France’s A Prophet a Criminal Masterwork
At 19 Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is sentenced to six years inside a French prison. While there he is introduced to the Corsican mob, their leader César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) wanting him to get close to and to kill fellow Arab prisoner Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), his own life on the line if he refuses. Once done, Malik now finds himself a part of Luciani’s group, slowly learning all he can about them and their business while educating himself to read, write and in economics using the prison’s learning labs.
Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in Sony Pictures Classics' A Prophet
Jacques Audiard’s (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) spectacular A Prophet (Un Prophète), a Best Foreign Film nominee at last Sunday’s Academy Awards, is a mesmerizing crime thriller that’s impossible to turn away from. Watching Malik’s evolution from timid and scared teenager into a self-assured and confident crime lord is downright fascinating, so much of it moving with such a cocksure elegance and grace the spell it casts is borderline hypnotic.
I loved so much of this picture it’s hard to know where to begin. The opening sequences are shrouded in a cloudy elegance that is both disturbing and thought-provoking, Malik’s decision to acquiesce to César’s demands one that is both detestable but also viscerally rational. He literally has no choice unless he wants to sacrifice himself for a fellow Arab he doesn’t even know, his choice one of survival the majority of us thankfully will never have to make.
It is what he does after this choice is made, however, that gives Audiard’s epic its emotional power. Instead of crumbling and becoming a hardened shell of his former self, Malik instead takes César’s power over him as a challenge to better himself. Slowly but surely he begins to learn things he never cared to during his youth, realizing that knowledge is indeed power and the more he has of it the better the likelihood he can ultimately leave prison on top of the food chain instead of at its very bottom. Like a master chess player he starts putting the pieces in place for an eventual coup, and while it isn’t certain he’ll be the last man standing if things work out as planned the chances of his falling down the ladder of power are virtually nil.
All the actors here are great, the cast an expansive and extensive once. But as good as they all are (especially a magnificent Adel Bencherif playing Malik’s best friend, confidant and eventual cancer-stricken business partner Ryad) none of them hold a candle to the film’s central figures. Both Rahim and Arestrup work in beautiful tandem together, and as one grows in stature the weight falling on the shoulders of the other as his influence falters is positively earth shattering. These two actors knock it clean out of the park, their last scene together one of such extreme emotional power I swear I sat their watching it with my mouth agape in awe.
Unfortunately, with so much to cover even at over two-a-half-hours there is just too much plot for the film to easily contain. There are times Audiard goes from points A, to B, to C only to suddenly jump all the way to F skipping D and E entirely. You get the feeling that this story almost should have been a miniseries, and while I still had a great grasp and Malik and where he was heading there were times I’d have liked his evolution from peon to godfather to have been a little bit more cohesive. I also felt like a little of the last act was rushed, if only a tiny bit, almost as if the director was finally feeling the burden of his time constraints and decided to put his foot on the gas pedal a little more firmly than he probably intended to.
Not that any of this bothered me as much as it might sound like it did. I was glued to my seat beginning to end here, and not for a single second did I want to get up from it in fear I might miss something important. The film held me in the palm of its hand playing with my emotions to such an extent the rollercoaster I was on was better than anything a Six Flags amusement park could ever hope to offer. There are so many levels to A Prophet pealing through them all is something that simply cannot be done in just a single sitting, Audiard’s latest a bristling criminal masterwork I can’t wait to sink my teeth into again and again.
Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)
