The Battle of Algiers is the first film that ever landed in my consciousness as a "Criterion new release," when I was notified by an email from the Daily Kos website about an old film from the 1960s that spoke powerful truths to the political crisis of our own times. I had noticed the Criterion brand on a few other intriguing, artistically-inclined DVDs that I'd borrowed from the library every now and then, when my mood suited the exploration of unfamiliar cinema. That was in late 2004, just about 500 spine numbers back from where we are now, long before I ever had any clue as to how much of my time in the years ahead would be spent watching these movies, marking my calendar to the 15th of each month (or the nearest business day) to track the next announcement of upcoming titles, writing and discussing these films online, and generally absorbing them into my experience of life, influencing my outlook on the world.
At the time, I was more focused on politics and social concerns. George W. Bush had just been re-elected to another term in office as president of the USA, which registered to me as a depressing, historically ignorant validation of the horrible blunders and deceptions that his administration had foisted upon our society in the aftermath of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. Now our country was more firmly enmeshed in a debacle in Iraq that I knew before it had even started would not end well, either for our troops or for the Iraqi populace that they were now trying to govern after the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Sure, the usual profiteers and power brokers would find ways to extract wealth from the blood that was spilled and the property that was destroyed, just as they had calculated in their run-up to the war. But would there ultimately be some way that the rest of us who witnessed this nightmarish blend of crime and tragedy might find a way to profit from the experience? That was the hope, at least... that a lesson could be learned, that the horrors of the experience would impress themselves upon intelligent minds so that future mistakes could be avoided, and more constructive paths could be found.
As I and my friends in the American antiwar protest movement contemplated our next move, now that our efforts to at least repudiate the Bush administration's approach to its self-proclaimed "global war on terrorism" by denying him a 2nd term in office had failed, the best option I could land on was to just continue doing what we could to build a "culture of peace" on the local level. Among other efforts, that included involvement in the media, so I got involved with a project called IGE Talks, an open-format, public access TV talk show that served as a platform for us to offer up a counterpoint to the cable news talking heads who had served our nation so poorly in normalizing the arguments for going to war in Iraq, failing to question the motives of the war's architects and painting a rosier picture of the likely outcome than history gave us any right to expect. It was, of course, a humble, low-budget, largely ineffectual effort, as far as provoking social change was concerned, though it gave us an outlet to speak our mind on a lot of different issues and at least put a message out there that reflected the thoughts and values of citizens like us who long for justice, wisdom and compassion from those who put themselves in positions of leadership and influence. After 10 years of serving as the program's host, I stepped out of that role at the end of 2014, content with the archive of video we'd created and ready to let others pick it up from where I left off.
I know that all of what I've written so far is much more personal than it is critical. The preceding paragraphs have very little to do with Gillo Pontecorvo's astonishing masterpiece that provides an indelibly memorable experience of being thrust into the middle of a particularly harsh and tormented moment in history. For those who lived through the final death-throes phase of overt Eurocentric colonialism, this film had to be quite cathartic, as the anguish and confusion felt by both sides in these conflicts reached a boiling point that spilled over into acts of brutal violence and the killing of innocents. The French rulers could not conceive of an honorable, sanitary exit from their predicament of exerting control over an increasingly unruly native population (nor were they eager to relinquish the material and psychological advantages of their authority), while the Algerian subjects struggled with the dilemma of deciding how much pain they had to inflict on their oppressors in order to regain their sovereignty, as they ran the risk of dehumanizing themselves in the process.
Caught in the middle of all this strife were hordes of people, nameless and ordinary as far as our purposes here are concerned, yet still preoccupied with their individual lives filled with details, emotions, aspirations and gracious potential, just as important (or insignificant) as any of the charismatic key figures that we focus on here: Ali La Point, Colonel Mathieu, Jaffar, whoever else you might care to name - each of them a pivotal decision maker who impacted the world around them, sometimes with life or death consequences, yet just as much of a bit player, an interchangeable part in the big picture as any of us.
