Un Prophète (A Prophet) (MA). Running time: 155 minutes. Director: Jacques Audiard. Starring: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Hichem Yacoubi
It's no great surprise to hear the name of Jacques Audiard, writer-director of French prison drama Un Prophète (A Prophet), mentioned in the same sentence as American greats such as Martin Scorcese and Brian de Palma.
The film, a frontrunner for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, relates the saga of a 19-year-old Arab man, Malik El Djebena's (Rahim) rise to power and influence during a three year sentence in French prison. The story of a young man balancing ambition and survival as he scales the criminal underworld resonates with classic gangster epics such as Scorcese's Goodfellas and de Palma's Scarface.
Un Prophète
also shares those films' penchant for bloody chunks of violence, as well as the cultural and racial disquiet that lends further tension to the characters' already taut existence. It is an unforgettable film that, like its predecessors, evokes sympathy amid immorality.
From the moment of Malik's imprisonment for allegedly attacking police, he finds that if he is to survive, he needs to choose between conflicting evils. He is immediately enlisted by Cesar Luciani (Arestrup), kingpin of a feared Corsican gang and a figure of great influence in the prison, to murder a fellow prisoner, Reyeb (Yacoubi), a witness in an upcoming trial against the mob. If he fulfills the deed, he will win Cesar's protection. If he does not, he will be killed.
Malik does commit the murder — the ultimate crime as an ultimate act of self-preservation — but only after first wrestling his conscience to the ground. In the moments immediately preceding the murder, he inadvertently bonds with Reyeb, who, thinking the young man to be a friend, encourages Malik to use his time in prison to educate and better himself.
There is a hint that Malik has damaged his own moral compass at the moment
of Reyeb's bloody execution. He embraces Reyeb's
advice to educate himself, as if in this way some good can be drawn from his evil act. Reyeb
appears frequently to Malik as a ghost, not to haunt but to counsel
and prophesy. The advice he offers proves to be helpful. Malik's own ambition and 'smarts' thus speak through the
guise of a demented conscience.
Malik increases in Cesar's esteem, as he proves to be a reliable and motivated minion. Perhaps too motivated: he's opportunistic, and begins to play his own