Romain Gavras is a “bourgeois” from the French periphery

From the very first minute of “Atina”, it was clear that French director Romain Gavras had no time to joke. Gavras knew how to shock, humiliate and create the effect of a hammer blow. The first scene of the film, which lasts ten minutes, is literally breathtaking. In a long shot, we are faced with a kinetic miracle of the camera: a physical, visual and sound choreography that literally takes us into the labyrinth of war, a joy for the eyes and the ear. But a few minutes after the film starts, the pain of the blow fades and the mess begins, and the mark of the blow that doesn’t interest us remains.

During a press conference at the police station, it all begins. An angry young man throws a Molotov cocktail and the war begins. The young people enter with all their might in the center, break everything, plunder cars and weapons, take the loot to their homes, wave the French tricolor flag, and hide in their small suburb, “Atina”, inhabited mostly by Arabs. . They do not intend to kill anyone or overthrow the regime, but are demanding justice for Idir, a thirteen-year-old Arab boy who was allegedly killed by police violence. During the conference, the French soldier Abd (Dali Ben Salah) tried to calm things down and give guarantees that the investigation would reach his brother’s killers, but younger brother Karim (Sami Suleiman) doesn’t care about this nonsense. He gets mad and insists he wants the writers today, and he’s the one who started throwing Molotov cocktails during his brother’s speech. On the other hand, their older brother, Mokhtar (Oceani Embric), has no interest in either of them. Instead, he is focused on continuing his shady activities.
The film, which borrows its title from the Greek gods of war, simulates a Greek tragedy through the three brothers: Abd al-Sharqi, the rebel Karim, and Mukhtar, who is linked to trafficking and the mafia. After the first ten minutes, the escalation continues, and with it the audiovisual excitement, especially with the arrival of the police in Athena and the siege with the intent of repressing young people who do not abandon their aggressive attitude for the sake of justice. The plot is minimal, with characters, anger, moral struggles between fraternities, suffering beings and tears and class and racial struggles. Gavras reinforces it with its classic tragic substrate, especially with music. By organizing the film, the imprisonment, the ghettos, the police siege, the violence, Gavras knows how to do it, almost like an action film director, if we consider the film of this genre, because there are many very successful moments like thriller and a war. But what catches the eye at first fades as the minutes go by and it becomes difficult to read what Gavras wants to say or find the meaning he suggests. The film aims to be one of the French films that have made the multicultural suburbs a sort of metaphorical and literal battlefield for contemporary debates on the legacy of postcolonialism, class or racial struggle and the isolation and suppression of the ghetto as an outlet. dramatic reality of the conflict. We have seen a lot of this kind of French films, we cannot forget Matthew Kasowitz’s masterpiece “The Hate” (1995), up to “Les Miserables” (2019) by Edge Lee, who co-wrote “Atina” with Gavras.

The cultural vacuum, the limited critical thinking and the limited view of social and racist problems in France, which Ledge Leigh began in Les Misérables, complete it here with Gavras. Watching “Atina” provokes a rejection of her cultural and political emptiness, but above all it invites us to think about the low level of analysis of French and European social cinema. Roman Gavras is the son of Costa Gavras, one of the central directors of the tradition of European political cinema who has always tried to deconstruct, explain and present social structures as an analytical reading of the cultural and political structure of the country, and like him Bernard Tavernier is interested in these battles. The point of view of these veteran directors on the reality of their countries is completely absent from the new directors. It is not necessary to be familiar with social problems in France to be sure that the explosive and lively “Atina” is completely devoid of substance, especially in its details, when policemen are presented as human beings, while dark-skinned people are not always assured of kindness. Gavras and Ledge Lee punish us with unjustified and embarrassing morality and blame all the social problems of the French ghetto on angry groups at home and racist idiots abroad.
The film addresses the problem as French politics deals with the suburbs, which are prohibited areas, it is advisable not to interfere in them, areas viewed with racism, which increases the problems of social integration. This can be seen from the television broadcasts in the background of some scenes in which politicians look at the inhabitants of Athens as if they were non-human beings. It is quite clear that Gavras does not fully understand the problems of the country of him. In a very superficial way, he presents the oldest social problems in France. As for the film, the cops are not racists, the Arabs are barbarians and eventually their violent instincts take over, the terrorists know nothing but the bombing of buildings, and the result is victims here and there. Gavras did not try to investigate these problems, he threw everything in our face in a naive and superficial way. Eventually he alluded to the extreme right or neo-Nazis lighting the streets. No social, political, demographic or even psychological reading of the characters. From the beginning we know how the film will turn out, which police will be the scapegoat and who will die. Even some scenes in the film look ridiculous in the face of the horror of what is happening visually.

The film presents the Arabs as savages controlled by their violent instincts

We know Gavras from the music clips he directed and his style is very clear in the film. The film is like a long, violent clip that never ends. Gavras doesn’t want to point out problems, but he lights up the gunpowder, and the rest is just a means to an end. The image of the film is powerful, direct, designed like a thriller in which there is a buzz around every corner. This is exciting and frustrating, because the film keeps losing direction. It simply throws us in the middle of the action to be swept away by the wave of violence. Also, Gavras provides the important information about the story through radio and television out of the box, as if to tell us clearly that he is not interested in the story, but in the action scenes and the rest is not important. At one point in the film, it’s impossible for Gavras to put everything in order, painting a clear picture of his overlooked characters. Even in its few pauses, the film’s narrative flaws are evident. It is a pity that this complicated subject was introduced by Gavras on the basis of his commercial instinct. Some scenes and characters in the film look like advertisements for luxury fashion brands and sportswear worn by Athenians attacking the police with fireworks, making the film artificial and theatrical. There is a great lack of precision and knowledge in Athena. With a more refined storyline and more interesting characters, the film could have been a real event, or at least an introduction to a broader discussion of the social issues it faces.

* Athena on Netflix