Kingdom of Heaven is a 2005 epic film, directed and produced by Ridley Scott, and written by William Monahan. It stars Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Marton Csokas, Brendan Gleeson, Alexander Siddig, Ghassan Massoud, Edward Norton, Jon Finch, Michael Sheen and Liam Neeson.
The story is set during the Crusades of the 12th century. A French military engineer serving as a village blacksmith goes to aid the city of Jerusalem in its defense against the Muslim leader Saladin, who is battling to reclaim the city from the Christians. The script is a heavily fictionalized portrayal of Balian of Ibelin. Hamid Dabashi, a professor who mainly specializes in Iranian studies at Columbia University, was the film’s chief academic consultant regarding the Crusades.[1]
Most filming took place in Ouarzazate in Morocco, where Scott had filmed Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. A replica of the ancient city of Jerusalem was constructed in the desert. Filming also took place in Spain, at the Loarre castle, Segovia, Valsaín, Ávila, Palma del Río and Casa de Pilatos in Seville.
Cast and characters
Many of the characters in the movie are fictionalized versions of historical figures:
- Orlando Bloom as Balian of Ibelin
- Eva Green as Sibylla
- Liam Neeson as Godfrey of Ibelin, Balian’s father (the actual historical father of Balian of Ibelin was not named Godfrey but Barisan)
- Jeremy Irons as Tiberias (the movie’s name for the historical Raymond III of Tripoli, Lord of Tiberias)
- David Thewlis as Hospitaller
- Brendan Gleeson as Raynald of Chatillon
- Marton Csokas as Guy of Lusignan
- Ghassan Massoud as Saladin
- Edward Norton as King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem
- Alexander Siddig as Nasir (on screen)/Imad (script)
- Jon Finch as Patriarch of Jerusalem
- Michael Sheen as Priest
- Iain Glen as Richard I of England
- Velibor Topić as Almaric
- Jouko Ahola as Odo (German knight)
Synopsis
In a remote village in France, Balian, a blacksmith, is haunted by his wife’s recent suicide, following the stillbirth of their child. A group of Crusaders arrive at the small village and one of them approaches Balian, introducing himself as his out-of-wedlock father, Baron Godfrey of Ibelin. Godfrey, having learned of Balian’s recent losses, attempts to pursuade Balian to join him as they travel to Jerusalem, in the hope he will eventually take his place as Godfrey’s heir. Balian quickly refuses, and, after resupplying and resting, the Crusaders ride on. Shortly afterwards, the corrupt town priest (Balian’s half-brother) reveals that his wife’s body was beheaded before burial (a customary practice in those times for people who committed suicide, to ensure the soul cannot enter heaven) and he has taken the crucifix she wore. Enraged at these insults, Balian slays the priest with the sword he is working on. Knowing he will be executed if he stays, Balian quickly decides to follow his father after all, in the hope of gaining redemption and forgiveness for both his wife and himself.
In Messina, Godfrey, on the brink of death, knights Balian and orders him to serve the King of Jerusalem and protect the helpless. He ultimately shares with him his vision of a ‘kingdom of conscience’, morality, and righteousness in the Holy Land, before finally succumbing to his injuries. On Balian’s subsequent journey to Jerusalem, his ship is hit by a storm, leaving Balian as the sole survivor of the wreck, though a horse also survives that runs away as Balian tries to mount it. Tracking the horse into the desert, Balian soon finds himself confronting a Muslim cavalier, and his servant, over possession of the horse. Balian slays the horseman in single combat, but spares the servant, asking him to guide him to Jerusalem. Upon their arrival in Jerusalem, Balian releases his prisoner, and asks him for the name of his master whom he has slain, so that he can pray for his soul. As his prisoner departs, he says that, “Your qualities will be known among your enemies before ever you meet them”. After being accepted as the new Lord of Ibelin, Balian soon becomes acquainted with the main players in Jerusalem’s political arena: King Baldwin IV, stricken by leprosy yet nevertheless a wise and most sensible ruler, Princess Sibylla, King Baldwin IV’s sister, and Guy de Lusignan, Sibylla’s scheming, bloodthirsty, and intolerant husband. Despite the respect Baldwin engenders from the combined Christian and Muslim population of Jerusalem, Guy, who is determined to rule after Baldwin’s inevitable early death, seeks to precipitate a war that will allow him to dispose of the Muslims and claim the kingdom for Christians alone.
