Score: 98/100
Score on a par with: The Science of Sleep 100/100; Deep Water 100/100; Good Night, And Good Luck 96/100; The Constant Gardener 98/100; Corpse Bride 95/100; Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit 96/100; I Heart Huckabee 100/100; The Incredibles 98/100; Lost in Translation 100/100; The Breakfast Club 96/100; The Quiet American 98/100; The Royal Tenenbaums 98/100; Chocolat 96/100
This account of the terrorist uprising of the Algerians against the French is simply brilliant: it is shocking in its realism and scrupulously even-handed. There’s no villain – it captures the idea that in a situation such as that of the French in Algeria in the fifties (or the US in Iraq now) there is no good and evil, and that both sides are wrong in different ways. And right. The look of the film is more or less perfect (only some café scenes did not convince, and could not have convinced even when the film was made), and the dualism of it is enormously striking – French versus Algerian, European City versus the Kasbah, tank versus stone-throwing crowd and so-on and so-on. The two main protagonists (or antagonists, more like) captured this dualism perfectly – the Algerian freedom fighter, terrorist, what you will, was a murderer fighting for cause which we now think of as implicitly good (anti-colonialism), while the French general fighting to keep France in Algeria (and so theoretically, as an imperial power, bad) was a hero of the resistance. Neither was wholly wrong or right, and it was fascinating to watch the film swing one way and then another, depending on who was committing the atrocities.
It was all gloriously French, and I loved every minute of it.
Ruprecht loves the water.
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