Of gods and men

Another love, even greater

OF GODS AND MEN

Director: Xavier Beauvoir

Certificate: 15

Running time: 122 minutes

This film never came to our local cinema. It’s in French with subtitles. However, if you can hire it, it is well worth watching.

Inspired by true events in 1996, it tells the story of a group of Cistercian monks living in North Africa. The film begins slowly (probably too slowly for those used to the bish-bosh wham-bam of Hollywood blockbusters) showing us the monks about their programme of prayers and chants in the little monastery, cultivating their garden, studying and giving help and medical assistance to the local Muslim village. The monks and the villagers get on well, respecting and befriending each other. It is a picture of a happy Muslim-Christian co-existence.

And as the monks mix with the community they find ways to witness. Amid the beautiful peace of rural North Africa, we find, for example, one of the village young women asking old Brother Luc, the medical monk, about love as she is faced with an arranged marriage. ‘Have you ever been in love?’ she asks. ‘Several times’, he replies, ‘and then I encountered a love even greater.’ He is speaking of the love of God.

But this idyll is broken. A group of Islamic extremists moves into the area and massacres a team of foreign workers. (The violence is quite explicit, hence the 15 certificate.) Fear sweeps through the region. Should the brothers, who are bound to be targeted, abandon their post and those who depend on them or, for the love of Christ, courageously stay? The story unfolds dramatically as the situation worsens and they have discussions as to what they ought to do.

As evangelicals, there may be much Catholic theology with which we do not agree, but the film brings a clear spiritual question about how much we practise what we say we believe and a challenge concerning our devotion to Jesus Christ.