KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Revisited
Taking the view that it’s never too late to bash last year’s movie, Ross Douthat, writing in Slate, pounces on Ridley Scott’s new, what-he-wanted-to-release-in-theatres cut of KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, which is now out on DVD. Why Scott was denied the chance to release this three-hour version, we may never know (the director mentions “some people” who were against the longer but paradoxically swifter-paced version.
If you missed the film on the big screen, you missed out. KINGDOM was an old-fashioned epic with a rare intelligence–and relevance to current events. Like all of Scott’s movies, it was magnificent to look at, with a deep blue and golden hued beauty and sweeping battle scenes.
Slate’s been running these “How Hollywood Works” essays every so often, and this essay has the grandiose title “How the Historical Epic Died With Kingdom of Heaven’–as if we won’t be seeing any more attempts at this genre for a while.
In short, the critic has problems with Orlando Bloom, whom he says “never looks like anything but what he is—a handsome, unreflective 21st-century guy dropped down in a medieval setting, with none of the hardened masculinity or the defiant otherness that would make you believe that he belongs to a different time.”
He’s not the only guy who thinks that Russell Crowe‘s the only actor who’s sufficiently butch to play a warrior-hero.
Man-pretty actors have taken extreme measures to play classic roles. As Achilles in TROY, Brad Pitt buiked up like an Olympian. Clive Owen (KING ARTHUR), practically rolled in mud to play a down-and-dirty Camelot king.
But Colin Farrell, who dared to reveal the emotional vulnerabilities of Alexander the Great (in the Oliver Stone film) and Captain John Smith in THE NEW WORLD, is dismissed in Slate as a lightweight. I couldn’t disagree more: Farrell may not be as physically imposing as Crowe or Liam Neeson (who plays Orlando Bloom’s father in KINGDOM OF HEAVEN), but most of these epic heroes weren’t gladiator kings, but wily strategists who lived fascinating, complex, contradictory private lives.
While Crowe and Neeson convey softness as well as strength, Farrell can look he’s dying of desire when he’s looking a woman (or a man) in the eyes.
It took me a while to accept Bloom as the hero–but he is supposed to be a young man, a young widower. When he meets his father (Neeson), his relative youth makes more sense.
One aspect of all these historical epics that never works for me is the extreme shortage of women in ancient and Medieval times. Of course hero and villain (and others) feud and fight for the love of a princess (Eva Green, in KINGDOM OF HEAVEN). She’s the only unattached female in the Holy Land–maybe in the entire world. Ditto for young Guinevere (Keira Knightley) in KING ARTHUR, Lucilla (Connie Niellsen (GLADIATOR), Pochahantas (Q’Rianka Kilcher), THE NEW WORLD.
In period films, these courtships take a predictable course, too.
They meet.
They banter.
They ride horses together
It rains and they get all wet.
They have sex.
I hope I can be forgiven for thinking, till I was maybe ten or eleven, that sex was always preceded by horsebackriding and thunderstorms.
What did you think of the director’s cut of KINGDOM OF HEAVEN?
I was so-so on the theatrical release, but the longer version is light years better. For starters, with the significant fleshing out of Eva Green’s character (she has a son! he’s crowned King of Jerusalem!) the film attains more of a ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST structure, where Bloom’s character is just one of several who have a stake in saving Jerusalem. And because of this added emotional heft, the siege at the end feels much more compelling, immediate. We finally know why the place is worth saving.
I’ve been wary of the recent trend of director’s cuts supplanting original release versions of films, but this is one case where it really does feel like the studio did some serious damage to the film when they cut it.
Exactly. Most often a director’s cut on DVD is just an exercise in self-indulgence, not a rethinking of the movie, or a better cut.
When I saw the movie in the cinema, I thought: it’s almost there. Scott’s cut of KINGDOM OF HEAVEN made everything move faster and make sense. The studio did itself no favors by shortening the movie.
Bilge, do you write for Nerve?