When it comes to the best movies of all time, they seem to have one thing in common for me, they all star Orlando Blom. One of these movies is the highly underappreciated movie Kingdom of Heaven set during the age of crusades.

At the start of the movie, we see the protagonist Balian, played by Orlando Bloom, in a personal hell. He has lost his wife, child and is tortured by his brother when a crusader knight comes to the village. Balian chooses to follow this knight to the holy land, where he seeks forgiveness for his and his wife’s sins. He becomes a knight, taking the following powerful oath.

“Be without fear in the face of your enemies.

Be brave and upright that God may love thee.

Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death.

Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong – that is your oath.”

I think its wort to take a closer look at that oath. Let’s start from the beginning, “Be without fear in the face of your enemies”, this seems quite straightforward. At first glance it says “Be brave” but I think its a bit more to it than that, its be without fear, and that is not the same thing. So what does it then mean to be without fear when you face your enemies? I would say, that your enemies are no reason to be scared. As the ancient Roman Cicero once said: “A wise man can never be forced to do anything against his will, for he knows what he wants, and he knows that he has a choice”. So facing your enemies is no reason to be frightened, for if you know what you want, they are no danger to you, for you always have a choice.

Now let’s get to the second row “Be brave and upright that God may love thee.” And to explain this we can start to think what God is in this sentence. As I see it, God, now, is a symbol of the perfect man, the man you want to be and become. Se is brave so that the person you want to be would be proud of you.

We are now halfway through with  “Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death.”. This is important both in the movie and in your own life. A simple white lie can simplify your life, but it comes at a price. Would people lie in a perfect world? if not, and if you want to create a perfect world, how can you justify lying? There is always one person that knows if your lying, and that’s you. Think of what it does to you when you know that you lie, you’re then telling yourself that you are not to be trusted, you are not telling the truth. So even if the truth has a high price, its worth it in the long haul.

The last part was to “Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong “.  We are all helpless from time to time, we are all at the mercy of the misery of life, the only way to carry that weight is to share it. But in order to share the weight, you have to be strong and help others, so that they can become strong and help you and others. This is also one of the most fulfilling things you can do, to give life meaning, to take responsibility for your own weight so you can learn to help others grow.

These are the rules that the protagonist in Kingdom of heaven lives by, he tries to become the perfect knight in the perfect world. Later in the movie he has to chose between becoming king and marry the women he loves saving a lot of people, the only thing he has to do is kill a bad man. But he chooses not to, “I cannot be responsible for that”.  Which is hard to understand, and something I’m not sure about. As they say in the movie. ” Sometimes you have to do a little evil, to do a lot of god“. Which is a topic for another day.