Children of a lesser God

Say: "We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed by their Sustainer unto Moses and Jesus and all the [other] prophets: we make no distinction between any of them. And unto Him do we surrender ourselves."
---Q:3:84

Overall, your first, instinctive, impression was to like this film; in particular, the simple lives of the monks, the silences, and the interweaving of texts. But the silences themselves were fraught with a sense of fear, almost-as if one knew what was coming, and worse: one was not prepared, could never be prepared, for the unknown.

And to be charitable, you could feel that it was made with good intentions, was an attempt to open a door to another side of Islam- and for that one must be grateful. In fact, one of the first texts recited is, I think, the one above.

But, the are some very poor moments in the film. Cringe-worthy, in fact.

The terrorist, for example, isn't really an evil guy after all. Why can't you show evil? Instead, he recognizes the piety of the monks after they recite another beautiful Qur'anic verse. In fact, this cardboard cut-out character is shown to be in awe of the monks and leaves them alone at first. All very cliched.

Secondly, the villagers at one stage say to the monks, after learning of the escalating violence in nearby villages [this takes place in Algeria] , that they should stay in the village, that they are the "tree" whilst the villagers themselves are only the "birds" on it. All very flattering to the monks, no doubt. The monastery has been there since the beginning of the village (we are told). But the old men can't even remember the name of the last abbot there!

And this disconnect is evident throughout. The 'mayor' also is shown to be some sort of of typical nervous, bumbling oriental. And he's wholly unconvincing when he says "I know you people" to the monks.

Of course, there are specifically religious points that I find hard to deal with. For example, when prayers are said for a dead terrorist. Nope, can't buy that. Over the last few years I've been living in a country where suicide bombings have been frequent (many in the city I live in...and with a terrible loss of life). Should we pray for the souls of the people who commit these ghastly acts of violence?

In the final analysis, the Muslims aren't really important in this film-it's really about how the monks find their own true faith in suffering, hope, duty. Which is, of course, admirable. But one can't help feel throughout the film that Muslims are children of a lesser God.

[Still, much better than the crappy propaganda film, Munich !]