‘Of Gods and Men,” in French and Arabic, is one of the most beautiful movies I know, even though its subject matter and otherwordly pace set it apart from mainstream entertainment. They set it so far apart that the film made me recall, of all things, the most beautiful rendition I know of “I Got Rhythm.”

In an old recording by the Mitchell-Ruff Duo, the upbeat Gershwin classic is played as a ballad, slowly and meditatively. It’s exasperating at first—you want the jazzmen to get on with it, to lift your spirits by breaking into a familiar tempo. But then, spellbound, you start hearing the single notes, the chord progressions and the lovely melody as never before.

The same sort of spell is woven by this story, loosely based on real events, of eight Christian monks menaced by Islamic terrorists in the Algeria of the 1990s. The narrative takes its rhythm from the brothers’ unhurried lives. In doing so, it finds new meaning in their rituals, and lifts your spirits with their fervent questioning of faith in the face of remorseless brutality…

These are worldly actors playing men at home in two worlds—their Cistercian-Trappist monastery, which, with its working farm, stands on rocky soil in the Atlas mountains; and the tranquil Muslim village they serve. Mr. Wilson’s Father Christian, the monastery’s prior, studies the Quran along with the Bible. Mr. Lonsdale’s aged and asthmatic Father Luc, the village’s only physician, not only ministers to the sick but dispenses sage advice to a local girl who wants to know about love. (“It’s lots of things,” he says, “but you’re in turmoil, great turmoil, especially when it’s the first time.”)

Mr. Beauvois structures his film, like a liturgy, around music—the monks’ chants, whose beauty is allowed to sing for itself; no fancy reverb effects, no ethereal voices. When the brothers aren’t chanting they are farming, exchanging ideas or attending the prior’s teachings, and when they aren’t doing any of that, Christian or Luc may be out in the town mingling with their Muslim friends.

Until, that is, bloodthirsty fanatics sweep into the region and local authorities urge the monks to return to France for their own safety. Then the issue becomes one of survival versus faith, and the questions deepen as the danger grows. At what point may the shepherd leave the flock? Of what avail is unsung martyrdom?

These are not rhetorical questions for the frightened monks; they must make fateful decisions. The decision-making process, in which paternalism gradually gives way to democracy, provides part of the film’s appeal. Each of the eight men has his own reasons for staying or going, and each case is stirring, since the acting is uniformly superb.

This is, among other things, a drama of ideas. For Father Christian, Muslims and Christians are inextricably bound by spiritual brotherhood. If that seems impossibly utopian at the moment, it helps explain the film’s big win at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and its subsequent popularity in Europe. We want to believe that such comity remains possible, and there’s no arguing against the film in rational terms, since its position, like that of Father Christian, amounts to an expression of faith…

More than anything, “Of Gods and Men” is a drama of character, and warm humanity. The terrorists are brutes, but recognizably human brutes. Father Christian is admirable, but not always accessible. (Or even comprehensible: after one of Christian’s teachings, Luc asks a brother, with sly humor, if he understood any of it.)…

The most vivid character is Father Luc, and not only because Mr. Lonsdale is one of the great actors of our time. Luc personifies love. He loved women, he tells the village girl, until he found a greater love and responded to it. That response resonates, without a sound, in an exquisite moment that finds the weary old man touching—almost snuggling with—the figure of an anguished Christ on a monastery wall.

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