Post by Dracula on Feb 19, 2023 14:19:11 GMT -5
Athena(1/3/2023)
Athena is a French film that showed up on Netflix without a lot of fanfare in the lead-up but which certainly got a lot of attention upon its release for its visual ambition if nothing else. The film was directed by Romain Gavras, son of the great Costa-Gavras, who has made a couple of features in the past but who is probably better known for making some pretty striking music videos for people like M.I.A., Jay-Z, and Kanye West. This feels like a pretty clear extension of the visual style he established previously, though as a matter of substance I can’t help but mostly view it in terms of the career of the film’s co-writer Ladj Ly, the director of the Cannes sensation and Oscar nominated police thriller Les Misérables. Ly seems like a promising voice, but there’s also something kind of nagging me at the back of my head that he might kind of just be the French David Ayer: a guy who makes violent and genre infused movies about “the streets” while trying to pass them off as authentic. This movie envisions a scenario in which a (presumably?) innocent Algerian immigrant has been shot by a Parisian police officer and this leads not to peaceful protests or even rioting, but something closer to organized and deadly domestic terrorism on the part of a gang of sorts who open the film by raiding a police station and then barricade themselves in a banlieue called Athena. I can say that if I were a serious criminal justice reform activist I would not want this movie to represent me, and to be fair I don’t think Gavras or Ly would argue that this is meant to be more of a grim hypothetical of an extreme situation than it is a reflection of exactly where society is currently, but that also maybe feels like an excuse to justify some rather loopy script machinations. Despite that, I don’t want to overlook the fact that visually the film has a lot going for it and I think it’s worth a look for that alone if nothing else and whatever misgivings I have about the script there is some interesting audacity there.
***1/2 out of Five
Athena is a French film that showed up on Netflix without a lot of fanfare in the lead-up but which certainly got a lot of attention upon its release for its visual ambition if nothing else. The film was directed by Romain Gavras, son of the great Costa-Gavras, who has made a couple of features in the past but who is probably better known for making some pretty striking music videos for people like M.I.A., Jay-Z, and Kanye West. This feels like a pretty clear extension of the visual style he established previously, though as a matter of substance I can’t help but mostly view it in terms of the career of the film’s co-writer Ladj Ly, the director of the Cannes sensation and Oscar nominated police thriller Les Misérables. Ly seems like a promising voice, but there’s also something kind of nagging me at the back of my head that he might kind of just be the French David Ayer: a guy who makes violent and genre infused movies about “the streets” while trying to pass them off as authentic. This movie envisions a scenario in which a (presumably?) innocent Algerian immigrant has been shot by a Parisian police officer and this leads not to peaceful protests or even rioting, but something closer to organized and deadly domestic terrorism on the part of a gang of sorts who open the film by raiding a police station and then barricade themselves in a banlieue called Athena. I can say that if I were a serious criminal justice reform activist I would not want this movie to represent me, and to be fair I don’t think Gavras or Ly would argue that this is meant to be more of a grim hypothetical of an extreme situation than it is a reflection of exactly where society is currently, but that also maybe feels like an excuse to justify some rather loopy script machinations. Despite that, I don’t want to overlook the fact that visually the film has a lot going for it and I think it’s worth a look for that alone if nothing else and whatever misgivings I have about the script there is some interesting audacity there.
***1/2 out of Five
