Free Men (2011)

Touches You

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I ignored IMDb's rating and just watched this hoping it'd be a good film. I was very disappointed. The story seemed interesting and it seemed at first as if it had many undertones and little stories and details—even a certain poetry—, but soon it was all simplified and followed a slow, distant rhythm like some sort of thriller and I started losing interest in the character and his situation.I could say most of the actors were great, especially Michael Lonsdale, but the rest, including Tahar Rahim, carried a considerable emotional weight throughout the movie, but merely on the surface; it didn't create deep connections with other characters or situations, and that's also how most scenes were. I can't help to blame the director and the script for all this. The photography was great and the art direction, as well, even when the color palette is extremely rehashed nowadays, because it wasn't distractive and helped create a certain atmosphere. I think the director wanted to create a very epic film—considering it was filmed in 10 weeks in France and Morocco—with a lot of tension and character development, but for some reason, everything ended up cut into bits of it and some under-layers of the story came to the surface and they became so explicit they appear as banal and forced, separating bit by bit from whatever was supposed to be the main truth of this film.It seemed like the movie was approached from the wrong angle and carried out with the wrong sensitivity and vision, because I fail to understand what it really was about and the concluding texts at the end only make me reinforce everything I have said since I almost didn't bother to read them. But it caught my attention the homage intention of them and it made me rethink of the whole movie again from that perspective. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything new and nothing appeared to have an extra value. If this was a movie about friendship or fighting for a cause, I don't understand why I didn't feel such weight, such connections, such struggle and such sacrifice, because, as I saw it, the characters weren't really risking anything or nothing that mattered to them anyway; when they tried to do noble acts, they looked more like they were just doing it for the hell of it as if they had nothing else better to do.Instead of seeing "Free Men" in this film, I saw empty men with no passion, no desire whatsoever for life. Stereotypes and victims with no will of their own.

"Les hommes libres" may not be outstanding in terms of cinematic art. This is definitely not an avant-garde film. It is true that the director, Ismaël Ferroukhi (who previously gave us the sensitive "Le Grand Voyage"), is content to illustrate the screenplay he has written. That is the reason why most French film critics (who dislike a film with a beginning, a middle and an end but without any particular effects) looked down on this yet interesting, informative and thought-provoking piece of filming. So just disregard what they say and watch "Les hommes libres". You will not be let down.The story (written by Ferroukhi and Alain-Michel Blanc), set in occupied France between1942 and 1944, revolves around a character named Younes, an Algerian immigrant who surprisingly evolves from petty black marketeer to informer for the French collaborationist police to Resistance fighter. He is one of those interesting characters who are buffeted by circumstances and end up heroes without them suspecting it in the slightest. First only interested in getting money to survive, Younes will be forced by the French police to spy on the rector of the Paris mosque, of whom the Nazis have every reason to think he helps Jews. This will in fact be his road to Damascus, for instead of enjoying working for the forces of evil (like "Lacombe Lucien" did in Louis Malle's masterpiece), he finds out that the occupiers and their sycophants are up to no good. And although reluctant to take action at first, he is finally persuaded to fight for the French Resistance.Even more interesting, because more ambiguous, is the relationship Younes develops with Salim (a singer of Algerian origin, both Jewish and gay) who has taken shelter at the Mosque. Salim is at once a gifted singer and an engaging and charming human being, a tortured creature and a sometimes unreliable friend. Younes, despite his lack of education, has already understood that the Nazis are evil but, through Salim, he becomes aware of something even more essential : a human being's rights must be defended even if this person is imperfect.Well made on the whole (one defect being an occasional lack of rhythm), posing genuine moral problems, very well acted by Tahar Rahim (whose "shy" style of acting becomes his naive character to perfection) and Mahmud Shalaby, already excellent in "Une bouteille à la mer" (a young actor who manages to combine natural charm, depth and intensity as Salim), "Les hommes libres" has the great merit to unveil the heroic role played during World War II by the Paris Mosque and its rector Si Kaddour (jauntily embodied by another great man, actor Michael Lonsdale). I had personally never heard of this major historical figure and I do not think I am the only one. So, let us thank Ismaël Ferroukhi for this revelation rather than criticize him for not being an avant- garde artist.