Guy and his co-conspirator Raynald of Châtillon massacre a Muslim trade caravan. Enraged, Saladin, leader of the Muslim forces seeking to retake Jerusalem, attacks Kerak, Raynald’s castle. Balian decides to defend Kerak castle from Saladin’s cavalry, in order to protect the innocent villagers surrounding the castle. Though outnumbered, he and his knights charge Saladin’s cavalry, allowing the villagers time to flee to the castle; the quick battle ends at a stalemate, with Balian’s capture. In captivity, he encounters the ’servant’ he freed, learning he is actually one of Saladin’s generals, who returns the favor, freeing him to Kerak. King Baldwin IV then arrives with his main army, and successfully negotiates a Muslim retreat with Saladin, averting a bloodbath. At Saladin’s camp, several of his generals are angry that he made a truce, but Saladin dismisses these complaints as a foolhardy rush to war; he will only launch an attack against Jerusalem after ample preparation, when he feels he is strategically strong enough. Baldwin beats Raynald and orders his arrest, but the stress of the events causes him to collapse, and his physicians believe he will die shortly.
King Baldwin dies and Sibylla succeeds him. Baldwin had attempted to pair Balian to Sibylla, but Balian did not accept, as he refused to be associated with the necessary murder of Guy; such political intrigue being counter to Balian’s morality. She therefore names Guy as her King Consort of Jerusalem. Guy, now free to do as he pleases, releases Raynald and they provoke Saladin to war by murdering Saladin’s sister. Subsequently, in their arrogance, they march to the desert, without adequate food and water, to fight Saladin, leaving Jerusalem unguarded except for Balian, his personal knights and the townspeople. Saladin’s army ambushes Guy and Raynald (the Battle of Hattin) and the crusaders are annihilated. Guy and Raynald themselves are captured; Saladin slits Raynald’s throat, and then marches on Jerusalem. Saladin’s siege of Jerusalem is three days of battle wherein Balian demonstrates tactical skill in knocking down siege towers and holding the line when a section of city wall is opened. Having proven their resolve, Balian surrenders Jerusalem to Saladin on condition of the inhabitants’ safe passage to Christian lands, to which Saladin agrees. Balian points out that when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem a hundred years previously, they massacred the Muslim inhabitants, but Saladin assured him that he is a man of honor, and, keeping his word, allows Balian and his people to leave. In the marching column of citizens, he finds Sibylla, and convinces her to come with him.
Later, Balian is back in his French village. A column of crusader knights rides through, led by King Richard I of England, who tells Balian that they are commencing a new Crusade to retake Jerusalem from Saladin. King Richard seeks Balian, the defender of Jerusalem, to join him, but Balian answers that he is only a blacksmith.
After visiting the grave of Balian’s first wife, he and Sibylla ride into the sunset. An explanation is given that King Richard failed in his Crusade, negotiated a shaky truce with Saladin after three years of war, and that “even today, peace in the Kingdom of Heaven remains elusive”.
