Arts & Life

At The Movies

Re-Creating Yerushalasnm
°

How Kingdom of Heaven filmmakers brought medieval Jerusalem
to the silver screen.

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

-om "Kingdom of Heaven"

I

n 1986, Oscar-nominated pro-
duction designer Arthur Max
(Gladiator) visited Jerusalem in
the midst of the first intifada.
"People told me not to go almost
everywhere, but I went everywhere,"
said Max, who is Jewish.
"Of course, some of the Old City
was closed off for security reasons, but
I went to the Western Wall and into
the al-Aqsa mosque and the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher. And I stood on
top of the Jaffa Gate and I looked out
over what to me always had been a
name and suddenly ffelt connected to
my heritage, a close connection to all
the Jewish history I had studied as a
,,
bar mitzvah [bov].
Max drew on those feelings to re-
create medieval Jerusalem for Kingdom
of Heaven, in which the protagonists
also journey to Jerusalem to connect
to their religious roots. The Ridley
Scott film, now in area theaters,
revolves around a crusader (Orlando
Bloom) swept up in the 12th-century
battle between Christian King Balian
and Muslim leader Saladin.
If Scott is known for dissecting
heroes braving fierce odds in movies
such as Alien and Gladiator, Max's
Jerusalem is an epic (and besieged)
character in its own right. While Jews
are relegated to extra roles, the city
itself is stunningly depicted in detailed
close-ups or otherworldly vistas.

periods, too much commercial and
industrial clutter," he said.
For inspiration, he instead turned to
19th-century Romantic painters, such
as David Roberts, who had depicted
the city using dramatic lighting and
visual exaggeration. An 1853 work by
the German artist Auguste Loeffler
became a key image for the film: "It's a
wide view of distant Jerusalem under
stormy skies but with sunlight break-
ing through," he said.
You see these whitewashed and
golden walls of the city gleaming in
the light, but all around the landscape
is forbiddinab And I showed this
painting to Ridley and he said, 'That's
it, the golden city on the hill under
siege, threatened by all the dark forces
around it.'"
To re-create this romanticized
Jerusalem, Scott agreed the real city
wouldn't do — not just because of the
commercial clutter but the congestion
and the political unrest. Instead, he
decided to build his set outside the
Moroccan town of Ouarzazate, at the
foot of the Atlas Mountains, an area in
which he had shot segments of

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The Golden City

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5/12

2005

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Scott, for his part, wanted Jerusalem to
appear as "the romantic, golden city,"
not because of the color of its stone
but because Kingdom's characters "saw
it as a metaphor for idealism," he said.
"The message is that for our heroes,
Jerusalem is a symbolic, iconic place
that represents God's city," Max said.
"Because of my background, I felt
compelled to 'get' the city not so
much scholastically as emotionally
correct."
As he began researching his produc-
tion design, Max again visited the Old
City and snapped photographs from
atop the perimeter walls. "But there
was too much intrusion from later

Gladiator.
He and Max spent days bouncing
around the desert in an SUV until
they discovered a wide plain upon
which they could construct Kingdom's

centerpiece set: the exterior of
Jerusalem.
Over five months in 2003, Max and
his 350-person crew molded 6,000
tons of plaster into more than 28,000
square meters of wall on the arid
plateau. "We modeled our physical set
on the oldest military structures of
Jerusalem, such as those located in the
Citadel, also known as the Tower of
David," he said.
"But while we built large sections of
walls and ramparts, with computers
we digitally added the rest of the city,
based on scanned images of ancient
ruins, iconic Jerusalem structures such
as the Dome of the Rock — all
inspired by the 19th-century painters."

Drawing Parallels

Max, 59, led his multinational crew
with ease, in part because of his own
diverse background. Speaking precisely
in an accent that is half-American,
half-British in a phone interview, he
said his Sephardic family fled Spain
during the Inquisition, spent centuries
in Belarus and eventually landed in
New York, where Max grew up in a
Reform family but became bar mitz-
vah in an Orthodox synagogue. Since
then he has lived in Rome and in
London and calls himself a
"Wandering Jew."

On the set, he regaled his crew with
tales, remembered from his childhood
religious studies, of how Jerusalem had
been conquered and re-conquered
since the destruction of the First
Temple.
In contemporary Jerusalem, the con-
flict continues, prompting Max and
Scott to draw parallels between the
film and current events. "It's like we
keep replaying history," Scott said.
"The holy wars are the fundamental
basis of Jerusalem today."
Kingdom itself has been under siege
from various factions. Scott received
death threats from extremist Islamic
groups while on location in Morocco;
Christian conservatives in the United
States will reportedly protest the film,
which they feel depicts crusaders as
less than chivalrous; and some Jews
will dislike one character's observation
that in Jerusalem, "No one has claim
and all have claim." (Scott, too, feels
"the city should be shared, not belong-
ing to one country or another.")
Max, for his part, believes the movie
does not take sides. "Surely the film is
a plea for tolerance and against
extremism of all kinds," he said. E

Kingdom of Heaven, rated R, is
currently playing in area theaters