“What struck me was how authentic everything felt. The relationships, the internal struggles of each character, the motivations of the army and the Islamists, the feelings of the townspeople. It all seemed clear while remaining nuanced and without snapping to this or that caricature grid. (Bad guys are bad, good guys are good, medium guys are medium.)

”I think the presentation of the monks’ theological wrangling was especially effective—the thoughts about weakness, death, etc. Atheist (or kind-of-atheist) Suzanne found it quite moving, as did I. In fact, there were no points that felt understandable only to Christians or theists. It all made sense in human terms.

“The title struck me as weird, especially because the plural, Gods, misleadingly suggests that the two religions presented in the movie revolve around two different gods. If anything, the action on screen suggested otherwise.”

--comments by my friend Jacob Slichter on the film “Des hommes et des dieux,” all of which feel exactly right to me.

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