High up in the Atlas mountains of Algeria lives a small monastery of French Trappist monks. Theirs is a life of peace. They celebrate mass with a hushed delicacy. They sow and harvest their gardens with a reverence for simplicity. And they care for the Muslim village that has grown up around them with duty and respect. There are seven of them – all with faces as sturdy and knobbled as old trees – though two of them stand out.
There's Luc, a heavyset old monk played by Michael Lonsdale, who once played the Bond villain Drax in Moonraker. Now he's asthmatic and tired, a man of medicine who keeps a practice that overspills with poor villagers. He hands out essentials such as spare clothes and shoes; dispenses advice on love to a young woman with earthy wisdom. And then there's Lambert Wilson's Christian, the nominal leader of the group. He is their sober intellectual who reads the Koran, writes of spiritual considerations or sits in discussions with the local Imam. And he is also the man who will walk out of the monastery at gunpoint to talk to a murderous Islamic militia, his face a mask of stern, authoritative calm while his throat is constricted with fear.
This is the world of Of Gods and Men, a film of amazing grace and almost austere beauty from French director Xavier Beauvois, who previously directed the so-so drama The Young Lieutenant. It is based on a true story, that of seven Trappist monks who were beheaded in 1996 in Algeria in mysterious circumstances. And Beauvois turns this into a rich study where terror is used as an interrogation of faith, but with an approach so gentle there is almost no wish to disturb.
The film roots us in a world where Islam and Christianity live in harmony only for a rogue group to upset the balance. The Armed Islamic Group of Algeria is roaming the country conducting killings. A gang of Croatian workers have had their throats sliced. The local Imam is upset at this new wave of militancy. The Koran, he says, does not endorse murder. The Algerian police come to the monastery and offer protection to this group of French foreigners. But Christian won't allow it. "Je refuse!" he says, though this sets the others on edge.
Beauvois turns the monastery into a psychological study of siege. Do you stay or do you go when the gamble is your life? Do the monks even own their own lives when they have dedicated them to their god? The monks take a vote that splits them down the table. Self-interest begins to surface. One of them begins to crumble, overwhelmed by fear and doubt. Others become sick from stress. They discuss leaving with the villagers. "You're the branch, we're the birds on the tree," a local woman says. "If you leave, we lose our footing." Luc and Christian see the crisis as a challenge, that their calling as men of faith is to be tested by such situations. For their discipline and resilience to buckle now would be tantamount to a loss of faith.
The film isn't a poster for religion but a study instead of radiant conviction, of grace under pressure. Beauvois's film is as restful as meditation, yet propelled by an undertow of powerful feelings. The cinematographer Caroline Champetier uses a fluid camera to create a mise en scene that is as spare as a monk's daily life. And the touchstone here is the great Danish director Carl Dreyer, with the film pushing for that blend of spirituality and transcendental style.
The film's greatest scene is a gentle allusion to the last supper. A tape cassette plays Tchaikovsky and the camera travels slowly across the faces of these men as they sit around a table. Some of them are crying, overwhelmed by beauty – of the music they rarely listen to, of the lives they may be about to give up. Their own faces are beautiful, charged from within. And the moment recalls Dreyer's luminous, spiritual close-ups of Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Beauvois captures the passion of these monks, the meeting of spiritual ordeal with renewed belief as a state of grace.
Of Gods and Men, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, is contemporary in the way it examines religious tensions in the modern world, and is somewhat old-fashioned in its bearing. But this is terrific cinema no doubt, taking us close to the transcendental.
First-time director Gareth Edwards' Monsters, meanwhile, is a strange beast. The film is set in Central America, years after an alien invasion. It's a world of military rubble and wreckage where locals are just getting on with their lives. The film tells the story of Andrew (Scoot McNairy), a stubbled twentysomething newspaper photographer who is tasked with escorting the tousled blonde Samantha (Whitney Able) – daughter of his newspaper boss – out of the infection zone towards a walled America. But they miss their boat and must trek it on foot.
In a manner similar to Jaws and the young Spielberg, Edwards has built a film around people, shelving the horror to the background for as long as possible. This feeds a sustained atmosphere. We glimpse aspects of the monsters but are rarely confronted with them. The militancy, spearheaded by the Yanks, starts suspiciously to appear one-sided.
Monsters' chief success is its sense of estrangement. This world is familiar but odd; the atmosphere is one of dread mixed with discovery. The raw realism is as alert to sense of place as a travel documentary. One wonders if Edwards set out to make something more commercial only to discover a richer canvas in the making. The film is sensitive, not as confrontational as you might expect and it will leave horror fans wanting. And even though it leans towards arthouse with its preoccupations, it will leave those fans wanting too: the characters just don't bite deep enough.
The film, though, is something of a coup. Edwards directed, photographed and produced it with a crew he was able to fit in the back of a van. The special effects he did in his bedroom with off-the-shelf software. That it looks as big-picture sharp and FX-savvy as a Hollywood spectacular suggests a DIY revolution in the making. That it was made for just $15,000 makes you wonder what James Cameron did with all that cash.
The shiny dome head of Megamind in Megamind, meanwhile, is steeped in Avatar blue. Like the villainish hero of the recent Despicable Me, his heart is steeped in goodness. Megamind is voiced by Will Ferrell with his usual hysterical, hapless abandon. For Megamind is both great and useless. He banishes Metro City's superhero only to become bored without a nemesis. It seems that lashings of knowing irony just aren't enough to entertain him – or the audience – so he creates a new nemesis out of a nerdish chump only for it to go terribly wrong. Megamind muscles in a few minor laughs but displays nothing you could call superpowers.
The local residents in The Pipe, a documentary about the controversial Corrib gas pipeline, certainly don't have any special powers. But what they do have is persistence – the kind of dogged nimbyism that can drive a campaign for nearly a decade. The "bad guys" in The Pipe, meanwhile, certainly do – Shell E&P Ireland, which wants to lay a pipline from Corrib gas field through the Erris parish in Co Mayo, and the Irish government which offered it its full support to do so.
The Pipe plays like David and Goliath, and the opening montage sets the tone: we get pastoral, aerial views of the Irish coastline cut up with a frenzy of garda clashes. From the off, then, it looks like propaganda. This helps its emotional through-line – in its little people versus the state/corporation, plenty of viewers will be sucked into support. Director Risteard O Domhnaill doesn't move beyond the point of view of the locals. He captures some stunning images, and some snorting, heaving, close-ups of the ruck and maul of protesters clashing with gardaí, who most of the time just look embarrassed. And then there's the mulish infighting among the campaigners which makes for entertainment.
The fair-minded viewer, however, who wants to weigh up this ongoing and explosive issue, is prevented from doing so. The myriad reasons for not building the pipeline are never supported here by anything other than hearsay. The wider (despicable) political picture is never extrapolated. This is a shame because some of the facts speak for themselves.
December 5, 2010
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