Church Program Example

Film of the Week - March 2

Men of God of Xavier Beauvois

Synopsis

In a monastery in the mountains of Algeria in the mid- 90s, eight French Cistercian monks live peacefully with the Muslim community of the place, treat the people farm the land, pray and live in communion and poverty. But the country is shocked by the massacres of fundamentalists, and even offer protection authorities and the French government to call them back at home, the eight men decide follow to the end of their mission.



Inspired by a true story, the martyrdom of a group of French monks in the mountains of Algeria, Men of God of Xavier Beauvois, which contributes to the quintet of foreign films nominated for an Oscar is not a protest film or reconstruction of a tragic news story. Although the responsibilities of the massacre have never been clarified, Beauvois choose to return the message of peace and coexistence that those monks were put in place in reality and look for the strength of their example, not so much in the speeches a bit ' too programmatic between Christians and Muslims, but in scenes of everyday life, in the sense of love for nature that Trappist grow, respecting men and things you read in the gestures of every day.

Men of God is not a documentary, like the famous Into Great Silence by Philip Gröning, punitive or film. It is a civil and religious allegory in the form of film, shot with a modesty worthy of Robert Bresson, but also with emotional tension and narrative worthy, here and there, a thriller. The director takes us inside the monastery and makes us share the daily life of monks. Which is made of prayers and songs, works in the garden and medical visits to the villagers, but also a morning breakfast lunch and very light, small resentments and jealousies of innocents. The seven monks

protagonists are portrayed as normal and decent people, men of prayer and sharing forced to be heroes (or samurai, as noted by someone, being seven!). Their life is made of simple things, narrated by the film with a force, a sobriety, a truth of accents that are rare in cinema today. There is the daily life of those men who had chosen an Islamic country for their mission. There their efforts inside and outside the monastery, the prayers in Latin and Arabic, work with the residents of that village in the mountains of Atlas, the charm of a landscape so vast and pristine together to create happiness and dismay, the doctor Monaco (the fantastic old French actor Michel Lonsdale ) that anyone who needs free care (including terrorists). And then there's the shock that takes hold of the monks when the fundamentalists are beginning to shed blood in the region, and realize that as Christians they are also targets individuals, the anxious waiting for a meeting that they hope will never happen, the discovery of no less terrible that even in this meeting can find a way to confirm, clarify, strengthen their choices. The (few) detractors criticize Beauvois for having ignored the historical context of the former colony and the events that were behind each monaco (so good they deserve a movie separately). But the look clean and firm with which we follow the expectation of the monks, the welter of contradictory and very human feelings, the whole public debate and ultimately decide that inner everyone to stay, have the force of a film Dreyer and his outspokenness, humanity, the sense of group John Ford.

Men of God becomes a friendly gesture towards the spectators who expect nothing more than emotional involvement. You can tell at one point, during a dinner when the seven monks listen to an aria from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, the most famous one could choose the one that everyone knows and they know to follow with emotion. The time is long, intense, and so the music grows quiet close-ups of seven friends who know the fate that they deserve. Beauvois not save the commotion, asked the tear, but not force, it simply puts on the floor of honest men and pure in which you speak, their wisdom and simplicity, to serve their common passions and not wanted, just as Tchaikovsky's music , as enchanting as for the use made of it, granted.

is simple yet beautiful at this time, the film stands as an example of conscious folk art, beauty accessible to all forms audiences. The film is a poignant reflection on how religion can, as a source of love turn into hate, and the pace of the story that Beauvois, precisely because of its message, is more accessible to all. The importance or the power of art is certainly not restricted to its accessibility, of course, but the aesthetic balance of a film like Men of God, is a rare quality, not necessarily the best that film can have, but probably, in times like ours, the most necessary.