Of Gods and Men

Rab Nawaz

Set in the back­drop of the Alger­ian Civ­il War of the 90s, ‘Of Gods and Men’ is an extra­or­di­nary sto­ry based on true events that has gained great crit­i­cal acclaim, includ­ing the Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and nom­i­na­tion as the French offi­cial sub­mis­sion for the Acad­e­my Awards. The sto­ry revolves around eight French monks liv­ing in a monastery in the Alger­ian coun­try­side who end up hav­ing to make dif­fi­cult choic­es when con­front­ed with extrem­ists.

The movie starts with the peace­ful rou­tine of the monks; dai­ly prayers, mun­dane house­hold chores at the self-sus­tain­ing monastery, ami­able inter­ac­tions with Mus­lim neigh­bours, and com­mu­ni­ty work includ­ing free med­ical help for the sick. The slow pace of their lives is empha­sised by the seren­i­ty of the high­land rur­al set­ting cap­tured in its unspoiled beau­ty. This seren­i­ty is dis­turbed by the fre­quent news of killing and arson tak­ing place in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try, but it isn’t till some for­eign­er work­ers in a near­by area are slaugh­tered that the monks and vil­lagers start feel­ing the heat. As clash­es between the secu­ri­ty forces and the mil­i­tants grow, the monks become a hot tar­get for the lat­ter. It is then that the monks must either choose to stay and face the risk of death or to escape and save their lives. Invok­ing the pow­er of faith and their com­mu­ni­tar­i­an bond, the monks decide to stay amid grow­ing ten­sions and unpre­dictable devel­op­ments, even­tu­al­ly meet­ing their fate­ful end at the hands of the extrem­ists.

Through com­pelling act­ing, attuned dia­logue and a slow-paced screen­play, the sub­ject of this mov­ing dra­ma is dealt with metic­u­lous­ly. The monks’ test of faith, which is cen­tral to the plot, is pre­sent­ed not only as a reli­gious prob­lem but also as an exis­ten­tial predica­ment. When the threat draws near and the monks hold their meet­ings to decide their future course of action, it seems like argu­ments from the Bible and the whole set of Catholic rit­u­als stand mut­ed before the loud ques­tion of their moral con­vic­tion. Fac­ing pos­si­ble death, their votes fluc­tu­ate between stay­ing and leav­ing the monastery. Their even­tu­al deci­sion to stay emanates from their con­vic­tion to stand against vio­lence and bru­tal­i­ty as well as their belief in the pow­er of love. The uni­ver­sal char­ac­ter of their motives, which lies beyond the bound­aries of any par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, is what makes them real heroes.

Through their col­lec­tive stand, the monks also set an impres­sive exam­ple of fac­ing peren­ni­al fears. Assum­ing that fear is a state of mind and lies inside of us, the solu­tion is not to escape but face it. As a tes­ta­ment to this end, they even refuse mil­i­tary pro­tec­tion, which is of course also influ­enced by their dis­dain for the cor­rupt state author­i­ties. “To leave is to die”, pro­nounced by Luc, one of the monks who is also the doc­tor, cap­tures the essence of this issue at play.

The cur­rent con­text of ongo­ing vio­lent con­flicts in the name of reli­gion neces­si­tates a keen­er look at this movie. It is awful to watch how peace between the coex­ist­ing Mus­lim major­i­ty and the monks is ripped away by forces which car­ry no mean­ing and no con­sid­er­a­tion for the com­mon dweller of the area. The words of Blaise Pas­cal quot­ed in the movie “Men nev­er do evil so com­plete­ly and cheer­ful­ly as when they do it from a reli­gious con­vic­tion” res­onate alarm­ing­ly before those of us who live with the real­i­ty of ter­ror­ism every­day in Pak­istan. Giv­en the his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary inter­con­nect­ed­ness of var­i­ous reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties, raz­ing monas­ter­ies and per­se­cut­ing minori­ties rep­re­sent noth­ing short of a civ­i­liza­tion­al down­fall.