There's no way that my observations as an armchair commentator on the misguided adventurism of recent American foreign policy can stack up against the penetrating insights that come at viewers from all angles in this enormously complex reenactment of actual events. But it's as close as I can approximate in relating my own memories of political resistance, relatively painless as it was, to what I see when I watch The Battle of Algiers. I've never experienced the kind of oppression and peril that gripped that city in those years. Everybody has their own version of The Struggle, and when it comes right down to it, mine happens to be rather detached from the more painfully strenuous renditions of that essential life drama.
But in this film, we are confronted with extraordinary images that compel our attention from the opening frame and stir deep, often troubling thoughts every step along the way. I think it's fair to assume that most American viewers have very little awareness of the war that took place from 1954 to 1962 between France and the revolutionary insurgents in its colony of Algeria, a slice of Saharan Africa that sits just on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. I was never taught anything about the conflict when I was in school, and if it weren't for this film, I might not have ever looked into this tragic history. But the basic dynamics, of a people under the pressure of unacceptable repression and exploitation, pushing for freedom against a ruling authority that believes in its own justification as a civilizing force and a guarantee of protection from the forces of lawless barbarism - all that we can relate to, since I think most people have lived on one side of the equation or the other, though with varying degrees of self-awareness and political conscience.
And we should apply that awareness to our interpretation of contemporary turmoil afflicting societies in many parts of the world. The fact that The Battle of Algiers does portray a particular clash between Western capitalist neoliberalism and an embryonic version of contemporary Islamist resistance of course only enhances the relevance of the film to what we've seen going on in the Middle East for the past several decades... really, ever since it first hit the theaters and won awards in the mid-1960s. Though it's probably too far a stretch to assume that watching this movie will lead a viewer to reconsider his or her pre-existing political biases, I am confident in asserting that anyone approaching the story with an open willingness to put themselves in the place of its various characters will recognize the inadequacy of simplistic reactionary solutions to the problems depicted onscreen. The tectonic plates of global civilizations have ground into collision points that are not easily, or painlessly, smoothed over.
Then there's the brilliance of the filmmaking itself - a stunningly effective mastery of staging scenes permeated with grit, tension and danger. The level of suspense that is established and maintained throughout the film is as high and palpable as any movie I can recall watching over the past several years, a sensation that is only reinforced by the verisimilitude that comes from filming on the actual locations where the battles took place. And what locations. The Casbah is a unique, incredible place, loaded with all manner of cinematic possibilities: the narrow, cavernous alleyways, its impenetrable opacity to outsiders, the way it hangs ominously over the heads of the privileged Europeans who live, work and play near the edge of the sea. Pontecorvo's ability to enlist massive crowds of devastated mourners and angry protesters and replicate incredibly realistic and scary bomb attacks in various parts of the city was abetted by the Algerian government, which had an interest in telling their story to the rest of the world after the FLN's campaign for liberation reached a successful conclusion.
Putting all those elements together in a film that reaches such sublime heights of moral anguish and sinister depths of heartless cruelty is nothing to take for granted, especially from a director who hasn't produced a large body of work. That's quite a shame, I have to say, since Gillo Pontecorvo proves to be a master of his art here. An earlier film of his, Kapo, was released several years ago by Criterion in their short-lived Essential Art House line, and it's still in print, at a very reasonable price, so I definitely recommend getting a copy while you can. The tributes paid to Pontecorvo by a later generation of directors (Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone, Mira Nair, Julian Schnabel) in one of the abundant, and profoundly thought-provoking, supplements included in this 2 Blu-ray/3 DVD set speak eloquently to that point.
Really, there's a lot more I could say about The Battle of Algiers, so much to admire and lament, that I think might come out more fluently in a podcast, or just a conversation with a friend, but I'll keep it (relatively) short for now. I'm more than happy to discuss it more in the comments if anyone is inclined to use that feature. This is the kind of movie that's as capable of inspiring zeal and courage to go out and change the world as it is of draining our enthusiasm to make a difference as we ponder the enormity and intractability of the problems we're trying to address - especially when there are high stakes of political power and monetary wealth at stake, and the potential for deadly violence should one side or the other (or both) feel like they're being pushed too hard. It comes down to what we make of the information within our reach - the calculations of what we have to protect, or to gain, and what we have left to lose. The greater the imbalance, the more vicious life seems to get.