UN PROPHÈTE (A PROPHET, 2009)—The Evening Class Interview With Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain & Tahar Rahim

Since first writing up Jacques Audiard's Un Prophète (A Prophet) at this year's Toronto International—where it arrived fresh from its Grand Prix win at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival—the film has secured numerous nominations and awards, including (most recently) the Best Actor and Best Sound Design nods at the European Film Awards; the Louis Delluc prize for best French film of the year; the National Board of Review's award for Best Foreign Language Film; Oscar® and Independent Spirit nominations in that category; and the Star of London prize for Best Film at the 53rd London Film Festival where Sight & Sound hailed the film as "the crime drama of the year."

Of course, it didn't take a gift of prophecy to see all this coming. I anticipated as much when I sat down to talk all-too-briefly with the film's enthusiastic director Audiard, co-writer Thomas Bidegain and the irrepressibly charming (though surprisingly quiet) lead actor Tahar Rahim.

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Michael Guillén: Let's begin with the film's title. I'm aware, Jacques, that you have already stated that the title harbors no religious implication?

Jacques Audiard: Yes and no.

Guillén: Notwithstanding, I was reminded of the Biblical adage that a prophet has no honor in his own country and interpreted the prison as a country in which Malik must earn respect. So if Malik is a prophet earning respect in this prison, what is the prophecy?

Audiard: There is no prophecy whatsoever. As Thomas and I were writing the script, we detected there would be this irony with regard to the film's title; but, Malik is a prophet in that he is a "new" man, the one who is exploring ahead of the others, and announcing what's coming. As we were writing the script, we weren't sure and hesitated about the film's title. It looked and sounded good and—though now it seems obvious—it wasn't always so obvious.

Thomas Bidegain: At first we wanted to call it To Serve Somebody.

Guillén: After Bob Dylan's song "Gotta Serve Somebody"?

Bidegain: Yes.

Guillén: A Prophet operates on different tonal registers. The film shifts between an almost documentary-like naturalism, a stylized realism, and the phantasmagoric. Can you speak to your decision to shift between these registers?

Audiard: A Prophet was proposed as strictly a genre film at the beginning; but, this was not enough for me and Thomas. We were not satisfied. Tahar's character had no depth. So that's what Thomas and I focused on: to develop the character of Malik and to give him more depth. This necessitated changing the type of genre of the film.

Bidegain: The moment Jacques and I decided the main character Malik would be haunted by the ghost of the first man he killed, then the form of the film changed. Imagine if Tony Montana would be haunted one by one by all the people he had killed? Maybe that would have made him a different person? Maybe he would have killed less?

Guillén: Well, since you bring up the ghost, let's talk about him. Why is he on fire?

Audiard: Because he is angry. It's like in cartoons when a character gets angry and steam comes out of his ears.

Guillén: [Laughs.] That's a funny image! I hadn't quite associated Malik with Yosemite Sam! What intrigued me about the ghost was—though you say he was angry—he didn't seem to be a vengeful ghost. He didn't seem to even judge Malik for having killed him. In fact, by all appearances, he seemed to be helping Malik adjust to prison life?

Audiard: He's a well-meaning ghost.

Guillén: A Prophet is strengthened for being alloyed with genre. Why do you love genre and why does it work for you?

Audiard: There are many things I love about genre: the entire imaginary; the whole universe that comes with it; the acting styles in specific scenes. Genre allows me to reach spectators more quickly. As a director, genre allows me to work faster. One of the things that comes with genre is a clear definition of good and evil. That's useful. Another aspect that comes with genre is the definition of the hierarchy. Though the character of Malik in A Prophet comes off as something of a hero, this is not so common in French cinema. His characterization is not the usual way that men are depicted in French cinema.

