Film 7 - User Comment for "The Battle of Algiers"

Rating: 9/10 (15 December 2011)

"The Battle of Algiers" shows how a people will resist colonization, even when the colonizing power, France in this film, creates, in their own minds, a more lavish lifestyle and promising future and have the audacity to considers the natives, the Algerians, fellow first-class citizens in the land that is home to the Algerians to begin with! The Algerians are resisting because they have enough confidence in their own abilities to make positive changes in their country for themselves and their posterity. In short, it is up to the people of a nation themselves to make their own decisions and see to it that their future holds promise and bears progress. No other nation, whether more powerful militarily and economically or not, should feel or think that they know better for a people what they need to have in order to be a happier nation or whether the influence that they are exerting upon the native population is necessarily the correct and best choice for that population and their future. 'The Battle of Algiers" attests to the fact that the freedom of a people to make decisions affecting their livelihoods and history as well as their cultural pride cannot be compromised or manipulated. The same way that Ali Le Pointe's character was willing to die for what he believed was right for himself and his people, so to was the entire nation (men, women, and children) of Algeria ready to lay their lives down in order to be in control of their own destiny and move forward and better their situation their own way – the way the Algerians willed it to be! Not the way the French deemed it correct.