Yes, we’re still writing TIFF ’09 reviews, we were sick and aching. Deal with it.
Rising French auteur Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet” (which won the Grand Prix award at Cannes and is probably the favorite at this point to take the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture) is first notable for the way it differentiates from the director’s previous two films. Both 2005’s soulful, Bressonian “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” (a remake of a James Toback’s wonderful directorial debut) which traces a man’s internal struggle between his masculine and feminine parental influences, and 2002’s Hitchockian thriller “Read My Lips,” about a deaf woman’s resistance to the lure of sin as embodied by a man she lusts for, center around wrenching, human tensions, and find the filmmaker fascinated by the pressures and persuasions that drive people to criminal action. In “A Prophet,” our protagonist, at the outset, is condemned to six years in jail, acting as a spiritual heir to the characters from Audiard’s previous films: he’s a young man whose time of indecision has passed, and we’re never shown what led him to his criminal path nor what crime he committed, in part perhaps because Audiard has shown us that story before.
What we’re given is essentially a blank slate. We know the man’s name is Malik, that he’s 20 years old (at least at the beginning) and that he’s an Arab in a jail block full of Arab-hating French mobsters. And that’s it. In the lead, Tahar Rahim enables as much insight into the mind of his character as the script allows, and the actor particularly shines in the early stages of the film, communicating Malik’s devastating moral decay, which gives “A Prophet’s” first half hour at least some momentum. What Audiard hopes is that we’ll invest our sympathies in Malik because of his extreme circumstances, not because of any individual personality, and that we’ll root for him as he negotiates his way through the jail’s criminal hierarchy. But what Audiard somehow manages to misunderstand is that a man who sacrifices is not necessarily a martyr – or a prophet – and, as evidenced in the overwrought Alexander Desplat score and some painfully obtuse symbolism, the aggrandizement of this criminal borders on the egregious. What’s worse, there’s just no reason for this kind of treatment of the character beyond winning the sympathies of more conservative audience members, and in doing so the filmmaker drowns what works on at least some level as a tense procedural.
If “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” is Audiard’s take on the solitary, prideful criminality of Robert Bresson’s “Pickpocket,” then “A Prophet” could be seen as his stab at “A Man Escaped,” the Bresson classic about an imprisoned French Resistance activist whose escape plan is compromised with the arrival of a new cellmate, one who may or may not be a Nazi informer. The conflict in that film becomes whether or not to kill this other man, and it mirrors the struggle in “A Prophet’s” best stretch, when Malik is confronted with the ultimatum of killing at the order of the prison’s reigning godfather, and earning his protection, or to risk being killed himself.
Audiard and Rahim nail the moral and emotional weight of these scenes, doing Bresson proud, but the rest of the film lacks that urgency as well as the strength of “A Man Escaped’s” politically-charged premise. And somewhere towards the end of “A Prophet’s” bloated two and half hour runtime, the film reaches its ‘big moment.’ So as not to spoil anything, I’ll just say this series of scenes rings completely false, and is so heavy-handedly executed that it’s just all the more frustrating that one has to sit through such a drawn-out affair to get there. [C-] –Sam C. Mac
"But what Audiard somehow manages to misunderstand is that a man who sacrifices is not necessarily a martyr – or a prophet"
no, it is you my American friend who have misunderstood. This film is about modern France. About an old guard and an underclass, about religion in a secular state.
Martyrs and prophets are not the same thing. This is where you come unstuck. In Islam, prophets are ordinary people, 'i am but a man like yourselves.' it is not neccessary for them to suffer, but to lead, teach and overcome.
Audiard does not say he is a prophet because he sacrafices but because ultimately he resists corruption.
Also, you talk about Bresson like he is a genre hack. No my friend it is you who do not understand.
Well first off, Bresson is in my estimation one the greatest filmmakers ever, if not the greatest period. I would never think of his films as confined to genres, and I tried to avoid easy designations like 'crime movie' and 'prison movie,' instead detecting the thematic and plot similarities of these films.
And I don't think that's so outlandish, as I'm sure Audiard is heavily influenced by Bresson, even if he clearly doesn't possess that same, almost indefinable Bressonian quality.
As for the prophet/martyr debate. I read an interview with Audiard where he expressed his interest in making a film in which the hero is an unlikely hero. And I understand how he wants to find heroism in this underclass Arab society, and how that fascinates him.
But, in the context of this film, it just doesn't really work. We're meant to see the man as the "hero" Audiard has in mind through the use of a cloying score and that ridiculous 'vision' in the last act, not because of his avoidance of corruption – let's remember he's a criminal throughout, he kills people and runs drugs, he's very corrupt.
Not that I'm trying to moralize, just illustrate that what your estimation of an Islamic prophet is doesn't really fit with this character.
Further, Audiard says in the same interview that the title is meant as ironic, which would suggest that Audiard doesn't in fact see him as a "prophet," as you suggest he does. My point is I think what he's trying to get at gets garbled.
I'm assuming you went to the gala and you're probably one of nine people in the Elgin who didn't enjoy the movie.
I agree with "Anonymous," although I see this movie more as a depiction of the darker side of the quintessential immigrant (I am one, before I go ahead with what else I have to say). I'm not saying this personally, but some of us have to do questionable things to get ahead.
Also, points for sympathy for Malik bettering himself. He makes the other Arabs realize that there's room for improvement when it comes to their conditions. He also learns how to read and speak a third language. If I was in prison, I'll probably have to shank a guy. In the end, he settles his scores and is hopefully able to leave that behind him. Compared to the scum he shared showers with, he's a fucking angel.
With every revenge plot, you're not supposed to like the protagonist who eviscerates his enemies.
Not the nicest story, but on both accounts it's probably more realistic than the hardworking frontiersman that populate most immigrant narratives.
I hope it wins the Oscar, but your angle on it is what I imagine would be what the Academy might think of it. Worried.
And the prisoners who oppress him are CORSICAN, not French. Which plays on a white subject position that oppresses the non-whites without those oppressors being French themselves, therefore making "French" people seem less accountable. And/or it's a play on how many "white" people in France aren't really "French."
I'm no sociology major, and again I agree with "Anonymous," and I'm saying this in the nicest way possible, but having some context on the diaspora or recent social trends in France might help.
I understand that this film wants to be a social commentary, and that it's certainly effective in that sense in some ways. But there are so many better films that play to the tricky race relations in modern France.
Obviously very different films, but just as a recent example (and as one I'll be reviewing shortly), Claire Denis' "35 Shots of Rum," and going back even further, her "I Can't Sleep." Those films intelligently access the tense divide between whites and non-whites (or the immigrants, in the case of "I Can't Sleep").
In "A Prophet," there just isn't enough focus on that cultural rift. Maybe the film should have given some context to the "diaspora of recent social trends in France."
We understand the Arabs are being oppressed by the Corsicans, and Malik learns to read and tries to better his situation. You don't have to like him, but the way the film elevates him you can't deny that it wants you to. And there just isn't enough context for this character to back up that aggrandizement. If anything it's putting a face to that oppression for people who can relate to him to root for, and I can understand your want to do so, but this character never comes to life as his own person.
And again, really, I could look past a lot of that, but that last act revelation/twist/symbolism nonsense, it's just heavy-handed and overwrought. It really spoils a film for me which I think otherwise is inoffensively middle of the road, and I've yet to hear a good argument for its inclusion.
I don't think they need to put a context the white and non-white relations, assuming that most people who are going to see this movie are French. Making Malik likeable, as you are saying, is as Hollywood as it's gonna get.