Review of the Battle of Algeirs

This film was very interesting. It has become a classic and a criterion collection selection. I am reading a book about postcolonialism and this book dovetails nicely with the text. I reviewed another film White Material that is more recent than this film and deals with postcolonialism. The Battle of Algiers was older, more grainy, less formalist, but very effectual. It has a documentary feel to it.

The film starts and begins in the same place; the hideout of a suspected terrorist. The whole French colonial venture is called into question in this film. It raised questions in my conscience such as: why are the French still in Algeria? What is the purpose of Colonialism? Why does the West rule over the rest? I think I did not succumb to racist, nationalist, or imperialist cliches about Western involvement in foreign countries. Yet the  questions remain. I suppose it becomes more of a debate about whether or not the West, and in particular the USA, should intervene in places like Iraq or Afghanistan? Do we really have the right to launch airstrikes, etc in a land that is not our own?

I also watched Indochine starring Catherine Deneuve which I thought was  a great film; one of the best I've seen about the predicament that Western countries find themselves in in the post WWII era. In that film it became all too clear that Western rule was coming to an end. Indochine was a great film about colonialist ventures that the West has launched.

Battle of Algiers was a low budget film. It's production values were low. Yet it still has a poigniancy about it. Still has a viscerality. It is the earliest film where the side of the Algerians or terrorists is openly given a forum. That is, perhaps, the best part of the film. We see what the non Western side strives for and their reasons for things like terrorist bombings of public places which I thought were disgraceful until the leader of the terrorist said that it was their only resort without war planes to do their dirty work.

I thought the Battle of Algiers to be a good film. Very cutting edge for it's time.