There's not a lot of English in this film. But the subject of ignorance needs to be treated in foreign languages too. So it's a good movie to entertain a humbling experience without pain.
Tahar Rahim, in yet another fish out of water, growing up story, plays yet another sensationalized terrorist who bucks the system and refuses to commit suicide via explosive mass grave. Which makes this hero sympathetic - he just wants to be normal terrorist and aspire to assassinship. Let's give it up for the grinders. There are so many filmmakers identifying with the explosive ignoramus, let it be said that grinders make the world explosively contrasty.
A Prophet highlights the growing pains of the technical education. In the case of the destitute Malik El Djebena, played by Rahim, he must honor his mixed Corsican parentage to become proficient at French, Italian, and Arabic while plying the given trades of seamster and occasional doomed (expected) assassin to exit prison a hardened criminal after beginning as a misunderstood punk. If you need to be bitch slapped out of a lifestyle, a Zack Morris episode, or any concept of self-importance whatsoever, check out this flick, it's better than anything De Niro's done in ages. There were plenty of colorful characters and impressively hairy moments to make up for the lack of spiffy monologues. There was even a couple of cool gimmicks like a grin and a ghost that helped save our hero from death and dementia.
Jacques Audiard puts on a James Cameronesque performance as director of cinematographers and actors alike; the film is intimate and investigates humanity in the most dehumanizing of places, prison, by stressing knowledge and its deficiency at all times. Even the shadows seem natural! Audiard is the king of the world! He doesn't waste his time reviewing one prison to trivialize the entire system of incarcerated labor with some moralistic trail, instead the hero's trail allows us to enjoy the transformation of a character, El Djebena, out of ignorance :
Warden: What do you want to do here? Work?
Hero: Of course.
Warden: Do you know how to do things?
The hero's silence is met with prison and the time to afford himself a profitable education in some six years of mortally dangerous prison solitude. The lesson's simple: life's a bitch, but at least miserable terrorist can learn a living in jail.
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