Starring: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Hichem Yacoubi Director: Jacques Audiard Category: III (French, Corsican and Arabic) Wandering into fellow prisoner Reyeb's cell, A Prophet's protagonist Malik notices the shelves are weighed down with books - an uncommon sight in a high-security prison. Noting his surprise, Reyeb says incarceration is better spent if one elects to educate himself while confined. 'The idea is to leave here a little bit smarter,' he says. And so Malik does, as Jacques Audiard's two-and-a-half hour film chronicles the young man's transformation from a meek, illiterate teenager to a multilingual, well-connected kingpin during his six-year confinement. But Reyeb's remark could well be aimed at audiences: Malik's strategies for survival offer a glimpse of how crime and/or late, post-industrial capitalism operate today, and are as much an enlightening take on the social relations of power as a gripping prison drama. Malik (Tahar Rahim, above) begins the film as a weakling, highly susceptible to prison's violent bullying. A street urchin with no intellectual or physical gifts to speak of, he quickly finds himself caught in the middle of two rival factions in the prison population: on one side, the Arabic group with which Malik shares, at least on the surface, some cultural and religious ties; on the other, a powerful Corsican clique presided over by the murderous overlord Cesar (Niels Arestrup). Despite his ancestry, he is forcibly inducted into the latter - his initiation rite being the slaying of Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), who is due to testify against Cesar in court. So far, so Scarface - but it's Malik's way of rising through the ranks that makes A Prophet a very different prospect than the archetypal flick about a hoodlum fighting his way to the top. While serving as Cesar's loyal foot soldier, Malik settles into this new world by cooly nurturing his brain rather than his brawn: he enrols in academic courses and learns Corsican clandestinely to get into the minds of his associates. Unbeknown to his old-school mentor-tormentor - who believes that power lies in physical intimidation - he becomes a rising star in the system, a model prisoner who doubles as a self-made player in the hashish trade outside. Those familiar with Hong Kong's litany of triad films, of course, might dispute the originality of A Prophet's premise: Andrew Lau Wai-keung's Born to Be King and Johnnie To Kei-fung's Election diptych have all touched on how mob linchpins might soon be drawn from slick, university graduates electing to manage their fiefdoms like proper businesses. But the protagonists in those films eventually revert to violence to maintain their stranglehold, whereas Malik remains austere to the end, as he goes about his trade with a subtle deftness that makes him scarier than a gangster. Malik's refusal to be reduced to an essentialist fate drives his gradual and subtle transformation into a leader: while it's an Arab prisoner (Reyeb) who provides him with enlightenment and yet another, Ryad (Adel Bencherif), who serves as his only friend inside prison, the young man sees himself as an operator who transcends his own background and, thus, history. As he tells a social worker, he speaks both French and Arabic and his parents were never around to influence his life. A Prophet is remarkable by revealing these nuances while never letting off the pace. While Audiard's mise-en-scene and screenplay offers both a critical social insight and a sensory assault, the film is made complete by screen debutant Rahim, who delivers a tour de force by revealing the subtle changes Malik undergoes throughout the story. It's a wonderful performance at the centre of a riveting film. A Prophet opens today
