possibility of anything supernatural at hand never seems a possibility due to his straight-shooting nature.
As Adso, we get a 17 year-old Christian Slater (True Romance (1993)), who breaks his celibacy with a poverty-stricken girl in a feisty sex scene. Annaud's keen sense of the sensual is very clear throughout Rose, a film with lots of intellectual and religious ideas floating around, which is aptly balanced with the horrors of the monastery and the vileness of its inhabitants, as Annaud tackles the occult to great effect and seems to revel in the stuff. Most vile of them all is Ron Perlman (Drive (2011)), whose already somewhat ghoulish features have been heightened greatly to suit his menacing, humpbacked character here:

Ron Perlman in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose

The details:

F. Murray Abraham (The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)) plays the adversary, who arrives late in the film after it has lost some pace.
Still, it is a very enjoyable time and a very specific, different, exotic place to be taken to for a couple of hours.
The film seems to have an implicit, agnosticist skepticism of all the (Christian) religion involved, which is represented mainly as ludicrous or of very poor consequences, but Baskerville also shows another, lighter alternative, retaining his Christian faith. And the ending is definitely no rejection of strong faith and quite memorable.
Annaud is working on his Chinese adventure movie Wolf Totem (2015) at present.

Related review:

Jean-Jacques Annaud: The Bear/L'Ours (1988) - Amazing bear story for (almost) the entire family

Watch the original trailer here

Sean Connery and Christian Slater in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose

Budget: 18.5 mil. $
Box office: 77.1 mil. $
= Big hit, - mainly in Europe, (Rose only made 7.2 mil. $ in the U.S.)

What do you think of The Name of the Rose?
Other unusually located whodunits that you want to recommend?