Wow. What's the message of this movie for today? Is there any hero in this movie at all?
(Fr) Dennis
http://frdennismoviereviews.blogspot.com/2011/03/outside-law-orig-hors -la-loi.html
As an American with no real knowledge of the Algerian revolution, I didn't get a message as such from it. I did find it involving. I would say that there is no hero here. Three brothers with separate stories and each with his inividual ties to the Algerian cause. I do hope that more discussion appears on this board now that the DVD has been released.
Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies
I think this movie is SUPER relevant for today. The opening scene of the demonstration of Algerians in 1945 was reminiscent of the exact same type of street insurrections that we see lately in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, AND Algeria again! Just like the national flag has been the rallying point in the 2011 "Arab Spring" demonstrations, we see in the movie the symbolic importance of the Algerian flag.
Basically this film highlights the colonialist aspect of the conflict, whereas today the War on Terror is a highly neocolonialist adventure. In the same patronizing colonial-style rhetoric, Donald Rumsfeld has compared America bringing "democracy" to Iraq as a parent teaching a child to ride a bike.
Arab people are still out mass-protesting because of the neocolonialism. One of the things that was highly publicized about Mubarak's repression of the protests in Egypt was the fact that tear gas canisters were made in Pennsylvania. And Vice President Joe Biden even had the gall to say that he "wouldn't consider" Mubarak a dictator! Mubarak, the Egyptian dictator, and Ben Ali, the Tunisian dictator were both receiving billions from the US in military aid. Saudi Arabia, a brutal authoritarian monarchy which does not even allow women to drive cars, had US troops stationed there for most of the 1990s and early 2000s, and a number of US troops even stayed there after they supposedly withdrew in order to train Saudi troops-- who are the same troops who were sent to crush the uprising in Bahrain.
In the movie Hors La Loi, we hear in the French radio reports about the attacks that it is a threat of "radical Muslim terrorists" and it just resonates that this is the same rhetoric which is being employed for the War on Terror. This type of rhetoric is a form of psychological warfare, demonizing the enemy and cloaking the true material causes of the conflict--imperialist colonial international relations and economic inequality.
In many ways this era in history is more important to be studied by not only the Arab people of today but other people as well. In the movie it also shows the important role of Leftists who support the national liberation struggles of other peoples: the Vietnamese communists, the French sympathizers (the blond and the priest, and the French Communist Party newspaper printers). The end scene is great in terms of cognitive dissonance: the French policeman says "we won" after they kill one of the FLN (National Liberation Front) leaders, as hundreds of Algerians chant "Long live the Algerian independence" and just a year later the country becomes decolonized. As Che Guevara said "Shoot coward, you are only going to kill a man!" Revolutionary ideas never die.
And the brother Abdelkeder looks a like Malcolm X. He has the same glasses and hair style it seems to me.
Just a quick correction, in the last scene the french policeman said "You won" not "we won". Basically, aknowledging that killing this one man(his nemises, if you will) wasn't a victory but rather the beginning of his own defeat.
A genius amongst morons is just another moron.
Hi I see a relevance in another way. For all the stereotypical criticism by Americans of the French today (that they are weak, that they surrender too quickly, and so forth), the film more than adequately shows that in contrast, the French did about all that could be humanly possible to do to put the Algerian Revolution down going to lengths that even post-9/11 America would be squeamish about.
Yes, I agree the film is _super relevant_ if rather dark.
(Fr) Dennis Kriz, OSM
http://frdennismoviereviews.blogspot.com/
"all that could be hamanly possible to do"!!! Are you joking? What's humanly possible about invading another country? Are you surprised that the conquered people would ever revolt?
There wouldn't be a revolt/hatred against the French if the French weren't conquering Algeria. There wouldn't be any terrorist acts around the world unless somebody been terrorized first. It's called revenge. I'd say 90% of it justifiable.
We can stop the cycle of revenge by admitting guilt, making ammends, paying back what was taking(material stuff), pledging not to repeat what had happened, etc. But adding insult to injury by saying: I did it for your own good, or to civilize you, or to teach you about democracy, etc. That only increase hatred and diminish any chance for reconciliation.
