Of Gods And Men

Last night I finally got to see the thoughtful, austere and rather grave French movie Of Gods and Men. Based on a true story, it tells of the last days in the lives of eight Cistercian monks, who live in a remote monastery in Tibhirine, an isolated  and impoverished part of Algeria. It is 1996 and the Jihadist uprising is claiming the lives of locals and foreigners alike and the monks have to make the terrible decision of whether to leave the villagers who depend on them and return to the safety of France.

Of Gods and Men is a slow, careful film which is reminiscent of the famous The Nun's Story in its depiction of the austerity and dedication of a cloistered existence. It takes an absolute age to "get to know" the individual monks and their personalities as time and time again we observe their pious services and rituals as the tension is slowly cranked up to the terrible conclusion, when the terrorists finally take the monks prisoner.
Generally the wait is well worth it, as Of Gods and Men is an absorbing and at times terribly moving study of fear and bravery under pressure. Not all of the monks deal with the threat of death with a Sound Of Music type of strength! Whereas the nondescript Monastery Leader Brother Christian ( Lambert Wilson ) stubbornly ignores the threat of death ,his fellow Brother, Christophe (a nice performance by Olivier Rabourdin) nearly buckles under the strain. And of course we have to have the cheerful, slightly gung ho monk who waves his hand in the face of danger ( this time is the affable Michael Lonsdale as Doctor Luc)----(remember sister Luke in The Nun's Story?)

Anyhow, the director, Xavier Beauvois, delivers two amazingly camp but oh so powerful sequences in this film that definitely need a mention.
The first is when an army helicopter hovers menacingly in front of the monastery stained glass windows as the monks huddle together holding hands, expecting to be machine gunned at any minute ( you can actually hear the audience take a collective gasp at this one)
and the second is a terribly indulgent but oh so moving "last supper" moment when the monks treat themselves to a glass of red wine whist listening to the strains of Swan Lake played on a rusty old tape recorder----believe me, there was not a dry eye in the house!!! ( I wish my old friend Bel was with me tonight...he would have wept buckets)


Oliver Rabourdin and Lambert Wilson

see The Alex Ramon review also