The Western and Arab Experience

Violence begets more violence; death and slaughter will run rampant when men, women, and children grow up in times that are thirsty for bloody, clouded by anger, and quick to thoughts of vengeance.

Recently I watched “Kingdom of Heaven,” the Director’s Cut, directed by Ridley Scott of “Gladiator” fame, and I won’t sit here and not say that I didn’t love this movie. History fascinates me, it’s one of my loves, and one of the two majors I completed in my undergrad. I happily sat there and watched it, admiring it for its technical achievements, but more so for where it stood on Western and Arab relations.

On a side note, this move was touted as a historical action flick and had 45 minutes of footage edited out because the studio head didn’t believe a modern audience would want to go see a movie this long.This is the primary reason it didn’t do as well as Scott would have liked and many critics found the film to feel “incomplete.”
This bloody conflict (The Crusades), which lasted for nearly 200 years, set up the shaky relationship of these two religious powers that continues to persist to this day. This is the primary focus of the film.

The movie, although not entirely accurate, is a fantastic contemporary depiction that gets at the meat and bones of what this conflict wrought. Balian de Ibelin (Orlando Bloom) was given his father’s lands, and through cooperation and dedication, terraformed a dusty and scarce environment into one that flourished with life and harvest. It’s no surprise that this scene is a metaphor for the incredible possibilities that are possible when two opposing forces work together, and it is a superb portion of the movie.

But of course, this film is about the fall of Jerusalem and it returning to Islamic hands under the military prowess of Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) . Both Saladin and Balian are represented as men of honor who try to avoid conflict with the enemy, preferring to continue a shaky peace. Now of course, there are several players involved who are ready for open war; both sides have either advisers or ambitious men who would like nothing better than to see the other side killed and burned while justifying it as God’s will. The film escalates into open war because there was no way to reconcile; insults were lobbed toward Saladin and Islam after his sister is murdered and his emissary killed while sending peace negotiations.

Christians are clearly portrayed as the wrongdoers and the primary antagonists of the film, and history can vouch for that, but this movie is not about sympathies for one side or the other. The most prominent scenes in this film are Balian riding out to meet the invading Muslim armies and always thinking of protecting the inhabitants first and foremost: a collection of Christians, Jews, and Muslims all living and working together. Following the climax of the siege of Jerusalem, Balian and Saladin agree to peace terms: the crusaders leave Jerusalem and all its inhabitants can leave freely, without fear of slaughter. The terms are accepted. Balian asks Saladin what the city of Jerusalem is worth.

“Nothing…everything.”

 Then there are other movies that focus on this shaky relationship in a way that doesn’t help show that there is any opportunity for understanding and mutual respect to exist. The last decade in the United States has been one of antagonism and racial profiling that’s done little to help society  try to learn about and respect people in the Middle East. These movies, for example, are not all-out propaganda against Muslims, but for a society that’s easily impressionistic and too preoccupied with other interests to take time to learn about other cultures, they aren’t far off.

 

 

“Rules of Engagement” is a good example of a film whose intentions are too contrived toward showing one side, leaving another in a murky miasma that leaves viewers internalizing poor ideas and stereotypes. Lt. Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson) is put on trial for a court martial over an event in which he orders his squad of marines to fire down on a group of protesters during a hairy situation at the US embassy in Yemen. Snipers are firing from the rooftops, across from the square where the scheduled protest–one that’s always been relatively peaceful, according to the film–is taking place. Childers and his men are under heavy fire while they evacuate the ambassador and his office, and he makes the call to fire down upon the crowd because he believes they are armed and dangerous.

The trial begins, and Lt. Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones), fellow marine during Vietnam and longtime friend of Childers, agrees to act as his defensive attorney. The movie follows Hodges’ attempt to uncover evidence in Childers’ favor, relentlessly pursuing surveillance evidence from the embassy where the camera pointed down at the crowd, but nothing is ever found. He visits the embassy in Yemen, and various other locales, where victims of the violence, particularly the children, are shown in a sympathetic light. One little girl who was in the crowd loses a leg as a result of Childers’ command to fire into the crowd. Hodges and Maj. Mark Biggs  (Guy Pearce), the prosecuting attorney, go back and forth arguing for and against Childers’ order to fire respectively, culminating in Hodges’ climactic speech about a marine’s service to country, his worth, and honor.
Childers is cleared of his most heinous charge and the film ends on a positive note for marines, showing how those who serve their country go through terrible trials that politics and ethics cannot teach in war. Fair enough. But it also ends up doing nothing positive for the group of people who were murdered, it being revealed that they all had weapons and were also firing at the marines, along with the snipers, justifying Childers’ call. The sympathetic scenes of bullet ridden children, especially the little girl with the crutch, are all throw-away. They are portrayed as beguiling, sending a terrible message about Arabs that doesn’t even spare the children.



Reconciliation of two cultures, who aren’t as different as each might think, is possible. And one can see how when comparing these two films. Where “Rules of Engagement” is a film about law and order–the reign of signed contracts, “Kingdom of Heaven” focuses on the spoken contract. A man’s word dictates who he is and what makes up his character; both Balian and Saladin were portrayed as honorable and empathetic men who obeyed their promises. The other film laid under a mire of political jargon and cover-ups. Sure, Childers innocence was proven and an American hero is vindicated, but the Muslims in that crowd, the children, never uttered a word, forever sealing their guilt. We as an audience get nothing from them, and a film about a medieval crusade is shown to be far more progressive than one about the judicial system in Democracy.