I just watched A Prophet (Jacques Audiard) for the first time yesterday, and loved it. I really dug how epic the film felt (in terms of its scope and runtime) while at the same time feeling really personal and intimate. Malik as a character goes through a lot of development throughout his six years in jail. Audiard creates a deeply flawed character, yet we're still able to care about him. It's one of the most unique and unconventional "coming-of-age" stories.
I was impressed by how complex the narrative was, featuring numerous side characters, especially when he gets to leave the prison for a short amount of time. Furthermore, none of these characters feel extraneous; every subplot/side character serves a purpose in Malik's growth as a person, whether it's the scene on the airplane that reveals his inner-childlike self, his friendship with Ryad, or even the last "leave" where he gains the upper-hand by not murdering Cesar's boss. Even the inmate he kills in the beginning of the film stays in the film as a ghost haunting Malik's subconscious.
There's one thing I'm still a little confused about though, and it's the deer scene during a prison leave. Earlier, he has a dream where he sees the road sign, and then he sees in a real life and accurately predicts a deer running into their car. Like some of the dream sequences, it kind of adds a surreal feeling to the images and story, which I thought was kind of interesting given how grounded most of the film was. Given the name of the film, we only see two instances (or the two that I can think of on the top of my head) of a character being prophetic, one being a random soccer game, and the other being this deer sequence.
However, I'm still unsure of what the deer actually represents in Malik's journey or the film itself. I'm interested in hearing if others have their own theories on what this means in this film!
Submitted June 19, 2020 at 04:56AM by jhuang98 https://ift.tt/3hBcfQJ