Review of Of Gods and Men (2010) by John A — 27 Mar 2011

It's 1996. Eight French Catholic monks live in a monastery in a remote area of Algeria. Though everyone in the surrounding village is Muslim, the monks and villagers live together in perfect harmony.

One of the monks, this old guy named Father Luc, serves as the village doctor, operating a little clinic in the monastery. The head monk, a youngish guy named Father Christian (who's way too good looking to be a monk, by the way), is shown helping someone with what appears to be a passport application. The villagers treat the monks as welcome members of their community, even inviting them to their religious celebrations. It's a nice peaceful coexistence.

It's also a fairly boring existence, at least for the monks. They spend most of their time performing very mundane chores. They mop the floors. They put fresh candles in the candleholders. They pour honey into glass jars to sell in town. They eat soup and French fries for dinner. But mostly what they do is sing. Or maybe chant; I'm not really sure of the difference. But whatever it's called, they do it very often. At least once a day, they put on their white hooded robes, stand in the chapel, and sing.

They don't sing anything that you've ever heard of either, or at least that I've ever heard of. I'm pretty sure they write their own songs, because sometimes they hand out little lyric sheets at the beginning. Even on Christmas, they don't sing anything familiar like "Silent Night" or "Little Town of Bethlehem". They have pretty nice voices - I'm no expert but they all sound like tenors to me - but if they made a Christmas CD ("A Very Monky Christmas"?), probably no one would buy it because their songs aren't particularly catchy.

Perhaps you think I'm going on a bit too much about the singing, but it's actually a huge part of the movie. What makes it even worse is that all of the singing is subtitled and I felt compelled to actually read all of the subtitles for fear they were going to chant something crucial to the plot, which they never did. It's just line after line of religious mumbo jumbo, which doesn't make a whit of difference to the story, and in my opinion, it'd be far better if they'd just left it off so you could just relax and listen to the music and think about what you're going to have for dinner.

Anyway.

After about thirty minutes of the monks and villagers living happy peaceful lives, word gets back to the village that some Islamic extremist bad guys have started slashing people's throats. The army, which is corrupt, tells the monks to get the hell out of there. Some of the monks want to stay. Others want to leave. If you've seen the preview, you already know what their ultimate decision is, but it takes them a lot of gut-wrenching conversations to arrive at it.

Though I liked parts of this film, it really did drag on what with all of the chanting, and at two hours long is at least twenty minutes longer than it needs to be. My other gripe is the gratuitous use of extreme close-ups. In one riveting scene, the monks sit down to dinner and for some reason Father Luc brings out a boom box and puts on "Swan Lake". The camera pans from monk to monk to monk, recording their expressions, zooming in closer with each lap until finally we're looking at giant close-ups of just their eyes and suddenly Father Christian doesn't look so young anymore. And even worse, I have "Swan Lake" stuck in my head again, just like after that god-awful Natalie Portman movie.

Though "Of Gods and Men" is a worthwhile movie, it's definitely a bit chore-ish, so unless you're someone who sees a whole lot of movies or are really into chanting, there are lots of better things out there for you to see.