A very good movie

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but since it won the César of the best French movie of the year and since it has been added to the ‘1001 movies you must see before you die’ list, I was really eager to check it out. First of all, even though I’m not a religious person (I don’t believe in God at all), I think Religion is a fascinating subject. Anyway, this movie was quite fascinating to behold and, honestly, one of the most spiritual movies I have seen. Indeed, it shows that the main purpose and goal of Religion is or should be love and all those men were thriving to reach this love and somehow became more human than most of us. I thought there were also something really divine in their behavior and they were quite remarkable. The juxtaposition of the fanatism going on in Algeria back in those days was also intriguing but you can see that the army or even the local authorities were not really found of those monks who naturally refused to take side in this ruthless conflict. This tale had also a more personal impact. Indeed, when I was a kid (just 9 and 12 years old) , I went twice in Algeria, spending some time with some local friends of my parents, playing with their kids, I even went to the Sahara a couple of times. Anyway, while watching this flick, I couldn’t help thinking about those friends and those kids I played with. What happened to them? They must have seen some terrible things during this reign of terror which has lasted 10-15 years and, suddenly, while watching this flick, I felt a terrible guilt. Maybe the only flaw about this movie is that you don’t really get to know those guys and their behavior was maybe too perfect. Or, like Roger Ebert pointed out, they should have left this place, go somewhere else helping some other people in need, instead of dying for no good reason. Indeed, at the end of the day, even if it wasn’t their intention, they still died as martyrs. Anyway, I thought it was a very interesting drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested by this subject.

8/10