Of Gods and Men
Metascore
86 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 29 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 29
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 29
  3. Negative: 0 out of 29
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  1. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Ed Schied
    Feb 21, 2011
    90
    The film is masterfully directed by Xavier Beauvois who co-wrote the screenplay. At Cannes, Of Gods and Men received the runner-up Grand Prix. It's also France's selection for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
  2. New Orleans Times-Picayune
    Reviewed by: Mike Scott
    Apr 29, 2011
    75
    It is a thoughtful film, a serious one, and one that is sneakily affecting.
  3. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    Apr 21, 2011
    100
    I can't recall the last film that so wholly, honestly and movingly explained what it means to be a Christian.
  4. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    Apr 6, 2011
    75
    A quietly compelling if not particularly emotional and sober-minded treatment of an infamous incident.
  5. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    Mar 31, 2011
    89
    It's something of a Tiananmen Square face-off, minus the overt politics, which makes it all the more spellbinding.
  6. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Marc Mohan
    Mar 24, 2011
    75
    Ultimately, the story can be seen as the collision of two equally uncompromising belief systems, each its own form of fundamentalism. That neither benefits from the encounter should come as no surprise to anyone with the slightest knowledge of human history.
  7. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    Mar 17, 2011
    100
    It's an observation of crushing truth.
  8. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    Mar 17, 2011
    88
    Like the best spiritual movies, of whatever faith, "Of Gods and Men" moves us toward a union with the infinite, and when we come to the monks' last supper, the moment is staggeringly powerful.
  9. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    Mar 10, 2011
    75
    I found myself resisting the film's pull of easy emotion. There are fundamental questions here, and the film doesn't engage them. I believe Christian should have had the humility to lead his monks away from the path of self-sacrifice.
  10. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    Mar 10, 2011
    90
    Alternately harrowing and humbling, this is a story of ordinary men whose compassion is tested in the cruelest, most profound fashion.
  11. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    Mar 3, 2011
    75
    This is a beautiful film, full of gray-and white-haired men who grow in stature before our eyes.
  12. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    Feb 26, 2011
    100
    It's a transcendently uplifting tragedy.
  13. Movieline
    Reviewed by: Elvis Mitchell
    Feb 25, 2011
    80
    The normally sly Wilson - who was once in the running to play James Bond - was directed by Beauvois to surrender ego. Wilson accomplishes this with a minimum of fuss.
  14. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    Feb 25, 2011
    75
    Be prepared to exercise the same patience and forbearing as the Trappists, because the pacing here is all Grecian urn – so much "silence and slow time."
  15. NPR
    Reviewed by: Mark Jenkins
    Feb 25, 2011
    90
    Although the monks don't seek death, Of Gods And Men can be seen as an ode to religiously motivated self-sacrifice. But Beauvois deliberately leaves the story open-ended. The value of these men's lives, he's noting, is not defined by how they ended.
  16. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    Feb 25, 2011
    75
    If there's an awkward moment, it's the scene in which the monks take part in a sort of Last Supper, drinking wine while Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" plays in the background. You keep waiting for Natalie Portman to twirl into the room.
  17. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    Feb 25, 2011
    80
    Quiet, soulful and wrenching.
  18. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    Feb 24, 2011
    100
    What he (Beauvois) conveys, through austere but spectacular visual language, magnificent liturgical singing and an ensemble cast headed by the terrific French veteran actors Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale, is something of the "why."
  19. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    Feb 24, 2011
    100
    A thrilling adventure of the spirit. Austere yet provocative, this is not only a film about faith, it also has faith that the power generated by complex moral decisions can be as unstoppable as any runaway locomotive.
  20. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    Feb 24, 2011
    100
    Of Gods and Men is supple and suspenseful, appropriately austere without being overly harsh, and without forgoing the customary pleasures of cinema. The performances are strong, the narrative gathers momentum as it progresses, and the camera is alive to the beauty of the Algerian countryside.
  21. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    Feb 24, 2011
    100
    More than anything, Of Gods and Men is a drama of character, and warm humanity.
  22. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Sam Adams
    Feb 24, 2011
    58
    Not withstanding rich performances from Wilson and Lonsdale, the film never comes close to embodying that level of complexity.
  23. indieWIRE
    Reviewed by: Eric Kohn
    Feb 24, 2011
    91
    Ignore the precise religious context and it stands perfectly well as a restrained look at personal convictions in the face of certain death.
  24. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    Feb 23, 2011
    91
    It is their shared strength as a band of brothers humble before their Christian God - and indeed before the God of Islam - that may stir viewers to an awe that transcends skeptical opinions about religion or politics.
  25. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Keith Uhlich
    Feb 22, 2011
    80
    Godly as the monks are, they are still human-which makes their ultimate sacrifice all the more devastating.
  26. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    Feb 22, 2011
    70
    Beauvois's film is cool while Denis's is hot-but the main difference is that where "White Material" is knowingly postcolonial, Of Gods and Men aspires to the timeless.
  27. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    Feb 21, 2011
    50
    There are eight individual decisions to be made here, yet Beauvois never humanizes any of his monks. The film instead consumes itself with songs, communal prayers and nightly meals.
  28. Variety
    Reviewed by: j
    Feb 21, 2011
    70
    As the film patiently (perhaps too much so for some) heads toward its foregone conclusion, Beauvois gradually raises his style to a level of baroqueness reminiscent of 1995's "Don't Forget You're Going to Die."
