Thursday, May 19, 2005

Of God, and Other Things

I saw Kingdom of Heaven yesterday, and overall the movie was just ok. Not great, not terrible, not inspiring. Just ok. What a terrible thing to say about a movie, when you can't even form a proper opinion on it because the movie doesn't offer enough substance to create a proper opinion. The best character in the whole damn movie was David Thewlis's knight, introspective and god-fearing, yet never afraid to show a sense of humor. And he's a fucking bit part! Although the Leper King was good too... it's very hard to bring across a sense of anything while wearing a mask the entire time, but the actor portraying him did an excellent job.

Balion: "You go to certain death."
Thewlis: "All death is certain."

At the end of the movie, Balion asks Saladin what Jerusalem is worth, and he replies "Nothing. ...Everything." It amazes me sometimes, it really does, what people will do in the name of God. The Catholic Church sent how many Crusades into the Holy Land against the Muslims? 5? All in the name of God, to kill the infidels... who believed in the exact same God, only worshipped him differently. There's still fighting going on there, and probably will be for centuries to come. All because someone's beliefs are different from someone else's.

It made me think, just a bit. I'm Catholic, but haven't been to church or confession in years and years. I believe in some sort of higher being, but whether it's God or gods I don't know yet. Sometimes I think that I believe in technology more than anything. That's something that comes from reading too much William Gibson, and being so entrenched in computers and cyberspace. And why not? Technology is what drives the world these days. Heh. Someday we'll all have cybernetic implants...

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