I started a film program, but I am not a professional critic. However, as a student of film and culture, I recommend Day of the Siege.
You will learn through this film to live not by lies. You see that times have been worse and that the cowards, the sycophants to tyrants, and the Machiavellian fail. The good, the truthful, and the beautiful endure. This is a film at war with Hollywood, thank God.
The computer generated graphics are crude, the acting excellent. The story telling is decent, unless you demand contemporary, American, commercial, tropes. If you live globally, think that elite Western values of now should be challenged, then this is reminder that Western values were once quite different. Western Saints do miracles in this film. Western saints think Christian virtues are needed. Only the lightly read thinks Jesus is John Wayne, merely an actor he, but only a schismatic doesn’t root for John III Sobieski, the Christian hero of Vienna.
If you are embarrassed that there is an embattled Patriarch in Constantinople, this is not your film. If you wonder how these great men have survived, watch. Miracles happen, especially when the cause is led by a saint who does not love war, but will not compromise the truth. Jesus is Lord.
That is a hard, unchanging, truth, indigestible to everyone at one moment or another.
What happens when a degenerate culture meets a hostile foe? Usually the answer is ruin. The society that believes will generally defeat the society the worries about believing. Unless, of course, a society that believes the truth meets a society that believes a lie. Then the society that is flawed, degenerate even, has a chance if she can muster the courage of her convictions.
When the Black Madonna leads a charge to save Christian Vienna, we were glad in the room where I saw this film, not because war is good, but because if war must come, we would have our Lady triumph over those that occupied Constantinople. 9/11 has happened more than once, but 9/11 need not define us.
Here is a film that is not at all American, not at all parochial, but is unafraid to say that Christianity is true and the values that produced science and stained glass are good. If you knew, somehow, that Tolkien had based the Riders of Rohan on reality, then this historical epic is just right, just now.
We are not Republicans. We are not Democrats. We have no true, absolute, king, but King Jesus. This film demonstrates the difference: the Hapsburgs are a mixed bag, but Jesus? He is eternal, unchanging, loving, and full of grace. He is also opposed to evil. If you will sack Vienna, King Jesus and Our Lady will stop you, but only after giving the chance to repent.
Never side with grifters who tell us what we wish to hear: grifters lie. Live not by lies. Never join with the weak who in reaction to the grifters side with antichrist. They avoid petty evil for great evil. Instead, ride with the King of the Poles as he liberates Christian Vienna.
The truth rides under the Icon of the Black Madonna to save the West.
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