Our SUNDAY CORNER With LEE LIBERMAN -- THE PHYSICIAN: Islamic extremism in 11th Century Persia is déjà vu all over again

"The scholar's work is more sacred 

than the blood of martyrs."

-- the Quran.

Novelist Noah Gordon (shown below, now near 90, and called 'the most successful writer you've never heard of') authored a trilogy spanning 1000 years about physician Rob Cole and his descendants. The first book of this trilogy (1986), THE PHYSICIAN, became a film directed by German filmmaker Philipp Stolzl (Young Goethe in Love, North Face, Erased) and has spawned a musical that debuts this June in Germany. Neither the novel nor the movie gained a following here but were much appreciated abroad. Now, at least, the film is streaming on Netflix for fans of fictional historical drama like Restoration (also on Netflix) or Lawrence of Arabia. The Physician, however, is loaded with political relevance to us because of its war on secularism by radical Islam. (Click here for Noah Gordon's web site and a list of his historical novels.)

Set in 11th century Persia and England, the adventure-romance pits Islam's great Golden Age of scholarship (8th to 13th centuries) against a dark and gloomy Europe. We meet up with the barbaric state of medicine in England in the jocular person of rogue, con-man "Barber." Stellan Skarsgård attacks the role (of tooth extractor, butcher of limbs, peddler of phony elixirs and bawd) with gusto.

An orphan boy, Rob Cole (Adam Thomas Wright, below) watched his mother die of 'side-sickness' -- appendicitis was a death sentence. Now homeless, he attaches himself to Barber and learns the tricks of the trade but he's frustrated -- diseases of the inside were guesswork and dissection of the human body was a crime. Rob grows up craving knowledge about how the inside of the body works.

Adult Rob Cole is played by Tom Payne, a better actor than, and lookalike to, Lorenzo Richelmy of Netflix's Marco Polo. Payne (below, right) is currently in AMC's The Walking Dead and is compelling enough to hold the center even in the midst of players with much more gravitas.

Barber's "eye-sickness" leads Rob to seek out a tribe of Jews whose healer removes the offending cataracts and explains his source of knowledge -- Ibn Sina (also called Avicenna), the master of science, philosophy, and medicine of Persia. Rob's road to enlightenment carries him from that moment through land, ocean, and desert travel until finally he becomes a student in Isfahan, Persia at the side of Ibn Sina. An historical figure (b 980 - d 1037) and author of 'The Canon of Medicine', still greatly revered, Ibn Sina is brought to life by Ben Kingsley, below. The scientist is said to have authored 450 known works of which 240 have survived including 150 on philosophy, 40 on medicine.

At the time, we are told, some say erroneously, that Christians were unwelcome at Ibn Sina's Madrassa. Since Jews were accepted, Rob circumcises himself during his desert journey to Isfahan and takes on a Jewish identity, calling himself Jesse ben Benjamin on his arrival.

Jesse continues to be daunted by the religious ban on dissection -- "necromancy" being punishable by death in Persia as well as England. But his entrepreneurial skills make him a problem solver -- especially useful as an epidemic of plague begins to decimate the population. The Shah at the time (Olivier Martinez, below) is the chief support of Ibn Sina's scientific work. A vain and secular tyrant, he's ripe for overthrow, outraging local religious leaders:

"Why did our citizens have to die [of plague]?" shouts the Imam (Makram Khoury). "It is the sins committed each and every day in the university whose Godless philosophy corrupts our city..... Isfahan is decaying from vice and apostasy. The Shah's time is over, and now there is only God... Allahu Akbar!"

A religious revolution is brewing. The tolerant, decadent Shah will be swept away in the denoument, driving out Jews and scholars and destroying Ibn Sina's university. The militant Seljuk Turks join forces with the mullahs whose fervor is a mirror image of 21st century religious extremism. The Turkish period will eventually contribute to the decline of the Islamic Gol-den Era. (The rule of the Seljuks, by the way, was followed by Mongol rule throughout Persia.)

Criticism doesn't change one's mind about the film's being a fairly entertaining and fast-moving tale. There are particular objections to the tampering with history creating inaccuracies about the known life and times of Ibn Sina. Still, all reimagined history is guilty of same -- the abridging of fact for the purpose of story-telling. Also there's the soap-opera framework including Rob/Jesse's dangerous romance with Rebecca (Emma Rigby), a Spanish Jew who has been sent to Isfahan for an arranged marriage to a much older Jewish aristocrat (below: Rebecca en route Isfahan).

Still, the yarn immerses you satisfyingly into ancient Persia through close-ups of daily life. Woven into the tapestry are Muslim calls to prayer and orthodox Jewish ritual at home and worship (the blowing of the shofar and wearing of prayer phylacteries), the burying alive of a woman adulterer, a medical school that functions with impressive urgency, costuming that feels real in off-whites and rich desert taupes and browns, and lovely effects by Pixomondo (Marco Polo, Game of Thrones) that bring the city-in-the-desert setting to life.

What enlivens the whole affair for me are the provocative politics, starting with the sameness of 11th and 21st century radical Islam. Then there's the contrast between the Golden Age of Islam and the intellectual poverty of the West at the time; and last, is the stunning present day reversal of fortunes between Middle East and the West. It's enough to make the viewer think twice about the inevitable and cyclical rise and fall of nations and the persisting tension between religious belief and intellectual progress. As for imaginary Rob Cole: Following his bout with radical Islam, his trajectory went up.

The above post is written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.