Historical accuracy
King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who reigned from 1174 to 1185, was a leper, and his sister Sibylla did marry Guy of Lusignan. Also, Baldwin IV had a falling out with Guy before his death, and so Guy did not succeed Baldwin IV immediately. Baldwin crowned Sibylla’s son from her previous marriage to William of Montferrat, five-year-old Baldwin V co-king in his own lifetime, in 1183.[3] The little boy reigned as sole king for one year, dying in 1186 at nine years of age. After her son’s death, Sibylla and Guy (to whom she was devoted) garrisoned the city, and she claimed the throne. The coronation scene in the movie was, in real life, more of a shock: Sibylla had been forced to promise to divorce Guy before becoming queen, with the assurance that she would be permitted to pick her own consort. After being crowned by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem (who is unnamed in the movie), she chose to crown Guy as her consort. Raymond III of Tripoli, the film’s Tiberias, was not present, but was in Nablus attempting a coup, with Balian of Ibelin, to raise her half-sister (Balian’s stepdaughter), princess Isabella of Jerusalem, to the throne; however, Isabella’s husband, Humphrey IV of Toron, betrayed them by swearing allegiance to Guy.
Raymond of Tripoli was a cousin of Amalric I of Jerusalem, and one of the Kingdom’s most powerful nobles, as well as sometime regent. He had a claim to the throne himself, but, being childless, instead tried to advance his allies the Ibelin family. He was often in conflict with Guy and Raynald, who had risen to their positions by marrying wealthy heiresses and through the king’s favor. Guy and Raynald did harass Saladin’s caravans, and the claim that Raynald captured Saladin’s sister is based on the account given in the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre. This claim is not supported by any other accounts, and is generally believed to be false. In actuality, after Raynald’s attack on one caravan, Saladin made sure that the next one, in which his sister was traveling, was properly guarded: the lady came to no harm.[4]
The discord between the rival factions in the kingdom gave Saladin the opportunity to pursue his long-term goal of conquering it. The kingdom’s army was defeated at the Battle of Hattin, partly due to the conflict between Guy and Raymond. As already stated, the battle itself is not shown in the movie, but its aftermath is depicted. The Muslims captured Guy and Raynald, and according to al-Safadi in al-Wafi bi’l-wafayat, executed Raynald after he drank from the goblet offered to Guy, as the sultan had once made a promise never to give anything to Raynald. Guy was imprisoned, but later freed. He attempted to retain the kingship even after the deaths of Sibylla and their daughters during his siege of Acre in 1190, but lost in an election to Conrad of Montferrat in 1192. Richard I of England, his only supporter, sold him the lordship of Cyprus, where he died c. 1194.
There was a Haute Cour, a “high court”, a sort of medieval parliament, in which Jeremy Irons’s character Tiberias is seen arguing with Guy for or against war, in front of Baldwin IV as the final judge.
The movie alludes to the Battle of Montgisard in 1177, in which 16-year-old Baldwin IV defeated Saladin, with Saladin narrowly escaping.
The Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar were the most enthusiastic about fighting Saladin and the Muslims. They were monastic military orders, committed to celibacy. Neither Guy nor Raynald was a Templar, as the movie implies by costuming them both in Templar surcoats: they were secular nobles with wives and families.
During one scene in the movie, shortly before Hattin, three soldiers referred to as “Templars” attack Balian; however, they clearly wear the white surcoats with black crosses of Teutonic Knights, rather than the white and red of the Knights Templar. The Teutonic Knights were not a military order until 1198.[5]
The historical origin of Orlando Bloom’s character, Balian of Ibelin, was a close ally of Raymond; however, he was a mature gentleman, just a year or two younger than Raymond, and one of the most important nobles in the kingdom, not a French blacksmith. His father Barisan (which was originally his own name, modified into French as ‘Balian’) founded the Ibelin family in the east, and probably came from Italy. Balian and Sibylla were indeed united in the defense of Jerusalem; however, no romantic relationship existed between the two. Balian married Sibylla’s step-mother Maria Comnena, Dowager Queen of Jerusalem and Lady of Nablus. The Old French Continuation of William of Tyre (the so-called Chronicle of Ernoul) claimed that Sibylla had been infatuated with Balian’s older brother Baldwin of Ibelin, a widower over twice her age, but this is doubtful; instead, it seems that Raymond of Tripoli attempted a coup to marry her off to him to strengthen the position of his faction; however, this legend seems to have been behind the film’s creation of a love-relationship between Sibylla and a member of the Ibelin family.
