Athena Review: (Venice 79) Chronicle Of An Urban Battle Between Police And Demonstrators
Stars: Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon
Director: Romain Gavras
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Athena Review: (Venice 79): The Seventh Art has repeatedly joined, superimposed or replaced the pages of the crime news to tell the salient phases of the escalation of tension and violence that exploded in the peripheries of the various latitudes, which led to the death, injury and arrest of thousands of people. Films and documentaries have thus fueled the debate, with the mind going back to the riots and riots in Paris in 2005 or more recently to those in Minneapolis that arose following the protests for the death of George Floyd at the hands of policeman Derek Chauvin ., later sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder. To these and other dramatic events, our thoughts and that of many are inevitably connected again when we read the synopsis and we witness the ninety very tight minutes that mark the last effort behind the camera of Romain Gavras from the title Athena, released on Netflix on September 23, 2022 after the presentation in competition at the 79th edition of the Venice International Film Festival.
Athena Review: The Story
In the film by the transalpine filmmaker, we find ourselves a few hours after the tragic death of a thirteen-year-old of Algerian origins in inexplicable circumstances, which throws the existence of the other family members into chaos when one of the three remaining brothers leads the revolt that broke out in the interior of the banlieue of Athena, transformed for the occasion into a sort of fortress under siege where a battle between demonstrators and law enforcement takes place. The entire local community is involved, composed of citizens of different ethnicities and religions, starting with the Muslim one, forced to watch helplessly in the clashes and leave their respective homes in a neighborhood set on fire and squeezed between the barricades erected in his defense.
Athena Review and Analysis
It is not the first time that French cinema and series have thrown the viewer without a parachute into the eye of the storm to experience the growing turmoil and tensions of a banlieue from within. First, there was The Hatred by Mathieu Kassovitz, then Les Misérables by Ladj Ly and more recently the Netflix series The Leader directed by Nicolás López and Ange Basterga. On all these occasions there has been a crash test between opposing factions and infighting that resulted in a metropolitan war that caused blood and destruction. Direct consequences also of the events that take place in Athena, with the protagonists who have chosen to stay from one side of the fence to the other in the name of their reasons. It is no coincidence that Gavras’s film and the neighborhood surrounding it are both named after the goddess of strategy in battle, the one that the police in riot gear on one side and rioters armed to the teeth on the other are called to put in place to prevail over the opponent.
In Athena there is an all-out struggle, inside and outside the chains of anonymous, crumbling and alienating buildings of the Parisian suburbs. The camera launches itself from the first useful frame in pyrotechnic and aesthetically spectacular sequence shots on the choreographic side, which even go so far as to defy the force of gravity when they make their way in reduced visibility between smoke bombs, detonations, tear gas, bullets and flames. Switch from one point of view to another to show events through symbolic characters of the various factions on the field, who become our eyes in an engaging and immersive film experience. An apnea dive does not allow the user even a moment of rest to catch his breath during the descent towards the abyss.
The urban battle that takes place in the film, however, is not limited to the common topographies of the neighborhood under siege but also insinuates itself within the walls of the house, but above all in the hearts, minds and actions carried out by members of a family, to be precise of the three brothers of the very young victim whose death ignited the fuse of the revolt. Each takes a precise position in the conflict, with the dialectical, ideological and physical clash between them that pits them against each other, transforming themselves into the driving force of the story that Gavras wrote in six hands with Ladj Ly and Elias Belkeddar. The hostilities and dynamics that arise from it, which are then poured onto the screen during the timeline, refer symbolically, thematically, conceptually and dramaturgically to Greek tragedy. Which makes the plot a container of universal arguments, situations and developments, without time and geolocation.
What happened in Athena could have happened anywhere and at any age, past or future. Behind every war, there is manipulation, an original lie that has pushed history to repeat itself from the Trojan War to contemporary conflicts. Gavras’s film returns a present that knows no peace, which brings with it yesterday’s lessons that have taught nothing today, much less tomorrow. From the incipt in media’s res that evokes a parent power almost of Nolanian memory, one of the many (the best, the most beautiful, the most surprising) of the sequence shots of which Athena starts.is composed (in the middle of slow motion, shooting with drones, very fast hand-held camera and so on), giving way to an immersive, crazy and spectacular experience within the conflict.
A visual orgy that describes police charges, running through the corridors of buildings, clashes in the squares, reckless guides, explosions and so on. If on this aspect the film triumphs in full, it does not come to have a perfectly harmonized linguistic register, because it accuses the origin of the video clip format so much so that it needs to emphasize the boundaries of each mini narrative arc that makes up its corpus, without being able to make it entirely a single fluid.A Netflix that distorts the roots of the authorial cinema on which the gaze rests or an authorial cinema that has the possibility of exalting itself in a new look thanks to the permissions that Netflix grants? See it, it’s worth it.
Athena Review: The Last Words
Athena is Romain Gravas’ third feature film, co-written with Ladj Ly, produced by Netflix and presented in a competition at Venice79. It is a highly spectacular reinterpretation of a classic translation of the Greek tragedy set in the context of a conflict that has its roots in the unease that grips the banlieues. Photographically and directorially breathtaking, the film is enhanced in the sequence shots, in slow motion, in the shooting with drones, which give life to that immersive experience that is what the authors have focused on, with the consequent risk of crushing everything else. . The story while revolving around an interesting idea, still linked to the Hellenic tradition, progressively unravels until it becomes didactic and loses much of its original meaning. A Trend that fatally joins a formal imperfection and that prevents a perfectly intact cinematographic construction. To be seen.
