After initially poor distribution many will seek out or find Asghar Farhadi's 2009 film, About Elly, due to the profile raising nature of his 2012 Oscar-winning A Separation. Looking back at this previous work, his talent for presenting a seemingly simple scenario before dissecting it, revealing layer after layer of significant social truths is apparent.
An escape to a holiday home by an array of family and friends starts the film on its slippery slope, even in its opening segments we see cause for concern as things don't quite go to plan. Central to much of the film's dramatic turns is Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) who despite the best intentions plants the deceitful seeds that will later amount to devastating results. The usual holiday home is unavailable to the party, information known to Sepideh but never revealed through her fear of disappointing the others, believing they'd sort out the details upon their arrival. Luckily they are housed in a rather grim beach resort which they spruce up the best they can. But this false start based on Sepideh's omission of truth starts a snowballing effect that along with an attempt to matchmake a divorced friend and an acquaintance of Sepideh's (Elly), comes a shocking re-evaluation of modern relations.
As Elly is left with the children after 'gently' being persuaded to stay for the whole weekend, despite her clear desire to leave, she vanishes and is assumed to have drowned going in to save a young boy in her care. As the rest of the group try to decipher what has happened, to confirm whether she did in fact enter the water or leave, the information regarding Elly is either contradictory or ambiguous at best. As pressure falls on Sepideh to provide answers it's soon clear that the woman in her presence the day before, the woman who teaches her children and brought along through her persuasion is nothing but an enigma to them all. Even the easiest of questions regarding her character can't be answered, including why she agreed to come, her connections back in Tehran, and before long whether the man brought into help is Elly's brother or fiancee.
Farhadi controls his story and cast expertly, never losing our intrigue for a second while constantly revealing new levels of intrigue. As the escalating scenario develops further the objective understanding of the group is knocked time and time again as the truth steadily comes to light. One of the most brilliant and chilling aspects of Farhadi's story comes from how it stems from the everyday, that there is no spanner in the works, no wolf in sheep's clothing present to sour the perfect holiday. It's the everyday deception of little white lies that amount to much more here, with everyone meaning well and having the best intentions a dark day falls on this group through human weaknesses. As with A Separation the characters are taken to morally grey extremes and forced to confront the murky maze of deception they've laid out for themselves and those around them.
Farhadi's direction is flawless, a once again invisible mode of storytelling in which his presence is absent and makes way for a pure cinema of natural performers with little to no staging. In About Elly he has created a morally rich modern parable of sorts that though I'm sure speaks volumes about Iranian customs and relations in some way, speaks to all of us as we might wonder, when forced, how little we know about those around us everyday.
Charting the day to day survival and eventual rise to power of a young man while serving a sentence in a brutal French prison, A Prophet masterfully melds an intimate personal journey and sprawling crime thriller in a fashion as rich as the works of Bresson or Mizoguchi. Jacques Audiard has created an atmospheric boundless tour de force piece of cinema, one of the finest offerings of the year, and undoubtably his best work to date.
The relatively unknown and fresh actor Tahar Rahim plays Malik, a 19 year old delinquent beginning his six year sentence. Introduced to him as he's admitted, the camera never strays far from him throughout the drama to come. Despite a close fixation on the young man we learn very little about him, omitting any hint of a backstory and only hinting at his convicted crime - the supposed assault of a police officer.
It doesn't take long before Malik is approached by a Corsican gang headed by the frightful César (Niels Arestrup) who proposition him; a new inmate (Reyeb) has arrived who will later testify in court, in their interest Malik is told that if he doesn't kill Reyeb he will be killed instead. What follows is an uncomfortable sequence of Malik preparing to reluctantly go through with the plan, he must gain Reyeb's trust, get close to him and kill him with a razor blade hidden in his mouth. The plan goes through with intense digust and marks for a cataclysmic event in Malik's life. Now working under the protection of the Corsicans, Malik rises somewhat in the prison system through learning from his new dangerous liaisons and using the prison's education plan to its full advantage.
As he rises and gains more and more control in and out of prison thanks to well orchestrated pardon days, Malick is haunted by Reyeb's death, appearing in ghostly apparitions throughout the film. Malik's guilt is shown quite literally in these visitations but is never voiced, in fact none of his thoughts or emotions are externalised here. While the film seems to paint its central protagonist as a blank slate muddied by his incarceration, it's Rahim's assured performance and natural likability that keeps us drawn to him. To be kept this emotionally distant from Malik but utterly absorbed by his decisions and general wellbeing is a mighty achievement.
A Prophet is such a rich piece of work it's difficult to decipher through the layers exactly what it's trying to say about a number of things, an obstacle that makes the film enigmatically irresistible. Audiard's films have always featured men on the fringes of society and here this is pushed even further; as Malik is pardoned on individual days for release he is a free man while remaining an inmate. More elaborately his mix of French/Arab ethnicity causes him to be segregated due to the prejudicial battle of his environment; to the Muslim inmates Malik is viewed as a Corsican and even by some of the Corsicans he serves is still seen as an Arab, thus treated disrespectfully by both camps. This sense of identity is perhaps more abstractly proposed in Reyeb's apparitions, after all, Malik never once shows any connection to his Arabic heritage (It's even hinted that he was an orphan) and through his reluctant murder of Reyeb (an Arab man) he is perhaps killing this disconnected part of himself, a sinful action with a fruitful return. One can even argue that Audiard is critiquing the justice and subsequent rehabilitation system as Malik combines his new background of organised crime with newly acquired knowledge from his economics class. With Malik's close friend Ryad released and struggling with family and minimum wage, the only answer is crime.
There is so much to be drawn from A Prophet, a film that on the surface seems like a barebones prison drama but is in fact one containing detailed nuances and more thematic levels than one would think possible in a narrative that never stops pushing forth the tropes of a standard crime thriller.
If Jacques Audiard's male protagonists have always been situated on the fringe between societal normality and damaging undertow, I likewise believe his films have to this point been delicately balanced on the edge of great filmmaking. A career full of undeniable quality, though one could see this filmmaker was yet to peak as he slowly built towards a truly exceptional piece of work. With A Prophet I believe he's arrived there.
