Un prophète (A Prophet) (Foreign Film Review: France)

Underdog stories are the stuff of feel good films.  Even ones involving the mafia, like Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas or Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, allow us, the viewer, to connect with the characters, we are holy in their world and as such we abide by their morals.  A Prophet is not like those films.  It falls into the category that the Italian film Gomorra (Gomorrah) is part of, a deconstruction of our romanticized view of crime.  At the same time the main character of A Prophet, Malik, spends the entire film in a prison, and its clear by the end, thats what built up his success.

The movie follows a young arab, Malik, as he is placed in prison for 6 years.  We never find out his initial crime, but by the time he gets out he's also responsible for numerous murders as well as drug trafficking.  The lead up to his fall, or rise depending on your viewpoint, to heavier crimes, happens when he becomes close with the Corsican mobster, Cesar.  As Cesar and his crew work their way around the prison system, Malik begins his own crew, outside of both the Corsican's and, the opposing force, the Arabs.

The film at first seems to be made in a harshly realistic style.  The film is shot handheld, and their doesn't appear to be anything out of place with reality.  All that changes after Malik commits his first murder.  He begins to see visions of the future, brought to him by the murdered man.  His clairvoyance earns him the nickname "prophet".

The film is reminiscent of Bronson a british prison movie about the life of British criminal Charles Bronson.  Both films feature extremely strong performances by the lead.  Both are stylized with fantasy elements.  Both are prison films.  A Prophet though has much stronger supporting characters.  It also has a plot that makes you feel that you've seen a complete story.

The director of the film says that it is fictional, and that it isn't trying to send a message, but the race relations, and the fall from grace that the film shows can be seen as messages.  Is it coincidental that Malik becomes educated when he goes deep into the crime scene?  Or that he exits the prison system more criminal than when he entered? Perhaps it is, but at what point does the subconscious of the director, or the character, shine through no matter how hard he tries to suppress it.

Bubble (Independent Film Review)

As a director Steven Soderbergh has one of the most eclectic careers in cinema.  He broke into the filmmaking industry with Sex, Lies, and Videotape, a film that was pivotal in the independent scene in the early 90s.  Soderbergh went on to direct the more commercially viable Ocean's movies (Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen).  Bubble was made immediately after Ocean's Twelve.

Bubble follows the lives of three small town factory workers, who are all employed at the local doll factory.  The film is shoved into the thriller genre, because there is a murder that happens, but for the most part the film is more like watching the three characters as they skirt around each other.

The script was not written, but improvised.  Not only was it improvised, it was improvised by the untrained actors, actors who has not so much as set foot on a stage, or in front of a camera.  The improvisation and lack of training isn't as obvious during the first 2/3s of the movie, when the actors are playing characters that are essentially themselves.  As soon as the murder takes place, and they are questioned, their lack of experience shows through.

Not all of the blame rests with the actors though.  Gus Van Sant used a similar technique in his murder/thriller Paranoid Park which it used far better than Bubble.  Even the reaction to murder (which happens in both films) is better in Paranoid Park, likely due to the fact that that film, unlike Bubble had a script.

The look of the film is harsh, grating.  The opening of the film has pretty still shots of the empty town.  After the characters are introduced though, any pretense at fancy camerawork is replaced with static over the shoulder shots, not altogether out of place among the drabness of the rest of the film.

The film is almost too much of an experiment.  All of the attempts at making the film as "independent" as it could be, made it lose all of its low budget feel.  While most indy filmmakers are trying to up their production value, Soderbergh was trying to lower his.  Ultimately Bubble looks like a cheap trick by a filmmaker known to make better.

$9.99 (Independent Film Review)

Etgar Keret is an Israeli author and scriptwriter known for his off kilter tales , similar to modern day fables. In $9.99, his third collaboration with Australian short film director Tatia Rosenthal, he takes hope and transposes it onto a modern day apartment building.

The film follows a group of residents who all reside within an apartment building in Sydney, Australia.  Each of the characters has their own story, which all meet and are interconnected.  The film is in stop motion, which seems like nothing more than a stylistic choice at the beginning of the film, is soon revealed to be put to good use.  The film has fantasy elements, but the animation makes the fantastical elements seem to fit into the Sydney backdrop.

The animation itself is phenomenal, beautifully smooth, with none of the slight jumpiness that is typical of stop motion animation films.  Their is a point in the film where a character shaves off all his hair, but he remains recognizable even with the lack of detail in most stop motion puppets.

Geoffrey Rush as the embittered chain smoking angel, is the highlight of the film.  His dry delivery and comedy is no doubt brought on be his own knowledge of humor, as well as the excellent script by Keret.    The rest of the cast was also top notch and the integration of the voice actors into their animated avatars was also well done.

The overlying themes of hope in the modern day, sometimes get muddled with the way that certain characters interact.  While the Angel is easily seen as a postmodern interpretation of a redeemer, the rest of characters roles are not as clear.  The director's choice in how the story is told is unclear at times, and the causes for some of the more fantastical element's needed to be made clearer, especially given the film's dark and brooding opening.

The film is a dark comedy and it certainly shows that.  Its rare though, in that the darkness of the piece comes not from flawed characters (though they are indeed flawed) but by situations that cause them to misunderstand each other.  This overlying inability to control everything is perhaps the greatest stake the film makes in its message that hope is alive, even in our disjointed, unorganized, modern society.