“In every crowd and beyond doubt are certain people who seem just like the rest, yet they bear astonishing messages”.
There are stories in the cinematic affirmation that keep gnawing from inside and derive much when you hold on to such significant moments. A Prophet is one of them. Director Jacques Audiard’s immersing organized-crime drama, leaps, telling you the deceptive gravity set in a French prison. It’s known that French films have a brilliance for the prison stories, and the tradition remains intact. The virtuoso of enlightening their unique cinematic history and the countless films centred around these themes. The likes of Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion (1937), Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956), Jacques Becker’s Le Trou (1960), and so much more in history. The rationale could be the idea of French existentialists, and the romantic metaphor of liberty, their deliberate notion to cut across monotony of life experiences, or maybe the love to exude an escape from out-of-ordinary real circumstances through the fiction into a fantastic aura around them.
A Prophet received widespread critical acclaim- This meant to be French gangster film, both as hard-edged, painstaking detailed social realism, and compelling genre entertainment. The film won BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film, and nine Ceasers Awards also screened at 2009 Cannes Film Festival and London Film Festival. This apart, the nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film at 82nd Academy Awards.
A Prophet introduces Malik (Tahir Rehman), the 19-year-old French youth of Algerian descent, sentenced to six years in prison for attacking police officers. Alone and illiterate upon his arrival- The loner becomes a pawn in the Corsican mobster led by Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup) who compels a brutal rule inside the prison and has a hatred for Arabs. Cesar’s earshot an important Arab witness held in jail on the makeshift orders, as he prepares to wipe him out. The presence of heavy Arab men escorts seem all the more difficult, and thus spots the lonely Malik. He offers him the deal to kill an Arab or get killed by Corsican.
Malik darts to the correctional officers only to find that they are hand in the glow of the Corsican’s payroll. The illiterate who hasn’t prepared for the surprises, realize being the lonely fatalist is the only hope for his survival, and in a mess complete the job. Notwithstanding, having Cesar’s protection, though one that remains from a distance. Conscience revere, Malik is haunted by the murder he committed. The film recites a surreal interruption with the dead man’s spirit, often visiting him in the cell. They adore the French films, are superb in building the abstract tone, so real on the screen.
Malik taking all the slang of Cesar, of his Arab hate bash, becomes an inside man and privileged Cesar for the day-long furlough outside the prison to manage Cesar Luciani’s criminal business. In prison, he befriends Ryad, a Muslim friend, where he learns to read and write, introducing him to two other Muslims, Tarik, and Hassan. His increasing power seems evident in prison. Ryad is released from jail due to health reasons, diagnosed with testicular cancer and six months to live. Just before, he gets involved in a prison drug deal with Jordi, and along with Ryad. He utilizes day release roles for his means to sell hashish. Malik’s coming-of-age is inestimable, a fact he’s all too aware of, but he can see any farther.
Cesar discovers that Malik using his day-release, more for his gains. He reminds him more than one occasion of who the boss is and wickedly ought to punish, inquire a trip bound Marseille to meet Brahim Lattrache, who in his utter anger towards Cesar, holds Malik gunpoint. Malik then spots a deer warning sign, remembers a recent dream of deer running the road, and he alerts Lattrache and his about the danger of hitting wild animals. Forthwith, the deer strike, and thus they escape the eventuality. Lattrache calls him a prophet, thus changing gears to conduct business with him instead of Cesar.
In another turn of event-Cesar decides to kill Jacky Marcaggi, the don of Corsican mafia. But, Malik has other plans to outwit Cesar using Jacky, and thus the prison drama surpasses more violence, and Cesar losing his reins to the rank newcomers. The final scene is the day of Malik’s release. He meets Ryad’s wife and son outside the prison, and they walk off together, followed by a vehicle convoy carrying Malik’s new association.
There are many incidents crammed in here and the prodigious conversations, always threaten to burst its bounds. The background clique intrigues are utterly perplexing. Perhaps starker of a socio-political view. Prophet touches the noble line of a French transitory, or the awkward integration of Arab immigrants and tries as much of a barb Islam as European sensibilities. The movie further propounds that there’s no real law in France, just as the reign of universal fear and the frightening of losing power corrupts. The men who wield it and fear the scourge of violence corrupts those who are subject to it. Purer than the peers may come indeed, to line a nest as a messiah.
Jacques Audiard does well introspecting of prison lives, negotiates the complex human characters contrives of considerable brilliance to get rooting for a person who, in his time, is a betrayer, a plotter, and a willing stooge. One would either feel and never learn mercy or forgiveness because they live by comparison, and many do not care about anyone. They do not apprehend that their deity is not rejoicing with them because of their actions. Instead, one is trying to free them from their insecurities, or by softening their heart. They instead put out your light than find their own. They can’t see beyond the false sense of happiness they get from destroying others. You know what the end is, or it isn’t the same.
In prevalence, this regards as the success of their deliverance. Apart, the mask of vindication has no takers, other than their kind. They join countless others calling themselves survivors, who damn well exist within your society, who are serving criminal or someone who’s been for rehabilitation. It’s a theme, that reminds viewers, of continually asking questions and those who wish to look beyond the crime story.
A Prophet deserves the praise Aggressive in scale, packed with memorable characters. Each of the crime events flows so smoothly that you hardly even notice the realities of large and small scale law-breaking. A recherché, in the rarest form, the kind that comes in a groundswell, thoroughly absorbing, exciting, and even poetic.
150 minutes, 2009, France
Starring: Tahar Rahim; Niels Arestrup; Adel Bencherif; Reda Kateb; Hichem Yacoubi; Jean-Philippe Ricci & Gilles Cohen
Directed by Jacques Audiard.
Story idea by Abdel Raouf Dafri.
Screenplay by Jacques Audiard; Thomas Bidegain; Abdel Raouf Dafri & Nicolas Peufaillit
Edited by Juliette Welfling.
Music by Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine.
Produced by Martine Cassinelli & Antonin Dedet.
