Sometimes a film has to underwhelm before it can satisfy. Building on the success of 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped, such has been the critical acclaim garnered by Jacque’s Audiard’s latest that at first it appears simply unable to live up to the hype. Lazy comparisons to Jean-Pierre Melville or The Godfather haven’t helped. A Prophet may be long, French, and include Mediterranean gangsters, but its largely uncinematic, observational feel has more in common with recent films such as The Hurt Locker than either of these – in fact, one of its most admirable characteristics is that it constantly avoids giving you the film you’d expect.
One wouldn’t necessarily infer this from the story. A young French Arab, Malik El Djebena (a breakthrough performance by Tahar Rahim), begins a six-year prison sentence. A chance conversation with a fellow inmate brings him to the attention of the prison’s ruling elite, a group of Corsican crime-bosses led by the patriarchal César (Neils Arestrup, admittedly looking something like a grizzled French Don Corleone). After his brutal forced initiation into César’s circle, Malik’s subsequent ascent of the Corsican crime hierarchy allows him to pursue his own criminal agenda, using the people and information he comes into contact with on the inside to play off various sides against each other for his own profit.
Yet even as Malik’s interventions in the outside world become increasingly complicated, the film’s extended running time makes what would traditionally be climactic twists seem like just more episodes, and it is a testament to the scriptwriters and editor that this tactic doesn’t slip into torpidity. Instead, through allowing the story and characters to develop at a relatively lifelike pace, such a flattened, linear progression actually enhances the film’s impact, provoking a constant unease regarding just how it will end up. The unfussy cinematography also helps this, refusing to draw too much attention to any particular moment or scene, and exercises enough self-control to come across as realistic without seeming overly messy or ugly.
Often, it is the careful manipulation of documentary-like aspects which really betrays Audiard’s skill: a particularly memorable example is Malik’s lingering over signing a legal form, his near-illiteracy brought uncomfortably to the fore. The film’s sound design often has the same effect: early scenes present a progression of half-indifferent, half-commanding bureaucratic voices, whilst the prison itself is a constant background of taunts and shouts echoing blurrily along the corridors. Outside, an incoherent tannoy constantly chastises inmates in the exercise yard – conveying well a world of authority present but almost always ignored. The naturalistic performances are generally strong, with Rahim’s strikingly believable performance conveying well his character’s mix of the tense, the vulnerable and the uncomfortably complicit. Meanwhile, Arestrup memorably imparts both his expectant ferocity and ultimately embittered dejection: an unsuccessful public attempt to catch Malik’s attention yields surprising pathos, Arestrup looking like an unwanted fifth-best-friend across the schoolyard.
Yet amidst all this, Audiard periodically introduces elements which seem bent on deliberately undermining the lifelike tone: thus at various points we are presented with a ghost, Tarantino-esque chapter titles, more typical gangster-film montages, two almost Lynchian visual sequences, not to mention Alexandre Desplat’s self-consciously cinematic music. These have mixed results: although they admirably prevent the film from becoming too monotonous, only in a few cases do their contributions seem to really add something beyond this, and the better elements – the various apparitions and hallucinations – feel too spasmodic and underused to fulfil their potential.
It is to Audiard’s credit that he manages to make all this realism, magic realism, and apparent self-reference co-exist quite effortlessly. Overall, the conflicting aspects and subtle shifts in direction seem like part of the general refusal to give you the film you expect; the intention is admirable, but the film’s story and construction simply aren’t original enough to prevent this seeming like a substitute for being truly innovative. This is not to say that A Prophet is not worth seeing: the end-product is well put-together, thought-provoking and becomes increasingly compelling as it progresses. It succeeds well on its own terms; whether it has much lasting impact will remain to be seen.
Three stars
