Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven sets a blacksmith against the Third Crusade. Balian of Ibelin, played by Orlando Bloom, is pulled from a French village into the politics of Jerusalem and the war Saladin is about to bring down on it. The film runs 144 minutes. It came out on 6 May 2005 from 20th Century Fox, and it is a mixed thing: a serious historical drama trapped inside a Hollywood epic.
Trailer, via HD Retro Trailers.
Balian’s Road to Jerusalem
The setup is grim and quick. Balian’s wife kills herself after a miscarriage. The village priest, his half-brother, has her body beheaded before burial and steals her crucifix. Balian kills him and burns his own smithy, then joins the Crusaders who have come for him.
Their leader is Baron Godfrey, his father, played by Liam Neeson. Godfrey knights Balian, names him the new Baron of Ibelin and orders him to protect the helpless before dying of an arrow wound taken in a fight with soldiers sent to arrest Balian.
From there, Balian is shipwrecked, the lone survivor, and walks toward Jerusalem. He fights a Muslim cavalier over a horse, kills him, and spares the man’s slave. The slave guides him to Jerusalem. Balian frees him there, and the slave tells him his mercy will earn the respect of the Saracens.
A Leper King and a Fragile Treaty
Jerusalem’s leaders are the leper King Baldwin IV, Tiberias the Marshal, played by Jeremy Irons, and the King’s sister Sibylla, played by Eva Green. Saladin has forgiven the death of the cavalier.
Against them stands Guy de Lusignan, played by Marton Csokas, a prospective future king of Jerusalem who wants to break the treaty between the Crusader states and Saladin. His allies include the anti-Muslim Templar Knights.
The cast is deep and the film knows it. David Thewlis is the Hospitaler. Ghassan Massoud is Saladin. Alexander Siddig, Michael Sheen and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau fill out the edges.
- Orlando Bloom as Balian de Ibelin
- Eva Green as Sibylla
- Jeremy Irons as Tiberias
- Ghassan Massoud as Saladin
- Liam Neeson as Godfrey de Ibelin
Scott Builds a Holy Land
Scott shot in Ouarzazate, Morocco, and across Spain: Loarre Castle in Huesca, Segovia, Ávila, Palma del Río, and Seville’s Casa de Pilatos and Alcázar. The scale is real and the film is at its best when it lets that scale carry the story.
The tagline promises the film’s code: “Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong.” Balian is built to embody that line, and Bloom plays him as a decent man in an indecent war. It works, mostly.
Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong
The problem is the middle. Monahan’s script wants to argue about faith, mercy and the cost of holding a city, and it has the cast to do it. What it does not have is a way to keep Balian interesting once he becomes a symbol. He is a blacksmith who becomes a baron and then a defender, and the film keeps telling us he is noble instead of showing the doubt underneath.
The Director’s Cut Is the Real Film
A director’s cut arrived on 23 December 2005, the same year, and it drew better notices than the theatrical version. That is the tell. The 144-minute release is a compromise, and it plays like one.
The theatrical cut still grossed $218 million worldwide. It received a Metacritic score of 63 out of 100. Both numbers describe the same object: a film people showed up for and critics could not fully endorse.
What the Theatrical Cut Leaves Out
Kingdom of Heaven is worth the time for Irons, for Massoud’s Saladin, and for the sight of Scott staging a siege with real stone behind it. It is not the great Crusades film it clearly wants to be. The theatrical cut is a good film with a better one buried inside it, and the director’s cut is the proof.
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