This film was a surprise.  Starring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and the new Bond girl Eva Green, it was a solid five-star story about the Crusades – especially the end of the period following the Second Crusade, in the late 1100s.  It is based on true historical events, with some embellishment and a little invention.  But it tells a tale one can’t quickly forget.

The Crusades as a historical fact make one wince.  Learning this bit of history is like reading about large dangerous snakes.  It is simultaneously revolting and fascinating material.  They began with a great kickoff when Pope Urban II decided it was terrible that the holy city of Jerusalem had become part of an area owned and controlled by “infidels” (Muslims).  He put out the call for a “Crusade” to win the city for Christianity, in 1095.  The word “crusade” is from the Latin meaning to “take up the cross”.  He was responding, at the time, from a call for help from the Byzantine Emperor Alexis for help fighting off the Turks and a concern for the safety of Christian pilgrims who regularly traveled to the holy land, which mainly meant Jerusalem and Palestine.  His well-presented and publicized call to arms fell on fertile ground in Europe.  Before long there was a stream of knights, foot soldiers and others on their way to “liberate” Palestine and Jerusalem. 

In the preceding centuries in Europe, the Middle Ages were in full swing – or perhaps more accurately, full slobber, or wallow.  Education not only didn’t exist, but reading and writing was forbidden by the Roman church except for Monks.  All things Roman had been rejected, including their baths and their ability to plan and organize.  The Roman Empire had degenerated into dust and the only relic was Rome itself, now the center of the largest branch of Christianity.  The other branch extant at the time was centered in Byzantium, now called Constantinople, in what is now Turkey.  That branch survives as what we now call “Eastern Orthodox” Catholicism. 

In the long feudal Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome, one bright spot was the reign of Charlemagne, a king centered in what is now France, who brought much of Europe under one banner.  Charlemagne was a handsome man who wore robes of ermine and a large spiked crown.  Paintings of him look like any good king in a Disney cartoon.  He ruled by force of personality rather than good administrative skill, however.  In this he was like South American Leader Simon Bolivar, who formed that continent into one country, only to have it fall apart when his own charm and powers of persuasion were no longer sufficient to hold it together.  Within a couple of generations after the death of Charlemagne, Europe’s factions were back at each others’ throats, hammer and tong.  The game was King of the Hill, and the man who could command the largest and most effective army of knights and soldiers, and build the largest and most imposing castle, would control his area until someone stronger came along to take it away.  Nevertheless, Europe was emerging from the long Dark Ages, and there was an increasing population, the beginning of education, and a promise of relative prosperity where there had been nothing but slavery, ignorance and poverty for centuries.  The lack of education and hygiene was offset by a raw vitality that spilled over into the Crusades when the Pope issued his call to arms. 

The Middle East, on the other hand, had emerged as a center of learning and culture.  Modern mathematics were developed in the Middle East, including Algebra and Trigonometry.  We still use “Arabic numerals” in most languages.  Mohammed exploded on the scene in the seventh century, and united a large area with a common goal and purpose.  Commerce and learning flourished.  However, the “common cause” of the early Muslim era had begun to deteriorate into political infighting and factionalism by the time of the Pope’s pronouncement, and this disorganization in the Arab world, combined with the surprise factor when tens of thousands of armed Europeans appeared on the horizon, led to the success of the First Crusade.  Within a short time, Jerusalem had been taken and a large area around Jerusalem was held by the Crusaders.  This began a 300-year period of give-and-take during which there were a total of eight Crusades (of which the first three are the most significant) and an ebb and flow settlement of the area by European invaders. 

The Crusaders were not, as a group, very compassionate and understanding victors.  They were there to exterminate the infidels.  When they first took Jerusalem, the slaughter was total.  They killed men, women and children and left few to tell the story.  Then, flushed with victory and the satisfaction of a job well done, many of them got back on their horses and went home to Europe.  The ones who remained began to develop a relationship with the Muslim environment and build a new home and culture.  By the time of the Second Crusade, about fifty years later, there were second and third-generation Christian families making their homes in Palestine and surrounding lands.  By 1144 the Arabic groups had become united enough to challenge the invaders, and were beginning to make gains.  Another Crusade was mounted.  Although this one was considerably less explosive and successful than the first, it refocused attention on the area and stabilized European colonization to some degree.