Philipp Stölzl's ERASED gives its cast--and its audience -- a speedy, thrilling workout

If you're looking for a nifty suspense thriller with a intelligently convoluted premise and some great action/fight set pieces, you could do a lot worse than ERASED, the new film from Philipp Stölz (shown below, the Bavarian filmmaker who earlier gave us the fine North Face and the just-OK Young Goethe in Love). An example of one of those internationally created, funded, cast and executed movies that actually works pretty well, Erased was filmed in and around mostly Belgium (with a little Montreal tossed in), using locations that are scenic and photogenic, as well as pleasantly different from the sort we most often get.

The film's original title was The Expatriate, which, once you know the story, proves a much better choice for both its meaning and irony. Undoubtedly the movie's marketing mavens decided that those extra couple of syllables in this fifty-cent word would prove too much for mass audiences to handle. So Erased it is, and erased (or nearly) are our hero and heroine. The former is played by the always reliable Aaron Eckhart (below), as, yes, an expatriate working in Belgium for a company that makes a very interesting product, about which a glitch has just been discovered.

Into Eckhart's care has come his somewhat estranged teen-age daughter, played with grace and grit by Liana Liberato (below, of Trust and Trespass). The movie begins with a gunshot and the trail of corpses the shooter has left in his wake. Something is stolen, then passed from hand to hand.

By the time, shortly thereafter, that father and daughter are running for their lives (below), the audience is piecing together plot strands like crazy, trying to figure out, as is the Eckhart character, what is going on and why.

Into the mix comes the lately-often-seen Olga Kurylenko (below, of Oblivion, To the Wonder, Seven Psychopaths) as a suspect ex-compatriot of Eckhart, and Garrick Hagon (further below, with Eckhart), as a naughty corporate head.

As the body count increases -- it's huge, for the bad guys are relentless and remorseless -- betrayals both planned and accidental occur, while father and daughter alternately spar and join forces to stay alive.

If the finale proves somewhat less exciting and worthwhile than what has come before, this is unfortunately par for the course of most of these international thrillers. On the plus side, I would say that Erased builds up enough good will and excitement during its first hour or so that you won't mind tagging along for the duration.

The movie -- from Radius-TWC and running 104 minutes -- is currently playing the L.A. area at Laemmle's Town Center 5 and will open this Friday, May 17, in Manhattan at the Village East Cinema and perhaps elsewhere. But, as it's been playing VOD since the beginning of April, you'll be able to gain access to it fairly easily.

YOUNG GOETHE IN LOVE: doing "then" as "now" -- and almost getting away with it

Last year Philipp Stölzl's North Face surprised art-house America with a riveting mountain-climbing movie that also gave us some interesting behind-the-scenes history of pre-WWII Nazi Germany. This year the filmmaker is back with a less success-ful, though relatively entertaining and pretty-to-look-at endeavor called -- in its American retitling -- YOUNG GOETHE IN LOVE, based on the early adulthood of 18th Century German literary icon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Financed (at least in part) and distributed in its home country by Warner Bros, Germany, the film is European mainstream with a capital "M." Conflating the look of time past with the behavior of time present, the movie seems dead bent on making the iconic figure a romantic hero for high-schoolers and college kids everywhere. (When our hero is denied a degree, he writes Kiss My Ass in the snow for all the faculty to see.)

The film's actual German title, in fact, is Goethe! (that exclamation point is not mine.) Can you imagine the Russians putting out a movie called Nabokov!? Or the French a film named Rousseau!? I actually could imagine a British musical from Andrew Lloyd Webber called Willie! (about that famous writer explored most recently in the new movie Anonymous). Or even an American musical, probably devised by gays, called Tennessee! But I digress. And the reason for that digression is that, as director and co-writer (with Christoph Müller and Alexander Dydyna) Herr Stölzl, shown above, has given us such a patently paint-by-numbers version of this chunk of the writer's life that, in any particular scene, you could easily imagine the characters bursting into song -- initially joyful, later rather sad. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that, as I write this, a score is even now being composed.

So then, let's not look to Young Goethe in Love for a history lesson. The rejiggered title is actually a pretty smart one, as it will put literarily-inclined audiences in mind of Goethe's initial breakthrough novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. And what the audiences will get when they plunk down their tushies in their local arthouse seats is a very pretty movie that certainly looks (above and below) 18th Century.

The film move along at a relatively sprightly pace, introducing us to young Goethe, his father, friends, co-workers and first love.

The cast, too, is well-chosen and on the mark. As Goethe, Alexander Fehling (above) exhibits the proper joie de vivre, sorrow, and impetuousness of youth,

while Miriam Stein, as his enamorata Lotte (above) has looks, spirit and intelligence aplenty.

As Goethe's best friend, who falls for an older, married woman, and in his sad way inspires the conclusion of his friend's first artistic success, Volker Bruch (above) is impassioned, silly and sad in equal measure.

Best of all is Moritz Bleibtreu (above), the wonderfully versatile actor who can play a terrorist (The Baader Meinhof Complex) Woody Harrelson's lover (The Walker), a charming scoundrel (last year's Soul Kitchen) or an absolute hero (romantic, as In July or dramatic, as with The Experiment) with equal aplomb. Here Bleibtreu plays Goethe's strait-laced, tongue-tied boss, as well as his unknown romantic rival, and he's terrific, as usual -- the only actor of the above four who manages to seem properly "period."

The celebrity-sotted finale, again turning the past into the present, provides the perfect ending to a pleasantly run-of-the-mill historical rom-com/dram-com. Music Box Films is releasing this one, which opens this Friday, November 4, in New York City at the Sunshine Cinema and The Paris, and in the L.A, area at the Encino Town Center 5, The Landmark, the Pasadena Playhouse 7 and the Santa Ana South Coast Village.  More playdates around the country will follow. Click here to take a gander at them all.