Clerics in crisis in 'Of Gods and Men'

Films about religious people aren't that rare, but films about genuine spirituality are, because movies prefer answers to questions, and personalities to cosmic problems. That said, the beautifully wrought "Of Gods and Men" -- based on the abduction and beheading of seven Cistercian monks in mid-'90s Algeria -- arrives with a wealth of personality, and several burning questions: Can men who've devoted their lives to Catholicism give up those lives when their duty demands? Just what is that duty? And can you really decide clearly when there's a gun at your head?

Led by their intellectually inclined prior, Christian (Lambert Wilson), the monks farm, school and provide medical care for the local villagers. Their home is a haven until a Christmas Eve invasion led by the ferocious Ali Fayattia (Farid Larbi), whose band has already slaughtered several Croatian immigrant workers. Fayattia is disarmed, figuratively, by Christian's knowledge of the Quran, and leaves. But no one thinks it's for good. And given that theirs is a religion based on martyrdom, the clerics are faced with an existential crisis.

Director Xavier Beauvois is not averse to allegory -- he knows his movie is a passion play times seven -- but "Of Gods and Men" is also solid drama, a story of both ideas and men, staged with care, craft and an ear for the music of faith. The monks' singing, which Beauvois uses intermittently, provides an ethereal aspect to a film very much concerned with blood, flesh, fear, imminent violence and the monks' crumbling faith in themselves, if not in God.

This is not an action movie, per se, but one is left with a similar kind of palpable tremor at its conclusion, through the rigor of its feeling and thought.