An anatomy of an occupation and revolution

Rating: 10/10 (2 February 2008)

This movie about the Algerian's fight for independence from over one hundred years of French occupation is a serious undertaking. If you are looking for a pleasant evening's entertainment, then you should put off seeing this until you are in a more solemn mood.
When I found out that there was no documentary footage shown I was stunned since some of the scenes seem so real, particularly the crowd scenes that usually look so staged when not real. It is to the film's credit that it does not appear to take sides between the occupiers or the revolutionaries, but maintains the appearance of just reporting what happened.
I came away from this with a better understanding of the minds of terrorists and how they operate, and that is much to be desired at this particular time, since the applications to current situations are so plentiful. Though there are but a few scenes of explicit torture, they provide a way to take the consideration of those practices from the abstract to the explicit.
The film does leave some significant unanswered questions. Why, after over a hundred years of French occupation did the Algerian resistance coalesce so dramatically in the late 1950s? At the inception of the resistance one of the Frenchman even minimizes it with the comment that the French and Algerians have gotten along for over a century, so why should that not continue? And after the uprising had seemingly been put down, after a two-year hiatus what caused the overwhelming popular uprising that resulted in Algerian independence in 1962?
After the final scene you are left to think that things are going to be great for the Algerians, but the subsequent history of that country is not all that inspiring.
All of this is not to say that this important movie is a bitter pill to swallow only for its educational values - it has elements of suspense, conflict, and violence to keep your interest.