La Battaglia di Algeri (1966, Gillo Pontecorvo)
This movie tells the story of the Algerian civil war and struggle for independance from France in the 50s and 60s. It shows us in detail the Algerians fighting back against what they perceive as oppression, and the French military who refuse to let go of their colony.
This was an interesting movie for me to watch, especially as I could see certain parallels with another movie I’ve seen recently, Hotel Rwanda. They may seem like strange parallels to draw, but bear with me. The ones I drew between this and Hotel Rwanda were, first and foremost, about the use of a rebel radio station to rile up the masses, the torture for information, the systematic slaughter of opponents. These two movies really show how brutal civil war almost always is.
There are also some obvious parallels to current events in Iraq, and the Pentagon must have thought so too, since they screened it a few years ago in an effort to start a debate on “how to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas”. Fascinating stuff.
There were some things I particularly appreciated about this movie. One was the almost documentary style in which it was shot. It’s gritty and real, and because I didn’t know any of the actors, it was that much easier to get into it.
The action is exceptionally well shot, and there is a lot of it. The rebels gun down police officers in a drive-by, they bomb bars and train stations — in fact they’ll bomb just about anything. The French are just as bad; when they have figured out the pyramid-shaped hierarchy of the rebel organisation, they perform all sorts of horrible torture to get information; it’s really quite disturbing.
All in all, the movie is a little bit slow at times, and I found it distracting that some of the language was dubbed, but otherwise, this was a very good movie about a subject I suspect not many are familiar.
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