Aside from considering it terribly relevant to current issues, it is a great film.
Extracts from the quite fair summary:
It might be added that the film is quite graphic in all its depictions, but without the comic-book graphism which defaces action films. And it includes a frank portrayal of torture, but as in reality, torture which leads to cracking the cell.
Effective, but at what price. The man’s eyes are the same thing I’ve seen.
No easy answer.
My addition there.
I further largely agree with this judgement:
It should cause everyone to step back and think about the situation we are in. I don’t mean that as either a victorious or a defeatist context, but for those who desire to wrestle with this.
There are, of course, a few historical issues and one can come away with a somewhat simplistic idea of how the Algerians defeated France.
The analogy is highly inexact, we can not withdraw as France. (Should anyone want to argue in this way, please that’s a GD thread) But the art here has real resonance for looking at the moral issues, for provoking thought about strategy and tactics and repercussions.
And I have always found it a starkly beautiful film.
I’ve seen it, it is a good film, and has a very gritty documentary style. The fighters in Algeria were more in line with Marxist and socialist thinking than Islamic “fundamentalism”. One interesting thing about “Algiers” was the FLN’s support by Algerian women, as depicted in the film.
A few years later the director Gillo Pontecorvo made a film called “Burn!” (aka “Queimada”)with Marlon Brando. It wasn’t a masterpiece on the level of “Algiers”, but it was an interesting film. Brando plays a British operative who infiltrates a “revolutionary” guerrilla band on a Carribean island colony in the 19th century, supposedly to support the liberation of the black slaves. All along he is only acting in his employers’ (wealthy foreigners) interests - to take over the little island once it becomes a “republic”. Brando’s character (tellingly named “William Walker”) betrays the guerrillas as soon as they have served their purpose, leaving them to fall into anarchy and disarray…
The fictional island is known as “A Queimada” (The Burned Island) because it was twice engulfed in fire during rebellions. Since the film was made in 1969 it was obviously an anti-Vietnam War statement and an indictment of U.S./European policy in Latin America. But the parallels to the 1980’s use of the mujahaddin of Afghanistan are striking.
Apparently this film was a flop, since Pontecorvo never made much of anything again. It almost seems as if halfway into the film, Brando might have taken over the directing…a la “One Eyed Jacks”.
Nothing to add but my further recommendation . A great, but very disturbing movie. Woth watching no matter what end of the political spectrum you’re on of how you feel we should approach our current problem.
Burn! on the other hand, is an intriguing failure. But still worth watching IMO.
Thanks for the reference to Burn. I had never heard of it.
Yes… and no. Yes, the FLN was a typical “third world” liberation movement with a healthy dose of marxist flavored socialist ideology. On the other hand, it was also fundamentally a muslim algerian reaction to France. Not fundamentalist, no. In that way it is an inexact analogy, but in regards to the structuring of the movement in urban areas, it is a quite useful if still inexact picture.
But as to the film, I have to say that I have a hard time thinking of a more rich film in regards to portraying both sides. I always rather admired the paratroops colonel, for example.
Thanks for the reference to Burn. I had never heard of it.
Yes… and no. Yes, the FLN was a typical “third world” liberation movement with a healthy dose of marxist flavored socialist ideology. On the other hand, it was also fundamentally a muslim algerian reaction to France. Not fundamentalist, no. In that way it is an inexact analogy, but in regards to the structuring of the movement in urban areas, it is a quite useful if still inexact picture. (Inexact historically as one might get the false impression that urban terror from both sides was the whole war, obviously the film tells the story of the city, not the country)
But as to the film, I have to say that I have a hard time thinking of a more rich film in regards to portraying both sides. I always rather admired the paratroops colonel, for example.
I went to a couple of good video stores in my neighborhood looking for this film after Collounsbury mentioned it in GD. Neither had it (although I might have been looking in the wrong section in one store, since it turns out that this is an Italian film commissioned by the Algerian government). The other video place said they were going to order it.
I do plan to seek the film out and give it a look-see.
Of note, I found a store which sells the above mentioned video.
I strongly recommend it, above all given the continuing developments in Afghanistan (and I may add, precisely along the lines of my predictions in November, except I was too optimistic in re leadership being killed or captured).
The film strikes me as ever more relevant and useful to view.
. A great, but very disturbing movie. Woth watching no matter what end of the political spectrum you’re on of how you feel we should approach our current problem.