Who’d have imagined that the best knights and armor movie since Braveheart (discounting The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a fantasy) would come out of Sweden, of all places?
Arn: The Knight Templar (available on DVD and Blue Ray) is an adaptation (much truncated, I understand) of a Swedish television miniseries based on a trilogy of novels by Jan Guillou. The hero is Arn Magnusson (Joakim Nätterkvist), a young man who was raised in a monastery, but trained in arms by a monk who was once a Knight Templar. Returning to his family, he falls in love with a neighbor’s daughter, Cecilia (Sofia Helin). Unfortunately her father’s political obligations make their match impossible. But the two young people manage to get together long enough to conceive a child. The ensuing scandal results in her being confined to a nunnery, and him being sent to join the Knights Templar on crusade in the Holy Land.
The storytelling requirements of fitting all this into the 133 minute run time make for a lot of intercutting and flashbacks (you do have to pay attention), but we follow their separate trials and and struggles for the next twenty years. The focus is on Arn, who becomes a legendary fighter in the Holy Land, one whom the Muslim armies recognize, fear, and respect. He even becomes a friend of Saladin, a circumstance which saves his life (what would fictional crusaders ever do without Saladin to pull their escutcheons out of the fire?). After their time of punishment is complete, Arn and Cecilia are reunited and married, but one final challenge remains for his warrior skills.
The use of language is interesting. Scenes in Sweden feature Swedish dialogue with English subtitles. But scenes in other languages (with some exceptions) are in English.
This is not a perfect movie from the point of view of the Christian viewer. The cliché of sundered lovers who defy their families (and are right to do so because of the transcendent importance of romantic love) underlies the whole story (go to Sigrid Undset for a corrective). Another cliché retreaded here is the depiction of Saladin as a flower of chivalry and enlightenment (a characterization ably attacked by Rodney Stark in the book God’s Battalions). In one scene, Saladin is even garbed and lighted in such a way as to remind the viewer of Jesus Christ.
But on the positive side, the crusaders are not portrayed uniformly as thugs and barbarians (some are, of course, but that’s fair). Little time is spent (at least in this version) on unfavorable comparisons between the Christian west and the Islamic east. Arn’s calling as a warrior is portrayed as a good and useful thing. The idea that one can wage war in order to make peace is seriously affirmed, without irony. Some clergy are good, some bad, but I saw no insult to Christianity (or even to church law) as such.
It’s a long film, and it jumps about a lot (especially in the early stages), but the story is compelling and the battles rousing. The violence is not overly graphic. There is one scene featuring brief female nudity. I enjoyed very much it and recommend it for mature audiences.