A Prophet

Directed By: Jacques Audiard

Written By: Thomas Bidegain and Jacques Audiard

Starring: Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup

Director of Photography: Stephane Fontaine, Editor: Juliette Welfling, Production Designer: Michel Barthelemy, Original Music: Alexandre Desplat

Rated: R for strong violence, sexual content, nudity, language and drug material.

    A Prophet, a new critical darling film from Jacques Audiard, opens with Malik being thrown around into the prison system. He is removed of all his past identity—his clothes, his wallet, everything. The irony hits because we don’t know who Malik is. We are unsure of his crime, his past, and exactly what his ethnic identity it is (though, as it will be referred to throughout, it is some sort of Arab descent). As spectators, we become Malik because we are given a clean slate to identify with. The world around him is cold and brutal, and Malik—young, vulnerable, and scared—is the only thing we can be certain of.

    But that sense of certainty is curious because the world that A Prophet becomes a place of morally ambiguous territory, in which nothing is truly certain. Each action has consequences within the prison, and no action is taken without truly seeing the experience of it. When Malik is forced by the prison’s crime boss, Cesar, to kill a fellow prisoner, the kill is messy and violent, almost disgusting. Mr. Audiard shows us the brutality in order to expose the power of such an event.

    Mr. Audiard, along with his star Tahar Rahim, have described A Prophet as the anti-Scarface (the De Plama version), which for the first hour is truly inhabits. Mr. Audiard’s brings a bleak and cruel vision to Malik’s rise in the system. It is not out of wants or desire, a desire for glory and power—it is a necessity of survival. Malik moves into Cesar’s world and becomes a pawn against his will, and their racist catcalls. But Malik learns and grows within the system, and when at times he is able to leave the prison for twelve hours on certain days, he creates numerous allies and even more enemies.

    And while Mr. Audiard has attempted something of anti-genre structure, he begins to fall into the complete trappings of genre, and A Prophet loses its visceral thrill. Although his action sequences—brutal, bleak, and bold in austerity—are viscerally crafted, its also thrilling and fun, something that the film can’t manage to do without knowing its origins in morality. Malik’s journey to the top is confronted with numerous plots and stories, which weave around each other in a swerving and confusing way. And the film thus loses its original aim—it becomes a great narrative piece, but not one that says anything more. When the final shot comes to a close, A Prophet seems to almost revel in its glorification instead of questioning the sins that have come before it. The genre and entertainment of it all has replaced the bleak world we need with this film.

    But A Prophet is surely not without its merits, and the reason we stay on this two and a half hour ride is because of Mr. Rahim’s performance. His quiet and dignified sense of self is hidden under his tough and exposed skin. Mr. Rahim brings conviction, and instead of shouting and screaming when it comes to the big moments, Mr. Rahim shuts Malik down, letting his joys sit under a cold shell. Mr. Rahim is almost matched by Niels Arestrup as Cesar, who brings dignity and control to the brutal crime boss.

    Maybe I had the wrong reaction to A Prophet by mistake. Maybe I missed the morally ambiguous centered that continues to contract through the rest of the film. But there is a sweeping quality to the second half of A Prophet—outside of the prison, we see the things we like, enjoy, and experience pleasure. And being swept up in this adventure seems like the wrong thing to happen. We need to stay grounded in the consequences, not jumping through genre antics.