A Prophet

Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestup
Releasing in cinemas: 11 February 2010
Rated: MA 15+

Shawshank - just a bowl of cherries !

At the beginning of last year we had the excellent but harrowing Italian crime film Gomorrah; this year an even more disturbing French essay in criminal violence, A Prophet, comes our way. It seems true that audiences love a good prison yarn especially if the treatment is harsh and the conditions degrading.

Think here along the lines of the Godfather in Cell Block A. This is the story of one brutalized man’s survival and rise to strength in a tough prison system. It's a graphic and gutsy film, with a viciousness even unusual for the genre. The reality of the prison assails your ears, right from the effective black screen opening.

Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) a 19 year-old French-Arab convict is incarcerated in a grim Gallic prison to serve out a six year sentence. While trying to keep a low profile, he comes to the attention of the aging leader of a feared Corsican mafia gang, Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), the type of vicious thug making Marlon Brando’s godfather look like a perfect gentleman. Cesar forces Malik to assassinate another prisoner in order to gain Corsican protection during his sentence.

Malik carries out the murder in a stiflingly gruesome scene. He’s a quick learner - toughening up and understanding the politics of prison, he gains the trust of Luciani, which he uses to his own ends in developing a drug-running syndicate. Rising up through the ranks, he no longer needs Luciani’s dubious protection; but escaping the Corsican’s clutches is another matter.

Much is made of the immigrant population of French prisons, with friction between the Muslims and the Corsicans. The ever-shrewd Malik straddles both camps. French director Jacques Audiard (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) gives this prison saga a hard edge of realism, considerable suspense, and odd wild flights of fancy. This results in a gripping behind the walls expose although lacking the uplifting moments of The Shawshank Redemption it gathers considerably more impact.

Tahar Rahim is remarkable as the young convict who educates himself to battle the system, meshing well with Niels Arestrup’s (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) explosive performance as the vicious prison ‘godfather’. Fair to say the whole cast are well chosen for their villainous look and solid performances.

Director Audiard anchors the story in the realism of a grotty prison, yet Malik becomes haunted by the ghost of his murder victim who appears at night in the cell, giving advice. Malik also has a prophetic vision of a horrific car crash with a deer. Hence he becomes ‘the prophet’.

On the debit side, you may feel the film is long in the telling - indeed perhaps it needs to be - but the first half carries most of the tension. Some aspects of the nefarious dealings in the underworld are not clearly spelt out in the complex plot. At times the camerawork reminds of TV production, but on the other hand the director plies us with fantastic visions while still grabbing hold of the stark realism. He knows his stuff and directs with flair and imagination; even reviving the technique from D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation of the iris shot using a small area of the black screen to emphasize an element of the scene. Audiard makes the most of sound and image to create his heightened atmosphere.

While the feint-hearted might may wish to forgo the experience, A Prophet remains one of the most powerful crime/prison movies and not easily forgotten.

John Bale