It sounds like a recipe for failure. Take a historical event (the disappearance of nine monks in Algeria in the 1990s) and base a two hour movie on it. Ensure a PG-13 rating by excluding or minimizing violence, language, and sex. Forget about the action; focus on the drama. Show Christians in an unabashedly positive, albeit human light. Show some good Muslims, and some bad Muslims.

Quick: What movie is this—and did it, in fact fail?

The movie is the 2010 French foreign language film Of Gods and Men. And, despite the fact that it does none of the things your usual Hollywood producer does when he’s looking to make the next blockbuster, it has not failed—au contraire, as its original French audience might say. It was so popular in Europe that it has been repackaged and is now showing in the United States. No, the number of theaters where it’s playing is not very large; but box office sales are looking very good, and in the particular theater where I watched it the room was packed.

It was not just that the theater was packed with people who might have been watching The King’s Speech or The Lincoln Lawyer (both of which were also playing under the same roof). The theater was packed and, for two slow hours, reverentially silent. I say slow hours, because it is a slow movie. Some viewers have compared it to Into Great Silence; and certainly the loving, unhurried attention given to the monks’ life calls that documentary to mind.

Yet Of Gods and Men is no documentary. The movie centers around the lives of nine French-born monks who live by and serve a small Muslim village in Algeria. When terrorist violence begins to erupt in that country, the Muslims of the village are as horrified and puzzled as the monks. “Where do these people come from?” asks one distressed villager. The monks are faced with a complex situation: To help a wounded terrorist, or not? To stay in Algeria, or return to France? The government wants them out; the villagers need them and want them to stay. The decisions the monks make, and the way they come to make them—the interior struggles that they go through—are the heart of this movie.

If the movie, as I said, is no documentary, neither is it a small-budget film with inexperienced actors. It stars Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale, two well-known French stars who have also appeared in American movies (Wilson as one of the villains in the Matrix series, and Lonsdale as the French police commissioner in The Day of the Jackal).

The movie resounded with audiences. Over 3.5 million people have seen it. That’s not a large number for an American blockbuster or a mainstream French comedy, but it’s highly unusual for a movie devoid of special effects and anything remotely approaching a love interest. One American reviewer, trying to explain the puzzle, remarked that “[t]he film’s timely themes—the clash of faiths, the possible dialogue between Islam and Christianity, and the divide between those who are religious and fundamentalist extremists—are undoubtedly hot topics, but the exact reason for its overwhelming success remains a mystery.” Even the film’s producer, Etienne Comar, sounds surprised by its success, though he gives some credit to the actors’ performances. “It just kind of snowballed as the weeks went by and suddenly the film was front page news, a ‘phenomenon of society.'”

The “phenomenon” extended to the film’s critical success as well. At the international Cannes Film Festival it won the second most prestigious prize, the Grand Prix. In France it won the 16th Lumière Award for Best Film, and at the César awards (France’s equivalent of the American Academy Awards), it won Best Film and Best Cinematography, with Lonsdale carrying away Best Supporting Actor. These are just the awards it won, mind you—it was nominated for many more.

Speaking, by the way, of the Academy Awards . . . how did Of Gods and Men do there?

Of Gods and Men was the French submission in the Best Foreign Film category, but it did not make the final shortlist of five. The films that did make the list ranged from the truly execrable Dogtooth to the noirish Outside the Law. The winning film, the Danish drama In a Better World, concerns a twelve-year-old boy (whose mother recently died of cancer) whose friend involves him in “a dangerous act of revenge with potentially tragic consequences.”

Well, no real surprises there. Edginess is just fine at the Academy Awards, as long as it doesn’t involve religion in a positive way.

In light of this snubbing, it is interesting to compare the box offices of those five nominees to the box office for Of Gods and Men.

Biutiful: $16,235,328

In a Better World (Best Foreign Language Film): $5,400,000

Incendies: about $3,500,000

Outside the Law: $3,292,518

Dogtooth: statistics unavailable.

Of Gods and Men: $32,919,55.

That’s right: to date, Of Gods and Men‘s gross is more than twice that of the most successful of the nominees in its category, six times that of the winning film, and about ten times that of the other two films for which statistics are available. (I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the reason I can’t find information on Dogtooth is that its promoters are embarrassed to admit how badly it has done.) Congratulations, Hollywood, you’ve done it again! You have shown just how prejudiced you are against anything remotely respectful of Christianity.

Just for fun, here are the figures comparing Of Gods and Men to some American movies that generated buzz this year:

Of Gods and Men: $32,919,550.

Inception: $823,576,195.

Tangled: $558,414,178.

The King’s Speech: $340,676,279.

Black Swan: $281,325,053.

The Social Network: $221,116,046.

127-Hours: $50,785,177.

The Kids Are Alright: $29,365,490.

I take special pleasure in noting that Of Gods and Men has passed The Kids Are Alright. Yes, yes, a movie about monks has done better that a movie about lesbians! There is hope for America! Equally interesting, perhaps, is the fact that the non-R-rated blockbusters (Inception and Tangled) did markedly better that the R-rated ones (The King’s Speech and Black Swan).

I know, I know, we live in a sick culture. It may even be a dying culture. But we still have some remnants of humanity left. We still respect faith, even when we don’t all share it. We respect courage and loyalty. We may be seduced by evil; but we can still recognize, if not understand, the good.

Of Gods and Men opens with a Bible quote, two verses from Psalm 81. “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” In the movie the quote stops there. It has said all it needs to say, and told us what to expect in the scenes that follow. But in the Psalm itself there is one more verse, one final line before the prayer ends. “Arise, O God, judge Thou the earth: for Thou shalt inherit among all the nations.”

Amen.

Two other reviews of Of Gods and Men:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703408604576164280016064732.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/02/of-gods-and-men-review  (has a few mild spoilers)