Movie #54: Released in 1966, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, 121 minutes. New to me!
LetterBoxd Score: 5 stars
I thought this was gripping from the jump.
One thing that helped me with this; I went in not knowing anything really about Algerian independence, so I asked Claude for a quick primer, giving me about the same information that a well informed person who reads the news would know when this movie came out. That helped me appreciate how shocking and visceral this was.
The production story is pretty crazy. It’s a “how did this get made” kind of situation, where there was a lightning-in-a-bottle confluence of buy-in from the people who were really there (letting them use the setting and actors and having a script based on the story of someone who lived it), combined with a director with extreme empathy, so that he wanted to know what it was like to be both sides of the conflict. The only note that rings a little false to me is the ending, which feels a bit “and they lived happily ever after.” Another movie with the Book of Job problem, like The Searchers.
In some of the other posts I’ve written here, I’ve complained when people use movies as a way to convey ideas; I just feel like it’s a bad medium for that, as compared to something like an essay. But this movie felt different to me. I did feel like it was conveying ideas to me – about how to wage and fight a guerrilla war, how to foment revolution, and how events ratchet – in an effective way. These ideas are important. And it did this in a way that never felt like a documentary. I wonder, if I watched something now like Zero Dark Thirty, would it feel the same?
Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?
It has all the hallmarks of top tier cinema for me. The characters feel like real people, but they also could be archetypes or universals. And it’s grappling with big ideas that transcend the setting and place (how human societies can spiral into violence, even if that’s not what most people initially want). At the same time, it’s not didactic and simplified with easy answers.
Next: Persona