Frère Jean-Pierre: "Partir c'est fuir et abandonner le village aux terroristes."By Xavier Beauvois
With Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale and Olivier Rabourdin
I met Des hommes et des dieux after watching Le passé (2013) and browsing through its cast. I liked the synopsis and it seemed to have gotten nominations as well as being the French submission for the Foreign Language Film Award.
The movie follows the life of a handful of monks in a monastery in Algeria. Their peaceful and quiet life is soon disturbed when a group of Islamist fundamentalists starts killing foreigners. The army decides to protect the monastery but the monks dismiss them. There becomes a struggle to live with the fear, the faith and everyone's opinion on the question of whether to leave or stay.
I really enjoyed the context and until the end I wasn't able to place it in time and to know whether it was a true story or not. It turns out it happened in 1996. The dilemma is very strong and the dialogues between the monks as well as their beliefs are extensive. The movie follows the rhythm of life of a monastery and is therefore quite slow with a lot of religious rituals. I have to say those scenes annoyed me, at first I thought they were necessary in order to set the tone and pace but as they grew longer and longer I started disliking them, particularly the religious chants.
The acting is really good and the range of emotions is wide, the two stars, Michael Lonsdale and Lambert Wilson (who are both famous bilingual French/English actors) give amazing performances. The movie which came out in 2010 couldn't have been more contemporary as the so called Arab Spring was about to start and the eternal quarrel would be on everyone's mind once again. I like to think that a non-religious person should be able to enjoy a religious movie and the other way around. Despite its heavy religious theme I think the movie reaches out beyond that while trying to dig deeper in a fragile peace.
Although most of the music annoyed me, the scene playing Swan Lake was absolutely amazing.
I liked: The discussion of martyrdom. Absolutely relevant. Acting. True story.
I disliked: Very slow. Religious chants and rituals.
68/100
I think the movie has a lot to say but it won't say it in the way you expect it to. The experience is slow but worth it.
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