Over the past several weeks I've gotten a jump-start on my summer movie watching by getting to my first two movies of 2011. Since the Church played prominently in the story lines of both films I felt I could justify seeing them in the midst of Holy Week, and the final weeks of the semester, which coincided so closely this year.
I'd been waiting for the first movie for quite some time. The French film Des Hommes et Des Dieux, or Of Gods and Men, is based on the true story of the French Trappist monks of Tibhirine in Algeria. In 1996, during the violence of the Algerian Civil War, seven of the nine monks in the monastery of Atlas were kidnapped from their cloister, and ultimately martyred by Islamic extremists.
The film is the moving tale of the discernment that the monks undertake, amidst the growing threat of anti-Christian violence, about whether or not to remain in Algeria or to flee to safety in France or elsewhere. The monks love, and have become beloved by, the Algerians who live around their monastery and who receive the ministrations of the monks. Some of these friends begged them to flee for their safety, while others felt that the monks were a kind of shield protecting even the local Muslims from the violence of the extremists.
The monks are, at first, similarly divided about whether to stay or leave - but over the course of the film, the monks communally discern that they are being called to remain with their "flock" in emulation of the Good Shepherd. I found two aspects of this discernment most interesting ... First, it is the elder monks who more quickly decide that they want to stay, even with the knowledge that this means facing certain death. The younger monks only come to this decision with time and with great personal struggle. I found this interesting, and felt that it indicated that the older monks had long ago begun preparing to face death as they aged and faced various illnesses. They had less to lose, in that sense at least, and the younger monks were less prepared for such an early and seemingly senseless death.
The second point is the role that the Liturgy played in the monks' discernment. The film does a most admirable job of portraying the silence and regular communal prayer that mark the life of a Trappist abbey. And ever so subtly the movie makes clear that it is precisely these aspects of their communal life that sustained these men in their heroic decision.
The movie raises fascinating questions about martyrdom and Christian witness, on the one hand, and reason and prudence on the other. It also raises interesting questions about the relationship between Islam and Christianity, especially in the Mideast and Africa. The superior of the Trappist community clearly knew this, and wrote before his death:
If it should happen one day – and it could be today – that I become a victim of the terrorism that now seems to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to Algeria; and that they accept that the sole Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I would like, when the time comes, to have a space of clearness that would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who will strike me down.
I could not desire such a death; it seems to me important to state this: How could I rejoice if the Algerian people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder? I know the caricatures which a certain Islamic ideology encourages and which make it easy for some to dismiss the religion as hateful…But such people should know that at last I will be able to see the children of Islam as He sees them—He whose secret joy is to bring forth our common humanity amid our differences.
My death, obviously, will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naïve or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But they should know that…for this life lost, I give thanks to God. In this “thank you,” which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, my last-minute friend who will not have known what you are doing…I commend you to the God in whose face I see yours. And may we find each other, happy “good thieves” in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.
Lots of great food for thought and prayer.
I also saw the newest film from Roland Joffe, the director of The Killing Fields and The Mission. There Be Dragons is set during the Spanish Civil War and traces the early life and priesthood of St. Josemarie Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei.
Unfortunately, the movie parallels the story of Josemaria with a fictional character, a boyhood friend of Escriva's who becomes a revolutionary in the Civil War. Although this helps propel the narrative, it contributes to the see-sawing nature of the film and does so at the price of historical accuracy.
I was more interested in the very compelling depiction of St. Josemaria and the earliest days of Opus Dei. I realize that more of his story would likely have made the movie to be too much like a documentary and therefore less likely to be distributed by a mainline production company. But I still would have liked more of his story, and less of the composite character.
Still, the movie raises interesting questions about the nature of evil and the workings of Divine Providence. Like Of Gods and Men, the movie also poses theological and philosophical questions about violence, resistance and pacifism
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