'A Prophet' Film Review
19-year old Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim), a naïve French Arab, is sentenced to serve six years in the cut-throat criminal arena of a run-down French prison. He sets out to survive his journey alone, but soon discovers that the jail is run by a group of brutal Corsican gangsters that aim to use Malik for their own devices, setting the young prisoner on the path towards a power struggle between gangs...
Advance hype can often serve to a film's detriment. Expectations rarely meet with reality, and when everything you hear about an upcoming movie is so good, it's normal to feel let down when you come to viewing it for yourself. It was after browsing the wave of excitable early reviews for No Country For Old Men that left me expecting some form of religious enlightenment, or a filmic experience that would dwarf everything else ever made. Obviously, neither happened. There was nothing wrong with the film - I've since realised that it really is a masterpiece - I just wish the film hadn't come with baggage in the way of such positive word.
This could easily have been the case for the critically-adored A Prophet (or Un Prophete if you're French, which I'm not), something I kept in the back of my mind as I headed into the screening, expecting to again come away feeling underwhelmed. But not even nearly a year's worth of hype prepared me for this film.
Director Jacques Audiard's previous work, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, was a satisfactory, but forgettable, French thriller. Here, for this ambitious crime drama, Audiard steps it up so many notches I lost count. His skill as a director has turned flawless - his style is raw yet powerful, his grasp on story efficient and entirely flab-free. The director has just joined Michael Haneke and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck as one of Europe's most exciting modern filmmakers.
As for the performances, there are no weak links here, and the strongest actors fill out the characters we spend the most time with.
The supporting roles are nicely played, with Niels Arestrup suitably slimy as prison boss Cesar, surprising us by slowly unveiling a fragility beneath the ruthless veneer, and Hichem Yacoubi is haunting as the snitching Reyeb.
Of course, the film wouldn't work at all if the lead actor wasn't perfect as Malik. Tahar Rahim is just that.
Not only does Malik have to be physically spot-on (the script requiring him to appear somewhere between Arabic and Corsican as he successfully straddles both factions) but he also has to believably transform from a weedy, helpless teenager at the beginning of the film to a drugs kingpin and prison head by the climax.
As excellent as Rahim is (and he really is one heck of a revelation, getting my vote as the winner of the BAFTA rising star award this year), the faultless writing of this transformation is what makes the film so compelling. Over the course of his six year prison sentence, Malik's (and our) patience is rewarded as he meticulously works his way to the top of the criminal heap, quietly playing sides against each other and removing barriers between him and the position of gangster number one.
Initially, Malik is a good-for-nothing, leaving school illiterate aged 11, spending much of his life in juvenile correction facilities and, now, serving jail-time for assaulting police. He doesn't even begin his ascent to the top by choice - he is forced into murdering a fellow prisoner by Cesar and his Corsican Mafioso and subsequently handed protection and menial work.
Oddly, at this point Audiard starts to present prison as a way of initiating reinvention and self-betterment for Malik - we get the impression that his life would have meant nothing had he never encountered this thuggish world.
Protected under Cesar's wing, Malik becomes an opportunist, using prison to his benefit: he takes vital classes (learning business strategies via economics exams, becoming fluent in Corsican etc), makes crucial friends and spies out ways of making easy cash on the outside. It's not long before the now-hardened criminal sees a road to head crim status, eliminating all remaining opposition to achieve it. It's as though Audiard envisions Malik's jail as a kind of chrysalis - he goes in a weakling, a petty crook, and emerges strengthened, a powerful leader both inside and out.
There is also much enjoyment to be had in the small details of crime other filmmakers might leave out. The inner-workings of the prison are sharply observed, such as the ways prisoners get around obeying the strict rules (for example, concealing a murder weapon is, although a horrendous procedure, entirely doable).
The tiny character details are just as fascinating.
During Malik's first full day outside of prison, he must board a flight to Marseille in order to make a drugs deal. At airport control, although wearing a regular businessman's suit, Malik stands out from the crowd, constantly on edge, sticking out his tongue at a security guard to prove he is carrying no weapons as though he is still in jail. Whereas most films would beat us over the head with the message 'LOOK! HE CAN'T ADJUST TO THE REAL WORLD!', Audiard conveys it with subtlety, just as he does with every other bit of character detail in the film.
A Prophet is a tough watch - most prison movies are, especially one as settled in the real world as this. The violence is made purposely repulsive by Audiard and those of a moral nature may find it hard to sympathise with an opportunistic murderer or any of his drug-dealing associates. Fans of TV series The Wire, though, will lap up the slow-burn build, subtle characterisation of the sprawling gallery of characters and the revelations found in the way the real criminal underworld operates.
To sum up: believe the hype. After a so-so 2009, 2010 has already started spectacularly with a gangster epic up there with the greatest and a prison drama that may be the best of its kind. If there are any better films released this year, the movie world will have started the decade in style.
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Karl Benecke - is a third year Film Journalism student at the University of Huddersfield.
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