Ismaël Ferroukhi both wrote (with Alain-Michel Blanc) and directed this emotionally charged story based on fact and peppered with real and fictitious characters to drive home the point of the film - that differences among peoples become erased in response to a common enemy. This is a powerful little film made more radiant because of the brilliant cast.In German occupied Paris in WW II there is a segment of Algerian and Moroccan immigrants who survive on the fringes largely due to people like the unemployed Younes (the handsome and gifted French actor of Algerian origin Tahir Rahim) who runs a black market selling cigarettes, tea, coffee and food to his fellow Algerians - until he is caught by the police. Instead to going to prison he is set up to spy on the Paris Mosque, thought by the police to be center for the Mosque authorities, including its rector Ben Ghabrit (Michael Lonsdale) of aiding Muslim Resistance agents and helping North African Jews by giving them false certificates. At the Mosque, Younes meets the Algerian singer Salim Halali (Mahmud Shalaby), and is moved by Salim's beautiful voice and strong personality. When Younes discovers that Salim is Jewish, he stops collaborating with the police and gradually transforms from a politically ignorant immigrant black marketeer into a fully-fledged freedom fighter. It is this friendship between Younes and Salim that shapes the changes in Younes character, allowing him to move form a non-political opportunist to a committed freedom fighter.There are many side stories that occur - the influence of the Gestapo, the presence of the mysterious Leila (the profoundly gifted and beautiful Lubna Azabal), Vichy collaborators, Muslims, Jews, Christians, resistance fighters, communists, spies, snitches, fugitives, traitors, criminals, children and innocents - with the theme of discovered camaraderie emerging slowly but surely. This is an inspired film that opens windows to parts of WW II history little known to the general public, and at films end the history of the post war activities of those character who are real is revealed, with 'Younes' being described as the general representative of all the Algerian and Jewish immigrants. The score is filled with the singing of Salim/Mahmud Shalaby that adds a definite feeling of authenticity to the film. In French and Arabic with English subtitles. Grady Harp

Tahar Rahim plays Younes, a young Algerian in Paris during the Nazi occupation, planning to return to Algeria after he gets rich on the black market. Instead, he ends up joining the Resistance and helping a few Jews escape through the Paris mosque.Rahim is a gifted actor. I first saw him in A Prophet, a so-so prison movie in which he gave a fantastic performance. Free Men has a great performance by Michael Lonsdale as the head of the mosque, and maybe that's why Rahim seems less impressive in this movie than he was in A Prophet. A Prophet made me an instant fan, but if I'd seen Free Men first I don't think that would have happened; Rahim is good in it, but not fantastic.Another problem I have with Free Men is that the central relationship is between Younes and a young Jewish singer of North African music named Salim who has survived because the mosque gave him false ID as a Moslem. The friendship between Younes and Salim is supposed to be inspiring (I think), but it just annoyed the hell out of me.First, the actor who plays Salim is an Arab, not a Jew, and he looks like an Arab, not a Jew. Trying to see the character as a Jew is practically impossible, but his Jewishness is key to the movie. If their friendship is supposed to exemplify some sort of grand utopian harmony between Arabs and Jews, it fails.Second, Salim is supposed to be the world's greatest singer of North African music, but to me it was nearly unbearable, just a bunch of ugly, whiny, screechy, nasal noise. I don't mean to offend North Africans, but their music doesn't sound like music to me (Lots of American music is even worse, though, including punk, heavy metal and rap).Plus, the guy playing Salim is so ugly that I couldn't look at him for more than a few seconds at a time; he has weird eyes that reminded me of the Emperor's yellow eyes in The Empire Strikes Back (or maybe it was Return of the Jedi), only Salim's are a strange unnatural blue color. Better casting of that role might have helped this movie a lot.So I don't recommend Free Men. The only things I enjoyed were Lonsdale's performance and seeing a sort of street-level view of what Paris may have been like under the Nazis, which I don't think I'd ever seen before.