Gods Men Prayer and Community

Gods Men

Prayer and Community in of Gods and Men

Frequently, the most powerful filmmaking is that which reflects the events of recent history. When cinema accurately and meaningfully captures the human experience in a way that is relatable and relevant, even when the setting of the film is one so far removed from our experiences as the audience. In French director Xavier Beauvois' critically acclaimed 2010 film of Gods and Men, the lives of a group of trappist monks in an Algerian abbey are quite remote to western movie-goers. However, in that which the film reveals about the role of community and prayer in the lives of these monks, of Gods and Men speaks to the more universal interconnection between spirituality and positive human collectivity.

With the film in question, it seems apparent that the tragic figures at its center are deeply committed to serving a positive role in a community which is not only being torn asunder by civil war but which also has demonstrated no small amount of hostility toward foreigners. As Scott (2011) asserts, "simplicity and charity may be central aspects of their mission, but the monks' presence, as European Christians in a land of Arab Muslims, is part of a complicated political legacy, fraught with resentment and bad memories. France's colonization of Algeria and the brutal war of independence that ended it cast their shadow over the monastery, and while the monks are not overtly trying to expiate the sins of colonialism, they are surely committed to healing its wounds." (Scott, p. 1)

To this end, for Christian and his fellow monks, the call to bring medical relief and an all-too-rare sense of peace to the quickly disintegrating Algerian society overshadowed the threat that this represented to their lives. However -- and this is a theme at the center of the film -- this threat invokes impassioned debate amongst the monks over the best course of action to take. While none lacked a sense of the importance of serving the community, they came from increasingly different perspectives on how long to tolerate the peril posed by a crumbling civility. Indeed, for some, a sense that the Islamic fundamentalist groups around them would see to their deaths invoked a question as to whether it was even a worthy goal to serve such a community.

However, the monks were united in their spirituality, in their shared call to prayer and in their commitment to the simplest of lifestyles. The film does a remarkable job of demonstrating the solidarity that this creates between them even as they find themselves vehemently divided over the best course of action. The commitment to the extended community around them surely begins with the strength of community shown by the monks themselves. Even in the midst of the tumult of mounting violence, with the increasing regularity of the hostility visited upon the monks themselves, and in the face of their own internal disagreements, the monks sustain their communal identity with absolute commitment to their chosen lifestyle. An unwavering belief in the power of worship would be a key characteristic of this lifestyle.