Monday, 8 April 2013

Being Curious about El Cid.

My favourite film right up to my late teens was El Cid. It’s set in mediaeval Spain and features two different sets of Muslims:

There are the ‘good’ Muslims who are well established on the Iberian peninsular, who are honourable, who wear brightly coloured clothes, who want to practice their religion in their own community, and who don’t want any trouble.

Then there are the ‘bad’ Muslims who’ve formed an army and come over from North Africa with Ben Youssuf. They’re what we would until recently have called ‘Fundamentalists,’ but who are now generally referred to as ‘Islamists.’ They want to invade the whole of Spain with a view to turning it into a Muslim country, they’re nasty and mean, they wear black clothes, and they’re out to make a hell of a lot of trouble.

Doesn’t this all sound oddly familiar? El Cid was made around fifty years ago, and it has me wondering whether there was some kind of prior knowledge involved in its creation. Just a thought.

And El Cid isn’t a particularly favoured film any more. Having been a half decent action movie for most of its length, it dissolves into absurd farce at the end, which is a bit of a shame. It also contains one of the most glaring continuity errors I’ve ever seen.

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