KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

With the obvious contemporary resonances, it was dangerous ground for Scott and screenwriter William Monahan ('The Departed') to approach. The dust had not yet settled from 9/11, the West was engaged in a vicious and unlawful battle with the Middle East and religion was being used to draw lines in the sand. It's no wonder that Fox pushed for something more swashbuckling in order to circumnavigate potential issues, but in its Director's Cut, it's clear that 'Kingdom of Heaven' was built to tackle them head-on. It's very decisive for Monahan and Scott to have chosen this particular moment in the history of the Crusades - not one of war but of precarious peace, a peace that would collapse not long after the events depicted in the film. Rather than pitting two sides against one another, where binary concepts of "good" and "bad" could play out (the former being the Christians and the latter being the Muslims), the film refuses to engage with this binary. That isn't to say that villainy doesn't take place, but that it is driven by something more insidious than religious zealotry and comes from within rather than without.

At the beginning of the film, Balian is faced with a frustrating religious hypocrisy, that his wife, having committed suicide after the stillborn death of their child, is refused a proper burial and is destined for Hell. In the small French village where he works as a blacksmith, to live is to scratch out a bare existence, to live under the yoke of doctrine that leaves no place for the individual. That his wife must suffer in death after having suffered in life leads to a sense of nihilism. What kind of God sets such rules and demands his people live and suffer like this? His father offers him a purpose, to come to the heart of their religion and seek answers, perhaps redemption.

What Balian finds in the Holy City is not a Christian stronghold but a city alive with cultural and religious diversity. Baldwin IV has preserved the practices of the Muslim leaders he had taken Jerusalem from, that freedom of religion should be practised, that this most holy of places should belong to anyone of faith, not just one faith. Amid the blazing sun and the swirling sands, Balian finds something closer to a kingdom of heaven, where religion is seen as an enrichment rather than an obligation or punishment.

In order for this depiction to work, Scott is careful to give the Muslim characters as much space and reverence as the Christians. While Balian is inarguably the pivot point of the film, in the Director's Cut he's hardly the lead. In this longer version, 'Kingdom of Heaven' is more of an ensemble piece, where its many threads are given the space to breathe and develop. As such, Massoud's wonderful performance as Salah ah-Din presents the man not as a warlord, but as the intelligent, shrewd, progressive thinker he was. Scott isn't trying to sanitise history to suggest that everyone is fundamentally the same and just needs to get along (this isn't 'Pocahontas'), but is careful to make sure that everything is shown in balance. Baldwin and Salah ah-Din approach one another with mutual respect, the former maintaining his dominance over Jerusalem as long as the people of the latter are respected.

The tension in 'Kingdom of Heaven', rather than an impending battle, becomes one of preserving a philosophical ideal. In fact, there's barely any action to speak of until over two hours into the film. Instead, we're held on the edge of our seats by Baldwin's failing health, by Guy's dangerous schemes and with the gut feeling that this peace cannot last. We know this because the greed of the invading Europeans cannot be sated, that for Guy and his compatriots in the Knights Templar, the Muslims are too bitter a taste to swallow. What Scott shows us is a Jerusalem on the edge of a knife, waiting for the blow to strike. That these brutes will undo Baldwin and Salah ah-Din's work is inevitable; the question becomes when will they do it and how catastrophic will be the consequences.

At the heart of this is Sibylla and her son, Baldwin's heir. The film gets the inevitable affair between Balian and Sibylla out of the way pretty quickly, but this serves to focus on the true thrust of her narrative, that of a mother torn between protecting her child, honouring her brother and preserving his kingdom. This comes to a head in a deeply tragic manner, where Sibylla is pushed to a devastating extreme, but this struggle in a way captures the wider struggle in 'Kingdom of Heaven', whether to be a good person is to act for what is best for the individual or the best for the community. Balian pretty much disappears for the action in the second act of the film, but what he is doing is observing how all these political machinations take place and deciding how he will proceed. With the exception of Guy and his cronies, 'Kingdom of Heaven' is careful never to pass judgement on its characters. They are at the heart of the world as they know it and this makes their actions all the more loaded, all the more dangerous and all the more immediate.

