The still highly controversial colonial war that France fought in Algeria
from the mid-1950s until the granting of independence in 1962 has only
been patchily reflected in the cinema. It figures significantly in the
background in films as different as Alain Resnais' Muriel and Michael Haneke's Hidden, and in 1966 there was Lost Command, a Hollywood version of Jean Lartéguy's French bestseller The Centurions
about a battalion of Indo-China veterans reassembling for another
bitter colonial conflict in Algeria. The only truly memorable movie is
the Marxist The Battle of Algiers (1966), set in the early days
of the revolution, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and initiated by Yacef
Saadi, a leader of the FLN (National Liberation Front). Banned in France
for several years and regarded as one of the greatest political movies
ever made, The Battle of Algiers was shown by the Pentagon to
all senior officers and civil advisers going to Iraq and Afghanistan to
show "how to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas".
Now we have Rachid Bouchareb's gripping Outside the Law,
the centrepiece of a loose trilogy covering the North African
experience from the 1920s to the present. Five years ago Bouchareb made
the powerful Days of Glory (aka Indigènes)
about the North Africans recruited to fight for La Patrie during the
second world war and the way they were used, humiliated and cast aside
when the war ended. The film concluded with an account of how pensions
to African veterans were frozen when the countries attained
independence; this so moved President Chirac that immediately after the
premiere he set about changing the law. Outside the Law has
also attracted the attention of French politicians, but this time
they're followers of President Sarkozy attacking it for alleged
distortions of history.
Bouchareb is not, as Pontecorvo was, a political film-maker. He's a humanist with a strong feeling for personal tragedies and people caught up in the tides of history. His London River, for instance, is an affecting story of a British widow and an elderly Malian migrant worker brought together in the wake of the 7 July 2005 bombings. In Outside the Law he focuses on the three Algerian Souni brothers, played by the same actors who were joint recipients of the best actor award at Cannes for Days of Glory. Three is the customary number for joint lead characters in popular movies about contrasted friends or brothers moving through time together (eg Three Comrades, Three Brothers, The Roaring Twenties, It's Always Fair Weather), and Outside the Law is nothing if not traditional and Hollywood-influenced.
The handsome, impetuous Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), the intellectual, introspective Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) and the short, chirpy Saïd (played by Jamel Debbouze, one of France's most celebrated comedians) are the sons of a poor farmer in western Algeria. In 1925 a local landlord sells the family farm to a French settler and they are turfed out. The film then jumps forward to 1945 when, on VE Day, the celebrations in Paris are accompanied in the Algerian town of Sétif by a liberation march that explodes into violence resulting in the deaths of a couple of hundred Europeans and the massacre of several thousand Algerians, including the Souni boys' father. This is the brilliantly staged curtain-raiser to one of what Kipling called "the savage wars of peace", a phrase borrowed by Alistair Horne for the title of his classic history of the Algerian war.
Over the next decade the three boys go their different ways. Abdelkader becomes thoroughly politicised and is incarcerated in Paris's Prison de la Santé for his dissident activities; Messaoud serves as a paratrooper in Indo-China and is a PoW after the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954; Saïd takes his mother to live in a shanty town in Nanterre before rejecting work in the Renault factory for pimping, running a nightclub in Pigalle and managing boxers.
It becomes clear, when the brothers are reunited, that Bouchareb's model is The Godfather's tight-knit Corleone family and its three brothers. When shortly thereafter Messaoud and Abdelkader become ruthless FLN operatives, the American underworld meets the French underground as Outside the Law takes on the dark, heroic tones of Army of Shadows, the film in which Jean-Pierre Melville turned away from stylised gangster pictures to make a celebrated tribute to the Resistance.
The movie sets out to be even-handed in the apportioning of blame without trying to defend France's intransigence and the failure to recognise the humiliation and spiritual deprivation involved in colonialism. Very specifically, a particularly ruthless police inspector, who served both in the resistance and as an officer at Dien Bien Phu, is portrayed by Bouchareb as an honourable man.
