Prophet, A

Synopsis:  Malik el Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is a 19-year-old Arab sentenced to six years in jail for violence against police. He just another typical inmate until he is chosen by Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), head of the Corsican gang that runs life on the inside, to kill a prisoner named Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) who is in transit awaiting to testify against the mob. Malik commits the murder and becomes one of Luciani's men but he is haunted by Reyeb's ghost and his growing awareness of his Muslim identity.

Although earning itself an Oscar nomination in the Foreign Language category of this year's Academy Awards it is difficult to see A Prophet as a potential winner, or even doing much business locally. Not because it is not an impressively well-made film, for it is, but because its fidelity to the tawdry world of low-life criminality is hardly likely to generate enthusiastic word-of-mouth.

Jacques Audiard’s film is a painstaking and, even vicariously, quite painful journey through the dark and vicious underworld of France’s criminal class, one which is apparently largely made up of migrants, people with no access to the mainstream of French society and who are inured to a dog-eat-dog way of life. This is well embodied by Niels Arestrup as Luciani, a nasty piece of work who, constantly surrounded by a coterie of swaggering thugs, lords it over his fellow inmates and his keepers alike. Unlike last year’s Gomorrah, A Prophet leavens the sordidness with the much more interesting character of Malik, whose story is told here.

Not that Malik is not tough. He is. But he also has a rare gift in this brutalized world, a sense of something better to be had from life. At first he has no real sense of it but his being forced to kill to survive triggers in him a sense of purpose which enables him to withstand the horrors of prison life.  A Prophet is in many ways like a realist version of one of those mythic tales that require the hero to weather many trials before finally slaying the dragon and winning his lady’s hand (the incongruously cheesy ending of the film seems to confirm this). In the central role Tahar Rahim is highly effective as the young man with nothing to lose but his life.

Be warned, however, this film IS realistic and at 155 minutes you get a very good feeling for the brutality and monotony that is Malik’s lot. Everything about the production, from the leached-out imagery to the sound design to the frightening assortment of thugs, works to bring that reality home. This is a strength that has deservedly won the film many critical plaudits.  Whether it wins it the popular vote remains to be seen.

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