Looking at the Director's Cut, it's easy to see how a cut-down version of this film would fail to work. Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson forgo the sweeping grandeur of 'Gladiator' for something far more rough and immediate. There's an inelegance to 'Kingdom of Heaven' compared to 'Gladiator', but that inelegance serves to frame the film more as an historical political drama rather than an action adventure film. This is really solidified in the one major action sequence, the Siege of Jerusalem that closes the film. Scott isn't constructing this sequence to get your pulse racing. It's bloody, frightening, brutal and mournful. He emphasises the days the siege takes, the tremendous losses on both sides, the inevitability that the city will fall and the Muslims will take it. This isn't the thrill and excitement of boys own adventure battles. This is the inevitable destruction of war, and the final image of the sequence is arguably the most devastating of Scott's career, the camera rising on two sides caught in an immovable embrace within the blown-out walls, fading to a silent mountain of bodies, Christians and Muslims tangled together. In this sense, the battle is not framed as a triumph but a tragedy, and the film is clear about what has caused it. The possibility that the Christians and the Muslims could have shared these Holy Lands is obvious and, from the two monarchs, hoped for. Peace though is a fragile thing, and without everyone protecting it, one small shudder can bring the whole thing down.

The noble intentions behind 'Kingdom of Heaven' are abundantly clear when looking at the Director's Cut, an attempt to open a considered and thoughtful dialogue on the complications in the Middle East where both sides are heard and acknowledged. Looking at the world of Jerusalem in the 12th Century as Balian navigates it, the idea of a peace being found doesn't seem that far-fetched, especially if it is a peace that both sides desire. It's the tragedy of this film (and I would argue, the tragedy of Ridley Scott's career) that this isn't the film audiences were first introduced to. Watching the interviews with the cast and crew in the documentary, all shot before the release of the film, are honestly quite heartbreaking. Across the board, they speak of their hopes for the conversations the film will start, with the Middle Eastern actors in particular commenting on their excitement at seeing a major film treat their people with such respect. Most traces of this hit the cutting room floor when Fox insisted Scott make the film more "commercial".

Of course, the situation has been rectified by the Director's Cut, the rare case in Scott's career of many Director's Cuts where the additions change the film for the better. In fact, it positions it as one of his finest works. Certainly this is the version promoted more fully now, soon to receive a 4K UHD release that won't even include the Theatrical Cut. But this longer cut doesn't erase the failure or stain on 'Kingdom of Heaven'. We can't say for certain that this cut would have been a greater success or would have achieved the goals it set out to, but let's just consider this for a moment: a major Hollywood filmmaker decided to take the trappings of the historical action epic and fashion it into a statement on religious and cultural intolerance in the Middle East where the Muslims are not the villains, four years after 9/11. Even if the film is imperfect (and even the longer cut has its flaws), there are so very few films like it.

Seeing the Director's Cut for the first time on its release was startling for me. It was so much fuller, so much richer, so much more moving than the Theatrical Cut, which I could barely remember. I'd never seen a film reborn to this extent. I would argue the differences here are even greater than those between Scott's various attempts to perfect 'Blade Runner'.

It had been many years though since I had revisited it, and watching it now in the context of Israel's genocide in Gaza and the West's almost categorical refusal to acknowledge this, makes 'Kingdom of Heaven' feel even more potent. The final title card of the film reads, "Nearly a thousand years later, peace in the Kingdom of Heaven still remains elusive". We are seeing this cycle of violence and religious intolerance being perpetrated over and over again, the people with darker skin and a different religion made out to be the villains as they're being murdered and displaced. Perhaps the function of 'Kingdom of Heaven' has now shifted from a vision and a prayer for the future to a reminder that this has all happened before, that it continues to happen, that we continue to let it happen. The cycles of violence continue because terrible men allow it to. We call them to account though if we see these misdeeds and stand against them. It may be an imperfect expression of this ideal in the most ancient, contested and complicated part of the world, but isn't it a miracle to see a major Hollywood film that has the guts to say it at all.