Film Review: A Prophet (Un Prophète)

Centred around half-Arab, half-Corsican, Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim), A Prophet is a story of social climbing akin to Scarface but without the overdone theatrics. With director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) at the helm, A Prophet is more than a crime film, it is a quintessential modern French story about social and cultural identity.

Malik is 19-years old when he enters a Parisian jail for his 6 year sentence. He is illiterate and seemingly emotionally immature; alone in the world without friends or family, and in practical terms, without money to survive his time in jail. What hope does Malik have in this lion’s den?

In a place divided by ethnicity, Malik is viewed suspiciously by both Corsicans and Arabs, as he doesn’t fulfil the necessary racial credentials for either side. That is, until he becomes useful to the leader of the Corsicans, César Luciani (Niels Arestrup).

A Prophet explores themes of power, control and survival, all tropes you’d expect from a film set in a jail. But then, there is the additional aspect of race – Audiard obviously wants to examine a topic that is central to modern ideas of identity in France. With an official policy of assimilation, issues of race and cultural identity in France appear to be constantly on a knife’s edge. In this way, the jail in the film is a microcosm of French society.

Malik represents a typical example of someone who has fallen between the cracks in France’s social system. Let down by the promise of assimilation, he is rejected by his ‘people’ and failed by the State (illustrated by his illiteracy). Left to sink or swim in jail, Malik is given lessons in servitude, seduction and murder by his adopted jail ‘family’. In his debut feature film role, Tahar Rahim makes Malik’s criminal transformation completely mesmerising. <!–[endif]–>

But as you cheer for the anti-hero Malik, there are fascinating moralities at work in the script. Does the film suggest crime pays?; or that you are best off sticking to ‘your people’? Certainly, there is the resounding question of jail as a place of rehabilitation and what rehabilitation really means.

A Prophet is a truly absorbing character study, not focused solely on the fantastic central performances of Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup, but allowing intriguing supporting characters like Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) and Ryad (Adel Bencherif) time on screen to develop, making them more than simply plot points. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film for this year’s Academy Awards, with an exceptional cast, superb storytelling and compelling visuals, A Prophet is more that deserving of the praise and accolades being heaped upon it.