A hit in Cannes and a box-office success in France, Xavier Beau vois’ “Of Gods and Men” has arrived in New York.
It’s based on true events — the 1996 kidnapping and murder in Algeria of seven French monks by Islamic terrorists.
Although the beautifully composed and acted film never mentions the incident, the real-life monks were beheaded — their heads were found, but not their bodies.
Beauvois prefers to end his film in a less explicit but still powerful manner.
His seven gray-haired monks live peacefully in a monastery in the mountains of North Africa, praying, gardening, selling honey and providing free medical care and advice to the local Arabs.
The country’s civil war hits home when the monks’ Christian construction workers are murdered by the rebels.
The monastery’s leader, Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson), refuses the government’s offer of protection, putting his fate in God’s hands, although many of his colleagues would feel more comfortable with the army around.
Christian stands firm even after the terrorists pay the monastery a frightening Christmas Eve visit. You get the sense that he feels more threatened by the army than by the fundamentalists.
Just as the monks live an austere, thoughtful life, Beauvois’ direction is low-key and reflective.
If there’s an awkward moment, it’s the scene in which the monks take part in a sort of Last Supper, drinking wine while Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” plays in the background. You keep waiting for Natalie Portman to twirl into the room.