March 4-10, 2004

movies

National Defense

STRIKING OUT: Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) in The Battle of Algiers.

Fighting colonialism then and now.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

by Sam Adams

The Battle of Algiers (1965) may be the first sympathetic portrait of armed anti-colonialist revolution to owe its re-release to the American military. "How to win the war against terrorism and lose the war of ideas," reads the flier for last fall’s Pentagon screening, linking Battle’s portrait of the uprising against French rule in Algeria and the current situation in Iraq. Though you don’t imagine the Pentagon turning frequently to former members of the Communist Party for advice, Gillo Pontecorvo’s film so artfully conceals its own construction that it’s often been treated as a documentary, if not mistaken for such. Pontecorvo and cameraman Marcello Gatti spent a month figuring out how to give their film the look of newsreel footage without adopting its limitations. Narration takes the form of communiques or news bulletins. Scenes were shot on the spot where they’d happened not a decade before. And apart from Jean Martin’s Col. Mathieu, every role was filled by a nonprofessional actor; as rebel leader Jafar, Yacef Saadi plays the same role in the film as he did in the revolution.

Though commissioned by Saadi and made with the cooperation of the post-colonial Algerian government, Battle deals evenly with both sides. Pauline Kael attacked Battle as "the only film that has ever made middle-class audiences believe in the necessity of bombing innocent people," but if that's true (the word "necessity" seems slightly hysterical), the military's use of torture seems equally predestined (if ultimately damning). The villain is neither the terrorists nor the military, but the colonial system placing them in opposition. From that point, the rest is almost inevitable.

Like The Dancer Upstairs, Battle is an essentially pacifist film that accepts terrorism as a legitimate response to state repression. When Mathieu parades a recently captured rebel in front of the press, an intrepid reporter fires off a question accusing the rebels of cowardice for hiding bombs in their women's baskets. "You give us your bombers, and we'll give you our baskets," is his immediate response. Mathieu quickly ends the press conference, but the seed has been sown. The press begins to question Mathieu's tactics, and he fires back. "I would like to ask a question: Should France remain in Algeria? If you answer, "Yes,' then you must accept all the necessary consequences."

For Mathieu, the answer to the question is obvious, as it is for The Battle of Algiers, though they are not, of course, the same answer. The situation in Iraq seems to offer no such simple questions, let alone easy answers. Mathieu's briefing to his troops, advising them to ignore "human considerations" and dismantle the "maze of laws" in their path, conjures uncanny visions of Ashcroft and Rumsfeld -- not to mention the spectacle of American generals pulling up a chair behind their on-screen counterparts. But colonialism's rules have shifted. America would rather have Iraq as a trading partner than a summer home, and it's easier to safeguard a refinery miles outside town than a bar full of carpetbagging Frenchmen.

The Battle of Algiers presents the conflict as a fundamentally territorial one: Either the French will occupy Algeria or the Algerians will. Though gun-wielding troops never go out of style, today's invading forces are cultural and economic. As painful as it is to hear the tales of Buddhist monks and nuns raped, tortured and beaten to death by Chinese soldiers in Tom Peosay's documentary Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion, it's even more crushing to see the culture threatened with burial by a government-promoted influx of Chinese citizens. China, it seems, has opted to dilute what it cannot defeat.

If China hopes to defeat culture with commodity, Cry of the Snow Lion inadvertently fuses the two. Its careful explanation of Tibet's unique heritage begins to sound like a travel brochure; preserve Tibet so we can learn from it. (Should only "special" cultures be protected?) You can't blame Peosay for such spectacles as a news conference featuring Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, Anna Sui and Björk. But by reducing Tibetan Buddhism to a lifestyle choice, Cry of the Snow Lion leaves nothing to preserve.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo A Rialto release Opens Friday at Ritz Bourse

TIBET: CRY OF THE SNOW LION Directed by Tom Peosay An Artistic License release Opens Friday at Ritz East