The set pieces – assassinations, an attack on a police station, a brutal invasion of the Nanterre shanty town – are confidently staged and the atmosphere of the time well captured. The film is less analytical than The Battle of Algiers and is inevitably somewhat simplified, and anyone puzzled by various aspects would be advised to read Alistair Horne's history. Bouchareb generally manages to keep sight of the larger political and human dimensions, and there is a beguiling performance by Jamel Debbouze as the realistic, resilient Saïd, who loves his brothers but distrusts the revolution and the ruthlessness it demands. To him, promoting an Algerian boxing star is as important as liberating the country. He brings to mind Jimmy Cagney in many a Warner crime film, a comparison that will not surprise Bouchareb.
Bouchareb is not, as Pontecorvo was, a political film-maker. He's a humanist with a strong feeling for personal tragedies and people caught up in the tides of history. His London River, for instance, is an affecting story of a British widow and an elderly Malian migrant worker brought together in the wake of the 7 July 2005 bombings. In Outside the Law he focuses on the three Algerian Souni brothers, played by the same actors who were joint recipients of the best actor award at Cannes for Days of Glory. Three is the customary number for joint lead characters in popular movies about contrasted friends or brothers moving through time together (eg Three Comrades, Three Brothers, The Roaring Twenties, It's Always Fair Weather), and Outside the Law is nothing if not traditional and Hollywood-influenced.
The handsome, impetuous Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), the intellectual, introspective Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) and the short, chirpy Saïd (played by Jamel Debbouze, one of France's most celebrated comedians) are the sons of a poor farmer in western Algeria. In 1925 a local landlord sells the family farm to a French settler and they are turfed out. The film then jumps forward to 1945 when, on VE Day, the celebrations in Paris are accompanied in the Algerian town of Sétif by a liberation march that explodes into violence resulting in the deaths of a couple of hundred Europeans and the massacre of several thousand Algerians, including the Souni boys' father. This is the brilliantly staged curtain-raiser to one of what Kipling called "the savage wars of peace", a phrase borrowed by Alistair Horne for the title of his classic history of the Algerian war.
Over the next decade the three boys go their different ways. Abdelkader becomes thoroughly politicised and is incarcerated in Paris's Prison de la Santé for his dissident activities; Messaoud serves as a paratrooper in Indo-China and is a PoW after the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954; Saïd takes his mother to live in a shanty town in Nanterre before rejecting work in the Renault factory for pimping, running a nightclub in Pigalle and managing boxers.
It becomes clear, when the brothers are reunited, that Bouchareb's model is The Godfather's tight-knit Corleone family and its three brothers. When shortly thereafter Messaoud and Abdelkader become ruthless FLN operatives, the American underworld meets the French underground as Outside the Law takes on the dark, heroic tones of Army of Shadows, the film in which Jean-Pierre Melville turned away from stylised gangster pictures to make a celebrated tribute to the Resistance.
The movie sets out to be even-handed in the apportioning of blame without trying to defend France's intransigence and the failure to recognise the humiliation and spiritual deprivation involved in colonialism. Very specifically, a particularly ruthless police inspector, who served both in the resistance and as an officer at Dien Bien Phu, is portrayed by Bouchareb as an honourable man.
The set pieces – assassinations, an attack on a police station, a brutal invasion of the Nanterre shanty town – are confidently staged and the atmosphere of the time well captured. The film is less analytical than The Battle of Algiers and is inevitably somewhat simplified, and anyone puzzled by various aspects would be advised to read Alistair Horne's history. Bouchareb generally manages to keep sight of the larger political and human dimensions, and there is a beguiling performance by Jamel Debbouze as the realistic, resilient Saïd, who loves his brothers but distrusts the revolution and the ruthlessness it demands. To him, promoting an Algerian boxing star is as important as liberating the country. He brings to mind Jimmy Cagney in many a Warner crime film, a comparison that will not surprise Bouchareb.
