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Prison is the best place from which to contemplate freedom: you see it whole as if it were another planet. No wonder so many prison movies, especially French ones, are existential dramas, adventures in action and philosophy set in an off-world dimension of the mind. Jacques Audiard's A Prophet rounds up the classic conundrums - "what is freedom?"; "what is non-freedom?"; "does jail have its own liberty and normal life its shackles?" - and adds some of its own. These address the tensions of a multi-race, multi-creed world and ask: "Is life under lock-and-key an exact, if microcosmic, reflection of life outside?" If so, is it, perversely, a perfect education for the man with the right mindset?
Add a thriller plot that keeps our pulses racing like a Grand National winner's - over a 2 1/2 -hour course strewn with shrewdly designed obstacles - and no wonder the film has cleaned up awards, starting with last year's Cannes Grand Jury Prize. A Prophet is a 21st-century filmgoer's Huis Clos . We are in hell, earthly variety, and an immaculately ordered one. The prison's ethnic population is cleanly divided into rival factions (Arab and Corsican); the ground rules for staying alive are laid out in black and white, like a chessboard. Malik (Tahar Rahim, resembling a young Che Guevara), a 19-year-old Muslim, starts as a pawn, but moves up through the pieces. His talent is to outplay, one by one, his betters.
After [Joe Warr]'s wife (Laura Fraser) dies of cancer, he is charged with raising their young son (Nicholas McAnulty). To minimise difficulties, he adopts a policy of "just say yes", egged on by ghostly visitations. The narrative proceeds by immersion rather than exposition. Details arise organically as the drama unfolds, rather than through dialogue of the "you already know this, but in case you forgot . . . " variety. So the viewer is in the rare and welcome position of playing catch-up. It emerges that Warr left his first English wife for the second Australian one, and has a neglected son at boarding school (George MacKay). This initially moody child comes to stay for the film's second half, and the three form a messy, makeshift family. The film is a convincing portrait of the stress of single parenthood. [Clive Owen] does well in a tricky role. I could watch him all day, and after The Boys Are Back , I felt like I had.
Add a thriller plot that keeps our pulses racing like a Grand National winner's - over a 2 1/2 -hour course strewn with shrewdly designed obstacles - and no wonder the film has cleaned up awards, starting with last year's Cannes Grand Jury Prize. A Prophet is a 21st-century filmgoer's Huis Clos . We are in hell, earthly variety, and an immaculately ordered one. The prison's ethnic population is cleanly divided into rival factions (Arab and Corsican); the ground rules for staying alive are laid out in black and white, like a chessboard. Malik (Tahar Rahim, resembling a young Che Guevara), a 19-year-old Muslim, starts as a pawn, but moves up through the pieces. His talent is to outplay, one by one, his betters.
After [Joe Warr]'s wife (Laura Fraser) dies of cancer, he is charged with raising their young son (Nicholas McAnulty). To minimise difficulties, he adopts a policy of "just say yes", egged on by ghostly visitations. The narrative proceeds by immersion rather than exposition. Details arise organically as the drama unfolds, rather than through dialogue of the "you already know this, but in case you forgot . . . " variety. So the viewer is in the rare and welcome position of playing catch-up. It emerges that Warr left his first English wife for the second Australian one, and has a neglected son at boarding school (George MacKay). This initially moody child comes to stay for the film's second half, and the three form a messy, makeshift family. The film is a convincing portrait of the stress of single parenthood. [Clive Owen] does well in a tricky role. I could watch him all day, and after The Boys Are Back , I felt like I had.
