In Theaters: A Prophet

Targeted by the Corsicans because they can't risk "one of their own," Malik is always in between, and learns to manage his position by cross-breeding his interests. "I'm being rehabilitated," his friend Ryad (Adel Bencherif) insists while teaching Malik to read and write, and it's a line Malik will repeat, like the model student he turns out to be. Learning Corsican alone in his cell at night we finally see signs of an independent psyche; treated like a dog by his protectors, Malik plays to that designation's strengths, winning César's trust with his mute obedience and abject loyalty. Stealthily setting up his own network between cell blocks and facilitating a drug ring, Malik fancies himself a junior diplomat, a mini-mogul, an impression only solidified when he is granted a leave day due to "good behavior," and is able to conduct some serious business on the streets of Paris.

There is an uneasy tension at work between Audiard's (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) indelible style and the teetering paradox of his burgeoning gangster's rise. Contrasting a cold-eyed naturalism with calm, almost soothing hallucinations of his victim and impressionistic internalizations (an iris is used to suggest both the focus and blurring of Malik's attention), Audiard creates a seductive psychology -- and a deep sympathy -- frankly at odds with his hero's journey. Cued to exhilarate in Malik's progress (often by Scorsese-ian music montage) and fear for his safety at the mercy of the almost mythically powerful César, any hope of a spiritual education slips through the frames, his moral fabric proved to be as permeable as the prison walls. A bleak message indeed, and one that could have used a deeper engagement with the film's racial and religious undertones. As it is Audiard uses them much as Malik does -- as a means to an end.

Although the plot reaches a viscosity that challenges digestion -- Malik's ultimate heist is a cloud of new characters and ecstatic violence -- the denouement finds a note of lucid pathos in the film's greatest strength, its lead performers. Newcomer Rahim and Arestrup build a complex, volatile bond, clearly the definitive relationship of Malik's life, that anchors a genre-driven film with human frailty. The final lines of a less successful recent genre exercise, Shutter Island, came to mind as Malik walked out of the last frame of A Prophet, literally trailed by the legacy of who he had become: "Which would be worse: to live as a monster or to die as a good man?" Audiard and his impressive but often inscrutable effort pose a follow-up: Is it worse to leave that question unanswered or unexamined?

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