Arn: The Knight Templar (Arn: Tempelriddaren)

While searching Netflix for a movie to write about for our assignment, I came across this Swedish movie with some Norwegian credits as well.  The movie was also shot on location in Morocco ( a very popular country to film movies of all genres requiring desert scenes or ancient scenes), Spain and Scotland.

Arn: The Knight Templar is the first movie based on Jan Guilliou's trilogy of the Crusades.  The movie is sometimes spoken in English, but also spoken within the movie is Arabic, French, and Swedish.  At times when English is not used, subtitles are.

I am a living history re-enactor and I love films such as these.  I love them for historical content, sets, and costuming.  I had not heard of Arn within history so I did a search to find out whether or not there had actually been an "Arn".  My search was actually inconclusive, I don't have the time to devote to hitting the head on the nail for this as my school and life schedule won't allow.  I found in a quick online search that probably Arn is a fantasy character, although I found a couple of sources that said he existed.

In short, the plot of the movie is about Arn who is raised in a monastery and grows up under the influence of an "retired" Knight Templar.  He learns the values and moral of the knight as well as becomes an apprentice learning his fighting skills.

When he is of age to leave the monastery, Arn returns to his clan.  He wins a dispute between his and a rival clan.  He also falls in love with a young girl of nobility that is promised in marriage to someone else in the rival clan.

Arn and his lover create a child out of wedlock.  The Church steps in and "sentences" the two.  The girl to 20 years in a convent, her child taken from her at birth.  Arn, 20 years to serve in the Crusades.

Of course, at the end, boy gets the girl - but not without tragedy involved.

There were some historical errors in the movie:

The Church was a powerful source in those days, and very political.  I am not well-versed on ancient Swedish law or monarchy. I suspect that it is very possible that the Swedes may have allowed the Church even more power over political matters, especially since to this day it is the Swedish Guard who guard the Pope.  It is possible that the Church may have had the power to "sentence" both Arn and his lover as they did in the movie.  On one hand a political infraction was committed, yet on the other Arn and his lover sinned.  Hard call without knowing more background history.

Arn's costuming was close to the time period, but the cross on his robe is not quite right for his time period of  the 1180's.

Also, Saladin would have known he could not make an offer of safe passage of all Christians from Jerusalem in exchange for the surrender of the Holy City.  He would have known that Arn didn't have the power to grant that.  Saladin did make that offer historically, but he made it through the proper channels.

Anyway, sometimes we need to view a movie as strictly entertainment.  Even when loosely based on historical facts, we need to keep in mind that a director always takes some liberty in artistry and ideas.  We need to be smart enough to decipher between the facts and fiction and research things of interests when we are unsure.

Regardless, it was still a good movie.  I enjoyed it. And I will be watching the other two movies within the trilogy.