Guillén: One might even argue that there's a certain amount of improbability to Malik's character. I'm not the only reviewer who—as much as I love the movie—finds the premise somewhat improbable. The speed with which Malik achieves power and rank in the prison suits the genre but doesn't seem wholly believable. Even you, Jacques, have mentioned elsewhere that the character of the Corsican boss César (Niels Arestrup) is improbable in the role of the prison king. I like how you described him: "He's an ogre in charge of a kingdom of spiders." How does that improbability further the truth of your film?

Bidegain: May I answer this? The film is a fiction so, of course, it is improbable that an uneducated young man who can't even read or write would learn Corsican from the prison boss in six years. He probably wouldn't be able to accomplish that even in 20 years, that's for sure. But that's why the prison as a setting is so interesting: it's a microcosm. It's like a magnifying glass on society. All the conflicts are tougher, faster, as well as simpler. All the problems that would complicate progress in the outside world—problems of integration, racism, the sociological problems—within the genre become justified for territory, power, or money. The improbabilities within the genre make the action simpler.

Guillén: One aspect I enjoy about the "heroes" in your movies, Jacques, is that I can identify with them. They're not too glamorous… [I turn to Rahim] Please don't take that the wrong way. What I mean is that they're not overly macho. They're smarter than that. I'm aware you look for certain masculine qualities that differ from the usual cinematic portrayals of male heroes, especially within French cinema. What was it that you saw in Tahar that you felt suited the man you wanted in your film?

Audiard: It was, indeed, my intention from the start that the spectator should be able to identify with the character of Malik and to the universe of the jail around him. It would have been an easy choice to cast muscular hunks in the roles of the convicts; but, I decided not to. Admittedly, when I started shooting, I became nervous because it seemed all the actors were skinny and tiny. [Laughs.] For a moment I thought I had made a mistake. But I have a taste for short, skinny men and women on which my camera concentrates.

Guillén: [To Rahim] So you're a skinny, short person, eh? [Rahim laughs.] Let me ask you a question, Tahar. As an actor, what did you give Jacques that he did not expect?

Tahar Rahim: I can't answer that because I don't know. All I can tell you is that I gave him all my trust. I gave him everything I had.

Audiard: When you work with an actor, it's a relationship comparable to taking a lover. You learn to open up, to surrender, you're not quite sure when it's going to happen that you'll be able to trust each other, but when it happens you can bet he will hit you under the belt.

Introductory photo of Audiard, Bidegain and Rahim courtesy of Brian Brooks at indieWIRE. Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: A PROPHET

"Who you gonna get to do the dirty work when all the slaves are free?"—Joni Mitchell.

In an environment of imprisonment and enslavement, such a question is fraught with peril.

Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (A Prophet) arrives in Toronto for its North American premiere after having won the Grand Prix at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. As synopsized at Cannes: Condemned to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena cannot read nor write. Arriving at the jail entirely alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. He is 19 years old. Cornered by the leader of the Corsican gang who rules the prison, he is given a number of "missions" to carry out, toughening him up and gaining the gang leader's confidence in the process. But Malik is brave and a fast learner, daring to secretly develop his own plans...

Although I immediately thought of the Biblical adage that a prophet knows no honor in his own country, Audiard disavows any Christian innuendo in the film's title other than that protagonist Malik—in a compelling, thoroughly convincing slow burn by newcomer Tahar Rahim—has acquired a gift for scrying the future after a (somewhat cryptic) near-death experience. At its simplest meaning, a prophet is one who sees the future. "Yes, the prophet is just a prophet!" Audiard advised Karin Badt at The Huffington Post, confirming the title's lack of religious subtext: "As for Jesus or Mohammed, I don't 'eat that kind of bread.' "

Rather, Malik's future—in which he sees himself freed from the "protection" that enslaves him—hints at what SBS Film's Lisa Nesselson suggests is "a changing of the guard." Which, in itself, is an incisive yet hopeful critique of French classism and racism, wherein a better future can be imagined (or seen, if you will). Audiard has also stated that—though there is no Italian mafia in France—there is a mob, which happens to be Corsican. As Nesselson explains further, "by sheer virtue of numbers, the Arab and Muslim populations in French prisons are an increasing force to be reckoned with. Malik navigates between clans, each with their codes of respect and honor." At The Hollywood Reporter, Peter Brunette writes that Audiard "explores this basic tribal confrontation like a seasoned anthropologist." In effect, the pressures and prejudices of the social world outside the prison are inflected in the microcosm within the prison. "It's not all that different on the inside or the outside," Audiard explains.

