Jacques Audiard’s   “A Prophet” might not have won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, but in its native country it took nine Cesar awards, including Best Picture, Best Director,  Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor.  Although Audiards last picture,   “The Beat My Heart Skipped,” was a disappointing and over-rated remake  of James Toback’s “Fingers,”   this new one is the best  ethnocentric prison movie since “Blood In Blood Out,” Taylor Hackford’s 1993 masterpiece about   Chicano gangs in San Quentin.

“A Prophet” chronicles  the rise to power of Malik el Djebena (Tahar Rahim).  Sentenced to six years in a French prison for assaulting a police officer, the 19-year old Arab boy becomes the right hand man of Corsican gangster Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup). By the time of his release, Malik has built  up a nice piece of business for himself on the outside.

This is a tough, bloody, and empathetic  piece of film-making that moves through each stage of Malik’s criminal education with the certainty of a prison sentence.  Rahim shows tremendous range in the part, from the homeless teenager denying guilt of the crime for which he has been incarcerated, to the  efficient and duplicitous  negotiator  who makes sure he is always the last man standing,  There is more to him than his smart and diplomatic ruthlessness, however, with many of the most memorable moments coming from his personal delight in small ecstasies such as looking out of the window on his first plane ride, or discovering the power of knowledge when learning to read.

Arestrup gives a quietly lethal performance as Luciani, whose swagger never falters even when he realizes he has been forsaken and betrayed by all his former soldiers and will be left to die alone in prison.  The rest of the cast, several of whom got the parts on the strength of their  criminal records,  is so perfectly drawn that even the characters who are only momentarily glimpsed leave a lasting impression.

Audiard’s detailed portrait of prison life captures the  lonely desperation of men in lockdown as well as the fear and suspicion that governs their every encounter with fellow inmates. One of the most grueling sequences captures the slow, nauseating horror of murdering a man with a razor blade.

As Rahim establishes himself among the multiple ethnicities of European criminal trade, he develops an almost diplomatic immunity from the conflicts between the Egyptians, Algerians, Africans, Corsicans, and Italians among whom he freely moves, which garners him the reputation of being a prophet. If   Audiard’s intention is to go beyond the criminal education of a relatively innocent boy who is unfairly incarcerated, his objective might be the allegorical construct of  the dilemmas facing the maligned Arab in  the world of international business. As such, “A Prophet” becomes a study in loyalties and obligations, personal ambition and social necessity.

There is a darker side as well, one that swells from the fear of a rising Arab nation in the complex ecology of international business and politics.  In the beginning of the film, the Muslim presence in the prison is fairly weak.  By the end, they are a force that must be reckoned with.   The Corsicans, on the other hand, have, with the exception of the now impotent Luciani, disappeared from the prison yard.  While it may not have been Audiard’s intention to make a statement regarding the Muslim ascendancy  over the collapse of  Catholic rule, the implications of the final scenes leave little doubt as to who is going to be running the penitentiary.

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