Vincent Ryan, doctoral candidate in medieval history at Saint Louis University (and son of Ignatius Press marketing guru Tony Ryan), has written a helpful piece over at CE about Kingdom of Heaven. He highlights the fact that director Ridley Scott has played a disingenuous game with the movie:
Scott is eager to tout all the research and historical detail in Kingdom of Heaven. However, when challenged about the various inaccuracies (and they are numerous), he is quick to intone, “I’m a moviemaker, not a documentarian. I try to hit the truth.” At other times he has defended himself by assuredly claiming, “I don’t think anyone historically, really, except historians, cares” or sarcastically responding, “Every historian is an expert.”
The movie has been heavily criticized by one of the world's leading experts on the Crusades:
Jonathan Riley-Smith is one these historians whom Ridley Scott seems to hold in such low regard. Generally regarded as one of the foremost historians of the Crusades, Riley-Smith is a professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University and the author of a number of books on the crusading movement, including What Were the Crusades. He was also one of the earliest critics of Scott’s film. After hearing some initial publicity and a general outline for Kingdom of Heaven back in January 2004, Riley-Smith told the Telegraph that the story was “complete and utter nonsense,” noting how it relied heavily on Sir Walter Scott’s nineteenth-century novel, The Talisman. “It’s rubbish. It’s not historically accurate at all. They refer to The Talisman, which depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilized, and the Crusaders are all the brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.”
Read the rest here. Also, see Ryan's recent IgnatiusInsight.com piece, "Mistakes, Yes. Conspiracies, No. Getting at the true story of the Fourth Crusade."
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