Let's respect one another, todays rich and famous(and civilized!) can be tomorrow's poor, desolate and uneducated. History REPEATS itself.
A genius amongst morons is just another moron.
Hi, actually I agree with you. What I was trying to say is that the Right in the United States tries to dismiss the French as 'weak' without _any_ sense of history. If anything, the French went _way beyond_ Post-9/11 "Guantanamo/Abu Gharib levels" to try to put down the Algerian Revolution and still lost. Why? Not because of "weakness" but because they were trying to continue (as you say) an unjust occupation of a land that was not theirs.
I think you're confusing humanly with humanely....
share90%??
You're forgetting the large percent of all terrorist acts that's due to religion.
Your interpretation of history and geopolitics is flawed to say the least.
If the US wanted Iraq’s oil why didn’t they just take it in 91’? They have the motive and means to do so then.
The War on Terror is a legitimate war on persons who stand in direct contrast to what Guevara stood. To assail Americans for attacking the Islamic version of Nazism makes me question your ethics.Che certainly hated Yanqui imperialism(and rightfully so) but he would have hated Islamicists more. Your theory of why we have a “War on Terror” requires one to ignore the message of Al Queda. That is simply idiotic. It also ignore the fact that we get most of our oil from areas outside of the Middle East. 15% of our oil comes from the Middle East.
It’s true that the US has worked with dictators. It is also true that radical movements have created some of the worst dictatorships in history. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim IL-Sung…these men rank among the worst oppressors of humans in history. Leftists are splendid hypocrites.
The radical movements you speak of were brutal oppressors themselves. Those countries essentially shook off one slavemaster for another. Left wingers have wrought a great amount of pain in this past century. 100,000,000 dead because of your Leftist heroes.
Your post is nothing but Marxist rubbish. You talk of psychological war fare as if only one side has employed it. Wrong. The Left is equally adept at presenting lies as truth. Your post is an excellent of this. You have been so superbly brainwashed into believing the myths and lies of Marxism that you honestly believe that the famines, genocides, arbitrary imprisonment, and the general restriction of rights by every Marxist nation is imperialist propaganda. That those who have lived in those nations will attest otherwise does not matter to blinked souls such as yourself.
Radical movements starting with the French Revolution have been the bane of the proletariats existence. People should look to the American Revolution instead. Sure, it was imperfect, but they at least gave us a government with strong starting point.
It's a reign of terror you ignorant booby. Having used Hussein to weaken Iran, he was deceived into taking back Kuwait (one of the British empire's booby-traps) and weakened in turn. Since the Americans couldn't manage to overthrow him by coup or rebellion, Iraq was invaded and turned into the Generalgouvernment and its oil reserves brought under imperial control. You make the usual simple-minded assumption that a revolutionary or leftist movement is defined by the label rather than the behaviour and then condemn nominal lefty regimes for behaving like typical right-wing ones without making the connexion that people who behave like brutes are brutes. No country which has had an industrial revolution hasn't dispossessed workers and peasants in favour of property-owners because fascism is the state and the state is fascism.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
Fantastic post, erkie. So well said.
R.I.P President Hugo Chavez 1954-2013
nm
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
As an Algerian, I appreciate the interest shown for this movie. It tells the history of the fight again the French occupation in Algeria from a different historical view and in another place. My mom use to tel me stories about her uncle who was burried a life by the French soldiers, and another who was tortured i France. France invaded Algeria from 1830 to 1962. In the WW2 the French government promised Algeria its independence if it helped her fight the German, and so hundreds of thousands enlisted in the French army, many died, the war against Germany was won, France liberated, the Algerian people took the street to celebrate their freedoms, that day 45 thousands people died. And the war of independence started, and to make it look serious, the FLN ( the first and only serious party) decided to take part of the fight inside the French soil, but also to defend and avenge the Algerian community living there, under such oppression. This movie tells just one of many stories of the war between the two countries. Unfortunately today, it's looks like the French won after all. Because while Europe strated building its cities from the ground, the Algerians and all the African counrtiers found themselves the freedom that was tottaly useless, for I that time, you were either a communist , or without political identity.
share