Un prophète (2009)
(A Prophet)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 155m
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif
Synopsis:
A young Arab receives a six-year custodial sentence and without any friends inside or out falls prey to the protection offered by the Corsican elite prisoner Luciani. Gradually, through graft, self-improvement and entrepreneurialism, he lifts himself up into the ascendant so that he leaves prison an established and connected underworld crimiinal.
Review:
A deeply depressing view of prison and what it does to inmates, this uncompromising and apparently pretty accurate representation can be deceptively uplifting simply by virtue of the fact that our hero rises from darkness into light. Viewed sociologically, however, it offers quite a different perspective. Hardly a single prison official is seen who is not implicated in the perverse bottom-up hierarchy of prisoner control, all maintained by money from the inmates' outside dealings and contacts. Like the worst of his kind our hero is a self-made man who learns from his environment, at times reminding one of the abused son of Padre Padrone, a not inapt comparison, given that we are offered another of Audiard's twisted father-son relationships in this film. The director meanwhile lightens the load on the spectator via some fanciful touches such as the constant presence of the ghost of Malik's first victim, the cue for some flashes of prophecy and gallows humour.
(A Prophet)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 155m
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif
Synopsis:
A young Arab receives a six-year custodial sentence and without any friends inside or out falls prey to the protection offered by the Corsican elite prisoner Luciani. Gradually, through graft, self-improvement and entrepreneurialism, he lifts himself up into the ascendant so that he leaves prison an established and connected underworld crimiinal.
Review:
A deeply depressing view of prison and what it does to inmates, this uncompromising and apparently pretty accurate representation can be deceptively uplifting simply by virtue of the fact that our hero rises from darkness into light. Viewed sociologically, however, it offers quite a different perspective. Hardly a single prison official is seen who is not implicated in the perverse bottom-up hierarchy of prisoner control, all maintained by money from the inmates' outside dealings and contacts. Like the worst of his kind our hero is a self-made man who learns from his environment, at times reminding one of the abused son of Padre Padrone, a not inapt comparison, given that we are offered another of Audiard's twisted father-son relationships in this film. The director meanwhile lightens the load on the spectator via some fanciful touches such as the constant presence of the ghost of Malik's first victim, the cue for some flashes of prophecy and gallows humour.
(A Prophet)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 155m
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif
Synopsis:
A young Arab receives a six-year custodial sentence and without any friends inside or out falls prey to the protection offered by the Corsican elite prisoner Luciani. Gradually, through graft, self-improvement and entrepreneurialism, he lifts himself up into the ascendant so that he leaves prison an established and connected underworld crimiinal.
Review:
A deeply depressing view of prison and what it does to inmates, this uncompromising and apparently pretty accurate representation can be deceptively uplifting simply by virtue of the fact that our hero rises from darkness into light. Viewed sociologically, however, it offers quite a different perspective. Hardly a single prison official is seen who is not implicated in the perverse bottom-up hierarchy of prisoner control, all maintained by money from the inmates' outside dealings and contacts. Like the worst of his kind our hero is a self-made man who learns from his environment, at times reminding one of the abused son of Padre Padrone, a not inapt comparison, given that we are offered another of Audiard's twisted father-son relationships in this film. The director meanwhile lightens the load on the spectator via some fanciful touches such as the constant presence of the ghost of Malik's first victim, the cue for some flashes of prophecy and gallows humour.