SUPERB crime drama A Prophet grips like an offer you can’t refuse as it follows the title character’s bloody rise through the ranks of an all-too-real criminal underworld.
Lead actor Tahar Rahim is our eyes and ears as writer-director Jacques Audiard takes us deep into the dark truths of violent tribal rivalries in a multi-racial French prison.
Audiard pulls off some nerve-shredding set-pieces and punctuates the gritty “reality” of the milieu with some virtuoso cinematic flourishes.
When we first meet French Arab Malik El Djebena (Rahim), he is a vulnerable, illiterate and inarticulate 19-year-old.
Soon he becomes a well “educated” inmate and, eventually, a vital go-between who can uniquely operate within rival camps. The transformation is engrossing and scarily believable.
If Rahim’s brief as an actor was to explore and reveal aspects of the human condition, while bringing the writing to life, he succeeds on both fronts, just as he is up to the considerable physical demands of the role.
This largely unknown performer shines in the scenes when El Djebena is unexpectedly touched by the beauty and possibilities of the outside world and at other times achieves an edgy intensity reminiscent of a young De Niro (as did Romain Duris in Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped).
Since its success at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, A Prophet has been hailed by critics as “the film of the year”, some have said one of the key films of the past decade, and has been compared to crime classics such as The Godfather.
High praise indeed, but believe the hype.
Veteran UK critic Philip French praised Godfather 2 as: “A magnificently-acted ironic epic with the expansive quality and rich characterisation of a great Victorian novel, demanding the unbroken concentration of the cinema.” All of his words could be applied to A Prophet.
Audiard’s intricate and multi-faceted picture works as a fascinating character study, as an expose of the failings of the modern French prison system and as a commentary on the “cutthroat” nature of capitalist society.
But its touch is so assured, and so subtle, that no one strand dominates. It powerfully bears the considerable sum of its parts as it walks the walk as an impressive all-round cinematic achievement.
The fine ensemble cast is led by Rahim and by Niels Arestrup, the errant father in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, as the leader of Corsican gangsters at odds with the prison’s Muslim community.
Music is used sparsely but effectively, from an early eruption of Bridging The Gap by Nas through to the closing strains of Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s version of Mack The Knife.
A PROPHET (18) Directed by Jacques Audiard. Starring Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Hichem Yacoubi. 155 minutes.