Miami Beach Cinematheque. May 7th, 8th, 9th, 2010. 6:50 p.m – 9:35 p.m.
Condemned to six years in prison, Malik L Djebna, cannot read or write. Arriving at the jail entirely alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. He is 19 years old. Cornered by the leader of the Corsican Gang currently ruling the prison, he is given a number of missions to carry out, toughening him up and gaining the gang leader’s confidence in the process. Malik is a fast learner and rises up the prison ranks, all the while secretly devising his own plans.
As in most gangster movies, character interest and plot interest are the same in A Prophet: a man’s identity is the moves he makes.Which is why the movie holds on as an investigation into who the main character, Arab prisoner Malik El Djebena is – every move he makes is ordered by a prison mobster, while his one or two stabs at autonomy and power are intended only to free him from slavery, and only tangle him deeper in the system.
There are all sorts of frameworks here, a patricidal Greek tragedy, a microcosm of the Arabs’ rise to power in France, a Burt Lancaster melodrama of a old man deluding himself of his power, a Rousseau-ian political allegory of men in chains from nature, and a Nietzschian religious allegory about pretending man-made structures are the dictates of god—and about the prophets who deliver the dictates. They’re all just scaffolding for what really counts, in a world where relationships are only economic, as if every man were a nation-state: the rules and procedures and schemes of people staying alive in prisons and mobs in France, 2009, the precautions they take with cell phones, or the best way to slice a guy’s throat. A Prophet doesn’t need a film critic, but a critic who’s been to jail and the mob and back, to say how good it is.
Directed by Jacques Audiard in 2009. France. 155mins. Starring Tahar Raman, Niels Asrestrup, Adel Bencherif, Hichem Yacoubi. In French, Arabic & Corsican with English subtitles. WINNER of Grand Prize of the Jury Cannes Film Festival, BAFTA Awards Best Film Not In English Language, Cesar Awards Best Film and European Film Awards Best Actor.
Miami Beach Cinematheque
512 Española Way
Miami Beach, FL 33139
305.673.4567
www.mbcinema.com
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