A prophet

A Prophet (Un prophète)
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel BencherifÖ, Hichem Yacoubi
Director: Jacques AudiardÖ
Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes

Uncompromising and amoral, Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet is a gripping French crime film which becomes an arresting viewing. The film follows Malik El Djebena( Tahar Rahim) a 19 year old illiterate Arab Frenchman, who is sentences to six years in prison. As a fresh meat Djebena is seen as easy target by the Corsican, the blacks, and Jewish mafia. He is forced to join the Corsicans and is treated like a slave by Cesar Luciani who has a strong authority in and outside jail and is perhaps one of the most convincing psychotic, manipulative middle aged thug i have ever seen on screen. Much like Audiard’s other masterpiece The Beat that My Heart Skipped (2005) , A Prophet is richly constructed, intensely satirical story about social justice and crime. Newcomer Rahim takes the audience on an initially cringeful journey of naive inmate clichés through an enticing and believable thug. With every frame the director eloquently captures the unsympathetic, hostile, drug fuelled prison environment in an unpretentious style. The effect is so pleasurably jarring the thought of selling drugs to make quick puck in your down time is no longer as appealing ( Side effects of extensive viewing of The Wire). A prophet is an art house gangster film that deserves all the hype and praise it has received since its release. Last year it won the Grand Prize at Cannes and was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign-language film. It is a film which exposes the nuance of intolerance in modern France and inadvertently suggest our prisons are not very different from society, both being controlled environment. A Prophet has very much revived the gangster drama genre. High brow film critics have described Audiard as the “French Scorsese”. However Audiard truly understands the art of storytelling and never compromises, coupled with great cinematography his films will continue to engage and create hype that many art house films can only dream about.