But in the late 1100s, about 80 years after the First Crusade, a military leader named Saladin emerged in the Arab world.  Saladin was not a mad-dog general.  He was very intelligent, and on several occasions he established peace treaties with the Europeans, which were uniformly broken not by the Muslims but by the Europeans.  This is not an attempt to whitewash the Muslims of the era, or to imply that all Christian invaders were brutes.  But the comparison doesn’t flatter the Christians during that period of time.

A schism developed in the European sector between the second generation inhabitants, who were making their homes in the area, wanted peace, and had a relatively high degree of communication and understanding with the Muslims, and the constant stream of newly-arrived Crusaders, most of whom were there with fire in their eyes, to slay the infidels and rid the holy land of the scourge of Mohammedanism.  Peaceful civilian caravans were attacked and slaughtered by roving groups of Christian marauders.  Small settlements and cities were overrun. 

Saladin was a wise leader and good politician, and as the years went by his power and influence increased.  By about 1170 he had united a sufficient percentage of the Arab world under his banner to mount a real attack on the invaders.  It is at about this time that our movie begins. 

The film is very realistic and is mounted on a large scale.  Character arcs, mostly based on the lives of the real players of the period, are very well drawn.  Brace yourself for the blood and carnage, but the portrait of the period is unparalleled in any other movie I’ve seen about the age of knights in armor.  (The Crusades really ushered in the era of knights in armor.  The Crusaders mostly wore chain mail, a lesser protection than real armor, but the richest lords could afford a suit of armor.  By not long after the Crusades, European warfare featured entire armies of knights in armor.)

One of the most rewarding features on this DVD is a mode where a running text appears below the film, giving the historical data behind the scenes you’re watching.  This mode is fascinating.  Watch the movie first, with subtitles so you don’t miss what the actors are saying.  Then restart the movie in this mode with the historical text.  You’ll be hooked.  I found it necessary to liberally use the Pause button, reading the box then continuing the movie.  The data in these text boxes would be good reading even without the film behind it.  For example, as a specific war lord addresses his troops, advocating an attack, the text below gives the background of this war lord historically, and tells what eventually happened to him.  In another text it might explain the history and function of a catapult-like machine being used to throw projectiles at castle walls, or it might explicate attitudes of the time, like the idea that the Crusaders considered archers to be dishonorable warriors, fighting from a distance instead of facing you with a sword, man-to-man.  (Of course it wasn’t long before archery began to dominate warfare.  By the 1300s, English advances in archery resulted in an irresistible military force during the Hundred Year’s War.)  There is also considerable cultural information of a non-military nature – how they got water in the desert, what they ate, the state of hygiene and what they did with their dead, etc. 

It may be a little overwrought to say that the Crusades were the beginning of the current Middle East conflict, but there is a case to be made for that viewpoint.  More importantly, the collision of these two cultures in the period between 1100 and 1300 cross-pollinated both cultures, enriching Europe and the Far East.  In Europe, it ushered in the age of exploration, with Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama, in a search for trade that would bring to Europe the spices and silks they had discovered in their Middle Eastern adventure. 

Following the Crusades, the Middle East coalesced into an empire known as the Ottoman Turks, that flourished until the middle 1800s.  It was one of the longest and most stable empires in recorded history, rivaling Rome and the British Empire for strength and durability.  During its peak, this empire stretched across North Africa into the Middle East, across Persia and all the way to India.  Incursions were made into Europe as well, and it once reached as far as Hungary in the southeast and included the south of Spain as well.  As late as the early 1800s, Europe was heavily concerned about the possibility of invasion by the Turks, and this concern didn’t end until after the Crimean War in the 1850s, in which the Turkish army was vanquished by British, Russian and other European forces.  The Ottoman Empire eventually fell because of corruption in the ruling classes, resulting in an erosion of the once solid economic and cultural base, and refusal to embrace the rapidly improving technologies of the 1800s in Europe, especially military technologies, which led to losses on the battlefields of the Crimea (an area of the Ukraine). 

But the collision of Saladin and the Crusaders is probably the most interesting feature of the Middle Ages.  People who went to the “holy land” for a high religious purpose, only to have it degenerate into a slaughter and a land grab, and finally decompose into a protracted and unwinnable conflict and a lost cause – a regrettable misadventure. 

It is a film worth watching.