Classic and Document

Rating: 10/10 (6 April 2009)

This is one of those movies that has not only become a classic of world cinema, but has become a historical document and technical discourse in its own right. While audiences around the globe cringe at its tragic narrative, military personnel watch it in order to understand the nature of urban-based guerilla warfare. Either way, the end result is the same: Empire is a Sisyphean business.
The movie begins on a raid and then quickly dissolves into the story leading up to the raid. Ali La Pointe is one of the highest leaders in the resistance of French control in Algiers, a resistance structured by a hierarchy of anonymity so that no one tier of it can lead directly to the rest. The occupiers are forced to use arrest and torture in order to ferret out every member, and only through the most extreme activities are successful. Their success, however, hardly wins the overall war. In the end, nobody wins.
Gillo Ponticorvo's approach is somewhere between that of Rome, Open City and Salvatore Guiliano. In theory, he's using realistic and documentary modes of expression, and yet those very grainy frames he creates is in its own way a darkly Romantic view of society degrading. His best approach to realism is in the use of non-professional actors, who all are remarkable.
Hopefully no one stops paying attention. Sure, anybody can find parallels between what happens in this movie and what's happening today, but more importantly it's important to keep in mind how the movie documents a process over a specific time, and how that process can re-arise again and again and again. History repeats itself, so it is important to always remain aware.
--PolarisDiB