History and cinema collide

Rating: 10/10 (4 March 2011)

No need to add to the assessment of this film's quality, but I can throw some light on aspects of the film. Someone who was present at the making of this film clarified to me what the significance of this film was, and why certain things are as they are.
This film was commissioned after independence during the short reign of Ben Bella, but was not completed until after the coup of Boumedienne. The short- lived Ben Bella revolution was full of the ideals of genuine peace-loving idealism and cooperative socialism. The dispassionate message of the film was very much in tune with the intellectual thinking of the regime. (Compare, perhaps ,the film "Memories of Underdevelopment").
Unfortunately the regime was easy prey for a military coup which happened during the making of the film. The crowd scenes, remarked on as so authentic, were in fact made so because this was the only form of gathering allowed immediately after the coup, and one is watching an odd blend of staging and reality, where Algerians were taking to the streets in a disguised protest against the coup.
Are there any heroes in the film? Well, yes. If one looks closely towards the end of the film one can see the scrawled message "Un seule hero - le peuple" - (only one hero - the people).
In a way then, one is witnessing not just a film about what had passed, but the beginning of the unfolding of the Algerian tragedy as it later became, and that is part of the film's potency.
Beware of seeing this film and the events it portrays through today's prism. The question of religion did not arise - the movements were anti-colonial & nationalistic at first, as portrayed. Later socialist, secular, communistic and cooperative, but finally succumbing to militarism. These cannot be termed as "Muslim". Only after the failures of the subsequent militaristic and anti-democratic governments that popular political Islam gained in importance.
As a footnote it may be observed that one of the Milk Bar bombers became a political figure in her own right, married a later president, and is, as I write, the Vice-President of the Council of the Nation. In appearance, she could still easily be mistaken for a French women.