The Netflix platform recently showed the French film "Athena" directed by Romain Gavras, which was one of the films in the official competition of the Venice International Film Festival.
The film won two awards from Venice: the Arca Cinema Giovani Award and UNICEF, and has a critical rating of 82% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The movie "Athens" discusses an important issue that many forget when they talk about the beauty of Paris, the French capital of light, which is the crisis of racism against people of color in general and Muslims in particular.
The dark side of Paris
Cinematically, Athena adhered to the three rules that Aristotle wrote about in his book The Art of Poetry;
It is the unity of place, time, and subject, and it is assumed that they are the three determinants that govern any theatrical work.
The events take place within several hours of one day only, and its geography includes the fictional “Athens” neighborhood in Paris, and it mainly deals with only one event, the “civil war” between the people of Athens and the French police.
The events of the film begin with the press conference that followed the murder of a French teenager of Arab origin called "Edir", and a video spread on social media showing that the killers were members of the French police.
The conference is trying to reduce the tension among the attendees, but anger quickly escalates to get out of control, and the brother of the murdered "Karim" - who with a group of young people from the "Athens" neighborhood assaults the police, seizes their weapons, returns to fortify the houses of the area, and ignites a "civil war" It soon moved to other regions and turned into a revolution against racism against Arab, Muslim and colored people in Paris and other cities.
It quickly becomes clear that there is an inner conflict;
In addition to the war between the revolutionaries and the police, it turns out that the family of the dead man consists of 4 sisters: the deceased younger Idir, then Karim the revolutionary, and "Abdel, the hero of the French army, whom some of his family are proud of, while others feel betrayed by this relationship with the "enemy". The last brother is a drug dealer who colludes with anyone who makes money through him.
Brothers Abdel and Karim are on opposite sides of the line of fire;
Karim will only accept revenge and extradite the police officers who killed his brother, while the other believes in the police narrative that assumes that the incident was carried out by a right-wing extremist group that aims to create confusion and is basically hostile to immigrants, even from the third and fourth generations who were born and lived on the land of France throughout their lives and lives Their ancestors as "other" steal their power.
Maghreb anger at the movie "Athena"
The movie "Athena" sparked outrage on French social media platforms, because of what many considered offensive to the communities of the Maghreb countries, as some accused its makers of promoting stereotypes that were associated with the Arab community in general and the Arab Maghreb community in France in particular, and seeks to present them as people who only know Violence, conflict and rebellion against the official authorities.
The criticism extended to the French right-wing movement, which sees it offending the police, inciting against it and also serving the "police kill" thesis promoted by the left, as he claimed.
When the camera talks
Returning to the cinematic vision of the movie "Athena", he participated in writing the script by director and author "Ludge Lee", who made his name with only one movie entitled "Les Misérables". It may even be more powerful than the actual output;
Both films take place in almost the same scale and sequence, an incident against a French of non-European origin and the suspected perpetrator is the police, which leads to escalating waves of rapid violence, a guerrilla-like war, and puts the film's characters under pressure to rediscover themselves and their affiliations. real.
The brown policeman from the movie "Les Miserables" who was fighting the rebels throughout the work, we discover with the conclusion that he is a Muslim, meaning that he was fighting against the sons of his religion and race, perhaps because his principles leaned with the category represented by his work.
In "Athens", Abdel (the hero of the army, who was awarded medals for his bravery) goes through the same struggle, and throughout the events he remains on the side of the police, but he doubts, did he do the right thing?
Director Roman Gavras made his mark more in two main aspects: the first is the violence that pervaded the film, a dominant feature of his previous works, even the music videos he directed for celebrities such as Kanye West.
As for the second effect, it stands out in its distinguished use of montage and camera movement.
Usually - especially in action films - montage pieces abound, because on the one hand they increase the speed and momentum of events, and on the other hand they are easier to shoot;
Instead of shooting several minutes, a single scene is cut into dozens of short clips that are easy to practice.
But Roman Gavras chose to dispense with the repetitive montage with camera movement that follows the action for several minutes.
This style contributes to identifying more with the characters and events, which increases the tension in a film full of violence like this, but at the same time it has its different aesthetics;
The scene of Abdul entering his mother’s house for the first time begins by following him from his back while he is among the crowd, then the atmosphere around him changes to people patting him on his shoulders, so the viewer knows that the character changes his condition from an army officer to a son of a Muslim family who consoles each other over their affliction, and as soon as he enters the apartment His mother wears him in a white robe, to give up the symbol of his belonging to the other side, the enemy, and prove his true place among his family. The camera keeps following him during his stormy meeting with his sister, who accuses him of treason, and then his attempt to help evacuate the rest of the residents from the apartment complex, whose borders are raging at war.
In one long shot, the director was able to not only convey the volatile emotional state of the main film character, but also introduce us to her in full, from the outside and the inside, whether her relationship with others, her self-doubts and her existential crisis.
The film "Athena" faults the ending shot in which its makers put an answer to all the questions;
Leaving no room for interpretation from the viewer, but the work at the end is an important experience to shed light on the other side of Paris, perhaps darker than our wildest nightmares.