A timeless immediacy

Rating: 9/10 (27 November 2007)

J. Hoberman, The Village Voice's resident film reviewer, described "The Battle of Algiers", Gillo Pontecorvo's Golden Lion-winner at the 1966 Venice International Film Festival, as the "revolutionary du jour". I have to agree. Completely.
Everything in the film could and should inspire ferocious and deeply-rooted ideologies and sentiments pertaining to one's own nation's freedom, independence and basic human rights.
The film is already four-decades old and the subject that it depicts, the Algerian people's struggle for liberation and self-determination against the French colonial government during the mid-'50s, can be rightfully considered as an integral part of modern history, but even when viewed from today's vantage point (as in my case) it still manages to unsettle and stun, to provoke and inspire. "The Battle of Algiers" possesses such staggering turmoil and realism that, as the events gradually unfold towards the nationwide street revolution, one can't help but be wide-eyed and unnerved throughout the film's 2-hour running time.
It works well to the film's advantage that it has managed to acquire through time an uncanny sense of historical immediacy. It feels as if Pontecorvo were still alive today working as a TV news reporter or documentarist recording with his own camera the incendiary real-life events right before our very own eyes. The Dziga Vertov principle of "life caught unawares" has moved onto a new level of meaning. It now becomes an almost-impossible task to draw the line between fiction and documentary, between what is staged and what is actual, if there really is such a distinction.
In my humble knowledge, no other highly-political film of World Cinema during those times and after has come close to the feral neo-realist energy of "The Battle of Algiers"--not even Costa-Gavra's "Z", "Missing" and "Amen", not even Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", not even "L'America" (Amelio), "The Mission" (Joffe), "World Apart" (Menges), "Bloody Sunday" (Greengrass), not even our own "Orapronobis" (Brocka), just to name a handful.
What can even be more baffling--and thus put one more notch higher the film's above-mentioned quality--for today's viewers is how "The Battle of Algiers" can put in context today's headline-hogging and highly-relevant spate of "political terrorism", international and local. As "outsiders" having to become aware of the headlines mainly by means of TV or newspaper, it has become a necessary habit (justified or otherwise) to regard these bombings, assassinations, insurrections and any other forms of "terroristic" acts as a work of pure evil and inhumanity. This is for the reason that what we, the spectators, get to encounter immediately is the outcome, the damages done, of the event in question (the what and the how). More often than not, we don't get the opportunity to dig deep into the ideologies and motivations that led to the act (the why). If we ever had the chance to know the raison d'etre of the act, most likely the account is biased or blurred, thus further fuelling our "prejudices".
The numerous bombing incidents in the film (as well as the attacks on the French officials), mostly at the cost of innocent lives and in broad daylight, can be a sure cause of alarm, considering that these events essentially ring true as to what's being delivered from today's news. But as director Pontecorvo and writer Franco Solinas take pains to give an objective account of the Algerian struggle for liberation and independence--or of the Algerian insurrection, popularly known as the Front Liberation de Nationale (FLN), if one takes the liberty to use an "extreme" description--we get to come to the knowledge that these extreme measures used by the Algerian nationals could be the only possible way to attain an extreme goal, otherwise unimaginable through "simple" and "humble" acts (like the local prohibition of vices associated with the colonial government, such as alcohol, drugs and prostitution).
The unbiased account of the historical events is such that the high-ranking French colonial officers, during those tension-filled and critical moments (like the setting up for explosion of a resistance fighter's hideout), still get to exhibit some kind of humanity for their considered "enemies of the state" ("If you want to die there, then let the children out first", is one such line). Such "humaneness", though, by the very situation itself (or the description of the situation itself), gets to border on a comical awkwardness. These colonizers still manage to put a smile on our faces.
An intertitle towards the film's end says that the Algerian people finally attained freedom by 1962 (not after some nationwide turmoil, bloodshed and protest, those "unintelligible and frightening rhythmic cries"). However, if we are to take bloody seriously the film's timeless immediacy, then the battle doesn't only stop at Algiers. It continues on and on, in another form, in another place, in another era. Whether won or not, only history can tell.