  29. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    Feb 25, 2011
    90
    This movie can hardly help being beautiful, in such a rarefied domain, but what matters is that it never looks merely beautiful. [28 Feb. 2011, p. 81]
    All this critic's reviews

User Reviews

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User Score
7.0 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 29 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 10
  3. Negative: 1 out of 10
  1. MarcDoyle
    9
    A beautiful film. Probably helps just a bit if you're Catholic, but the ecumenical spirit among the priests & their Muslim neighbors is refreshing. Finally, we see monks/missionaries/priests in a positive light. Amazing courage in the face of irrational danger. Of the 30+ people in my theater, maybe 8 walked out before it was over - it can be a little slow at times. But it works! Inspirational.… Full Review »
  2. Shiira
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. On one hand, you see Bill Maher's point in "Religulous" when he describes religion in terms of having a "neurological disorder" while he walks through Grand Central Station with Andrew Newberg, an eminent researcher in the field of nuclear brain imaging. The neuroscientist and Maher are in agreement that "if a billion people can believe in something, it can still be ridiculous." It's one thing, however, to poke fun at the Truckers Chapel, or the Creation Museum, or a ministry run by a former member of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, but it's another thing to exercise that same officious manner and condescending tone to a formidable opponent. Somebody who believes that mankind and dinosaurs coexisted in prehistoric times, of course, is going to be no match for the quick-witted and acid-tongued host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher", not to mention, the United States senator who makes up a word("indigously"), and confuses the usage for "legitimacy" with "literacy" in reference to his claim that Jesus' teachings were a factual discourse. These non-academics are easy targets. But try telling a Carthusian monk that his faith, the God he devoted his entire life to, has the erudite heft of a faerie tale, whose stories, in Maher's estimation, are on equal footing and interchangeable with "Jack & the Beanstalk". True enough, "religion [can be] detrimental to the progress of humanity" with all the gross ideological differences that give rise to wars, but the stand-up comic's wiseacre rhetoric, when juxtaposed against the static images featuring the monks of La Grande Chartreuse, contemplating God from the cramped space of their cells in "Into Deep Silence", can't help but come off as pedagogically cruel, because what if, as the agnostic narrator asks in "Religulous", they're wrong? Correspondingly, if Christianity is indeed a knockoff of Mediterranean religions, primarily the Egyptians' Book of the Dead, then the nine Trappist monks who cast caution to the wind and refused to back down from Algerian Islamic fundamentalists in "Of Gods and Men", died by their assassins' bullets for an ages-old fabrication, which is, as Cee-Lo wails soulfully, indeed, "crazy". For sure, the Catholic church could use some good PR, amid all the countless scandals that have come to light involving pedophilic priests with their seeming lack of remorse and arrogance. Whereas, the hermetic conditions of the Carthusian monks removes illicit prurient temptations from the equation, the Cistercian order who had occupied the Tibhirine Monastery before their violent deaths in 1996, lived among their Algerian neighbors seemingly without any transgressive incidents. While counseling a young Islamic girl about matters of the heart, Brother Luc looks perfectly fatherly, just way we would want our religious leaders to behave, therefore living up to the Christian ideals of charity, generosity, love, and unity. And in the wake of the monks' first contact with terrorists outside their monastery gates on Christmas eve, you can add piety and morality to the list, as well, when Brother Christian convinces the other Trappists to stay and face certain death, proving Maher's point that religion is a neurological disorder. But still, even the most hardline non-believer has to concede, however begrudgingly, the courage of their convictions. Their stubbornness may be infuriating, but not in the hypocritical sense, like the Russian Mennonite farmer in "Silent Light", who insists that his wife should continue to observe their faith in solemn prayer, this in spite of himself being an adulterer. But did the monks' non-action, the decision to resign from life, perhaps, have a touch of vainglorious egotism mixed in with their valor and bravery? In "The Passion of Joan of Arc", the Maid of Orleans is told, "You have no right to die. Your king still needs you," not to mention, the French people she professes to fight for. Call it what you want, but martyrdom is still suicide, a prideful sin, in which people can't be saved from beyond the grave. To be fair, "Of Gods and Men" does show not only the radical fundamentalist side of Islam, but the apolitical, peace-loving Muslims(the existence of a non-radicalized sect is what Maher refuses to acknowledge despite the entreating of his Middle East interviewees), as well. And yet, the film remains imbalanced because it fails to provide the underlying cause behind the terror, which is the century-old(and then some) French occupation of Algeria. This incomplete record of the bigger picture is also what flaws "Hiroshima mon amour". When the Japanese man tells his foreign lover, "I was off fighting the war," he might have been one of the soldiers who participated in the Rape of Nanking, or a pilot that descended upon Pearl Harbor on D-day. The moviegoer sympathizes with the Trappist monks, as well as the victims of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, but violence doesn't occur in a vacuum.… Full Review »
  3. jeremyp
    9
    The most spiritual and uplifting movie in quite a while. And if you don't like spiritual then how about charity and duty to one's fellow man. It's probably too slow paced for many young people but not for those who are wondering about their souls. Eight Trappist monks have to face up to the probability that their lives are in mortal danger if they stay in their monastery in Algeria, which is being ripped apart by a civil war between a secular Muslim government and extremists. How they come individually to their decisions is explored steadily over the movie's length. We see how they live and most importantly how they interweave almost seamlessly with their Arab neighbors. As they abjure from proselytizing and offer medical, farming, and other social needs they are respected. But they are Christians and they are foreigners and the extremists view them with at least a very jaundiced eye, and at most with evil intent. This is not a movie about terrorists, nor a movie about Frenchmen, but about faith and a deep sense of duty to that faith. It's not a movie just for Christians or even Catholics, it's a movie for all faiths and creeds as it speaks to the fundamental question of our role on earth: what is our purpose?… Full Review »
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