How one manifests a prophetic sense of the future becomes one of the film's main narrative concerns, rendering a sense of destiny as achieved through self-constructed identity. As David Phelphs phrases it at The Auteurs: "A man's identity is the moves he makes." Despite petty crimes, Malik arrives at prison as something of a tabula rasa. Though Malik has been sentenced for juvenile indiscretions, he's not quite yet a true criminal, as much as he is a desperate young man. We are told virtually nothing about his past and we watch his character unfold and mature before our eyes as he negotiates his position within the prison hierarchy. At the L.A. Times, Kenneth Turan observes that A Prophet speaks to Audiard's long-standing interest in what he calls "self-education, the building of someone's character." In effect, Audiard aestheticizes the autodidact, the self-made man. As TIFF's program capsule synopsizes: "Audiard turns this premise into a probing psychological study of a disinherited, rootless young man, who initially makes choices based on the animal instinct for survival. When that need has been met, however, another set of motivations comes into play." At Moving Pictures Magazine, Eric Kohn notes the "undoubtedly tragic irony" in which Malik "gets forced into criminality by the very system intended to condemn it." Let alone that this criminality is his initiation into manhood.

Further energizing this philosophic and psychological enterprise, however, is Audiard's well-known penchant for elevating genre to artistic heights. Dispatching to Film Comment from Cannes, Amy Taubin observed: "Not surprisingly, some of the most pleasurable movies were by directors who fully embrace genre. ...A Prophet is elegantly structured, arresting in its detailing of a little-known subculture, filled with fascinating characters, and gripping beginning to end."

"What interests me about genre," Audiard explained to Kenneth Turan, "is that the public connects immediately with it, it has certain rules, certain codes the audience recognizes. I can use that to create something very big," an aim which—Turan notes—includes "creating icons, images for people who don't have images, the Arabs in France." Audiard has become the new master of the polar (French thriller), which he has intelligently infused with indirect socio-political commentary. Variety's Justin Chang describes Audiard's project as "solid, sinewy pulp fiction with strong arthouse prospects." At Screen, Jonathan Romney concurs that "A Prophet works both as hard-edged, painstaking detailed social realism and as a compelling genre entertainment." The blend makes for thoughtful, absorbing and ultimately entertaining filmmaking.

The film also plays with the tension between the literal and the phantasmagoric. The prison—with its "brutally restricted iron-and-cement palette" (Romney)—appears real; but, ends up being a completely constructed set because, of course, all the prisons in France were serving as prisons. Thus, even though the real is configured at its most naturalistic—with actual convicts cast to play themselves in prison scenes—it is likewise always held in question as a cinematic conceit. At Variety, Justin Chang finds Malik's education behind bars "improbable." One might even say romanticized. Even more intriguing is the ghostly presence of a man Malik is ordered to kill early in his prison stay. Throughout the six years of his sentence, this ghost hovers around Malik in his cell, his skin burning (as if registering that he is visiting from Hell); intimate evidence of the decisions Malik has had to make to become himself and to ready himself for his release back into the outside world. Surprisingly, the ghost is not a voice of conscience or guilt. He doesn't seem to judge Malik, despite the fact that Malik has taken his life and committed further atrocities. The audience finds itself in a similarly spectral position of non-judgment, satisfied by film's end with Malik's transformation towards the heart of his prophecy. He has become who he has seen himself to be.

Cross-published on Twitch.