The events of the siege of Jerusalem are based on the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, a favorable account partly written by Ernoul, one of Balian’s officers, and other contemporary documents. Saladin did besiege Jerusalem for almost a month, and was able to knock down a portion of the wall. In the film Balian knighted everyone who could carry a sword, but historical accounts say he only knighted some burgesses. The exact number varies in different accounts, but it is probably less than one hundred in a city which had tens of thousands of male inhabitants and refugees. Balian personally negotiated the surrender of the city with Saladin, after threatening to destroy every building and kill the 3000-5000 Muslim inhabitants of the city. The film, however, downgrades the roles of Sibylla and of Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem in the siege, transforming Heraclius into a coward. Saladin allowed Balian and his family to leave in peace, along with everyone else who could arrange to pay a ransom, but sold thousands of poorer inhabitants who could not pay into slavery.
The “uneasy truce” referred to in the closing scene actually refers to the Treaty of Ramla, negotiated, with Balian’s help, at the end of the Third Crusade. The Third Crusade is alluded to at the end of the movie, when Richard I of England visits Balian in France. Balian, of course, was not from France and did not return there with Sibylla; she and her two daughters died of fever in camp during the siege of Acre. Conrad of Montferrat had denied her and Guy entry to the remaining stronghold of Tyre, and thus Guy was attempting to take another city for himself.
Balian’s relations with Richard were far from amicable, because he supported Conrad against Richard’s vassal Guy. He and his wife Maria arranged her daughter Isabella’s forcible divorce from Humphrey of Toron so she could marry Conrad. Ambroise, who wrote a poetic account of the crusade, called Balian “more false than a goblin” and said he “should be hunted with dogs”. The anonymous author of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi wrote that Balian was a member of a “council of consummate iniquity”, and described him as cruel, fickle, and faithless, and accused him of taking bribes from Conrad.
The young Balian of the movie thus did not exist in reality. The historical Balian had descendants by Maria Comnena. Thanks to their close relationship to Sibylla’s half-sister and successor, Maria’s daughter Queen Isabella (not shown in the movie), the Ibelins became the most powerful noble family in the rump Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as in Cyprus in the thirteenth century. Most notably, Maria and Balian’s son John, the Lord of Beirut, was a dominant force in the politics of Outremer for the first third of the thirteenth century.
An episode of The History Channel’s series History vs. Hollywood analyzed the historical accuracy of the film. This program and a Movie Real (a series by A&E Network) episode about Kingdom of Heaven, were both included on the DVD version of the movie.
Film score
The music to the movie is quite different in style and content to the soundtrack of Ridley Scott’s earlier 2000 film Gladiator and many other subsequent films depicting historical events. A composition of classical listings, rousing chorales, juxtaposing Muslim sacred chants, and subtle implementation of contemporary rock/pop influences, the soundtrack is largely the result of British film-score composer Harry Gregson-Williams. Gregson-Williams chose to move away from the “battle waltz” and the “wailing woman”that had been introduced by Hans Zimmer in Gladiator and would then find excessive use in more and more other movies, such as Alexander and Troy.
Awards
Won (3)
European Film Awards:
- Audience Award - Best Actor (Orlando Bloom)
Satellite Awards:
- Outstanding Original Score (Harry Gregson-Williams)
VES Awards:
- Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture (Wes Sewell, Victoria Alonso, Tom Wood, Gary Brozenich)
Nominations (8)
Satellite Awards:
- Outstanding Actor in a Supporting Role, Drama (Edward Norton)
- Outstanding Art Direction & Production Design (Arthur Max)
- Outstanding Costume Design (Janty Yates)
- Outstanding Visual Effects (Tom Wood)
Teen Choice Awards:
- Choice Movie: Action/Adventure
- Choice Movie Actor: Action/Adventure/Thriller (Orlando Bloom)
- Choice Movie Liplock (Eva Green and Orlando Bloom)
- Choice Movie Love Scene (Eva Green and Orlando Bloom - Balian and Sibylla kiss)
