Of Gods and Men: the Story of a Success

Last update: 2022-04-22 09:34:59

As is well known, Of Gods and Men, the film about the seven Tibhirine monks, the victims of armed groups in 1996 at the time of the Algerian crisis of the years between 1990 and 2000, won the Jury prize at the last Cannes Film Festival. It also deserved the prize of the Ministry of Education and the Ecumenical Jury. But above all it is winning over the favour of the public, which for many weeks has acclaimed its extraordinary success. Many people are asking themselves about the reasons for this success at a time when French society does not give much space to religious issues. And it is to this question that I intend to give some answers.

 

First of all, it must be stressed that this film, produced by professionals like Xavier Beauvois, director, and Étienne Comar, scriptwriter, is a quality product at the level of cinematographic technique: shots, narrative rhythm, good acting, beauty of landscapes …It was not commissioned by an ecclesiastic institution. The decision to make it was taken by professionals who considered that the dramatic story of the life and death of the monks could be presented to the big public, and they have won their bet. It is a work of cinematography and not an instrument of propaganda or proselytism.

The movie won the Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival

 

But apart from the technical quality, where does the public enthusiasm come from? Let us first of all remember that the kidnapping and then the death of the seven monks were followed by French public opinion with great concern in 1996. This interest transformed into admiration when the spiritual will of father Christian, the prior of the monastery, was published. A message that represents one of the fundamental texts of the twenty-first century. It moved John Paul II to such an extent that the Pontiff expressed the desire for Christian de Chergé’s face  to be on the fresco of the new martyrs painted in his  chapel in the Vatican.

 

With the cinema production that message has taken on a particularly strong meaning in its juxtaposition with the entire community facing a terrible decision: can the monks stay where they are, while the armed groups in the neighbourhood are on the rampage, increasing their murderous attacks, like the one in which twelve Croatian workers were killed on 14 December 1993 on their building site just three kilometres from the monastery as the crow flies? The answer to that question is at the centre of the tragedy evoked in the film. In the end the monks decide together to stay and face the danger so as not to fall short in their solidarity with their Muslim neighbours, among whom the community had carried on its monastic life for sixty years.

Can one be faithful to one’s vocation to the point of dying for it? Can one risk one’s own life for neighbors of another religious confession? 

This decision thus becomes a strong sign of the links that a Christian community can establish with the Muslim peasants living in the village nearby. To the dramatic intensity of the decision to be taken collectively is added the very topical question of the possibility of authentic relations between

 

Christians and Muslims. Besides the truthful representation of life in a Cistercian monastery against the magnificent landscape of the Moroccan Atlas mountains, what is presented is a problem of conscience that makes sense to any man, whoever he may be.

 

Can one be faithful to one’s vocation to the point of dying for it? Can one risk one’s own life for neighbors of another religious confession? Can everyone make this choice personally, and at the same time choose as a community, without oppressing individual freedom? In an age in which the consumer society imposes its choices and rhythms, the public has demonstrated that it is still sensitive to questions of a completely different dimension. This goes in its favour. And it is a message for this time of ours.