Xavier Beauvois is a friend. In my mind, he is even one of the very few who, once, nearly fifteen years ago, was involved (without ever having renounced it) in the adventure of my film, Le Jour et la nuit. Does that mean I should refrain from expressing how much I was moved by his own film, Des Hommes et des dieux, portraying the last days in the lives of the French monks of Tibehirine, assassinated by Islamists in 1996, in Algeria? Nevertheless, the point is not actually Algeria. In reality, it is a film that is not about Algeria, nor terrorism, nor even about this other planet-wide persecution I referred to in an interview with a Spanish daily last week, one that targets Christians. No. It is a film about saintliness. About the time of saintliness. It is a film that shows the ordinary of seven existences, seized in a time frame that is slack, almost pure, eventless, which is another name for saintliness. The approach of the killers. The waiting, more unbearable from second to second for us, the audience, and for them, the seven monks, a source of intense fervor. Their impassive faces as they share the last meal. The soul, defenseless, and yet invincible. The dying flame of a life and the chapel of rest of the heart. Doubt, sometimes. Peace, finally. The dissolving contours of thought when the final act comes and they must accept to follow the killers, their courage mixed with horror. Prayer itself, which becomes almost useless and that Beauvois, it seems to me, in any case stops filming. The slowness, especially. The earth and the sky ablaze and yet time that seems to be frozen. Rarely has a film been so very slow, so passionately and spiritually slow, and yet, made the heart beat so very fast.
Michel Houellebecq is another friend. And, not so long ago, we published a book together, Ennemis publics. Should that prevent me from expressing here, after so many others I did not wish to precede, my admiration for his latest novel, La Carte et le territoire, in which he has, to my mind, arrived at the summit of his art? The breakdown, this time, of all reverence. The mourning of all saintliness. The triumph of the mediocre, the indifferent, the neuter. Failed lives. The defeat of language as the gold standard of meaning. At the heart of the novel, the counterfeit of art, very precisely, of the narrative. And then, suddenly, two events. First of all, the Father. This strange figure of the Father, inaccessible and familiar, hidden and, nonetheless, lacking mystery. This father like an empty house with his elusive secrets, his strong-rooms open to the four winds and these mazes of ancestry which Houellebecq, for the first time, apparently wishes to concentrate on. And then he, the author, the appearance of the author himself, taken by surprise in his Irish exile, who cuts into the novel, breaks up its until-then perfectly classic trajectory and sets it off, but in a different way, on an unexpected tangent. He, Houellebecq, really? Or his double? Or the ghost of his double? Or, perhaps, a stranger, but one who, like the devil, would have taken on the appearance of this other double? You'll see. That's the surprise. Just be aware that death is there, as it must be, at the rendez- vous. This death that, as always, knows all the tricks, the disguises, the hiding places. This death that never catches you better than at the moment when you thought, as in this instance, that you could be more clever than he is. A great work, Gracq once said, isn't it always a way of committing one to the grave?
Theo Van Gogh, the film maker who was stabbed and had his throat slit by an Islamist in Amsterdam in 2004, had a vision of the world and of Islam that I do not share. But in this text by him, Interview, directed by Hans Peter Cloos at the Studio des Champs-Elysées, in Paris, Patrick Mille -- more than a friend, my son-in-law -- plays one of the principal roles, confronting the radiant Sara Forestier. Is this a reason for me not to recommend one of the most incontestably intriguing shows of the opening of an otherwise rather dreary Parisian theatre season? A special correspondent at the end of his tether and a starlet already in dire straits. Show business. Its laws. Its rites, its burlesque altars, its cynicism, the whole sideshow. And the human, as a result, like a shipwreck that has already happened. Lives that are no long minuscule, just superfluous. Lying as second nature. The world as a consequence definitively lacking a cause. The memory of men itself that has become an aviary where vague and rare recollections (Sarajevo or a Serbian pistol at the temple for the hero, an episode from a soap opera for the heroine) collide like birds flying around in a cage. And then, here, a Freudian slip. There, a word that rings true. And there again, a sentiment that quivers, that wants to prevail. And then love, well, yes, good old love, that returns pattering softly like the footsteps of a dove and, little by little, takes over. A bizarre sort of love. A love almost homonymous with what bore that name before these times of post-humanity and their terminal thoughts. A love like a martial art. A love like a defeat anticipated by each one. A love where one makes sure he doesn't show his cards until he is very certain that he no longer has a winning hand. But finally, love, all the same, with its devouring words, its voice from the gut, and its leaps of the heart. Things go badly. One senses the risk of death that may, once again, win out. But if we seek the exact image of how the religion of nihilism has changed us all slightly, it is there. And one recalls Sade's words, "If aetheism is looking for martyrs, it has only to say so, my blood is ready."
Most of these killings were committed close to the capital, in the regions of Algiers, Blida and
Médéa, the most militarised ones in the country. In many cases the massacres, which sometimes went
on for several hours, were perpetrated a few kilometres or even a few hundred meters away from
barracks or advanced posts of the army or of the security forces. However, in spite of the victims’
screams and call for help, the security forces did not intervene to rescue the people being massacred
or to arrest the authors of the killings who managed to escape each time.
Survivors and neighbours declared that they had called the security posts or hurried there and that
the members of the security forces had refused to intervene, stating that they had not been given a
mandate to do so. In at least two cases, survivors told how people trying to flee from the villages
where massacres were being committed were forced back by a security cordon, which did not
intervene when the killings were taking place and only entered the village after the attackers had
gone.
It is undeniable that army barracks and security forces advanced posts were located nearby the site
of several massacres. Besides, Algerian authorities do not deny the fact that security forces did not
intervene during the massacres. The question why did they act this way remains unanswered8
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=244_1246931093&c=1
The Algerian military strategy which France and America approved of including committing atrocities, including disemboweling pregnant women and babies, and accusing militants of undertaking these atrocities. And since then, the West has been silent in levelling war crimes against them because America now has a major military base in southern Algeria, bases Algeria selling much of its oil to America.
In fact the most infamoust Algerian militant group, the GIA, was said to be infiltrated and colluded with the Algerian military.
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&geopolitics_and_9/11=complete_911_timeline_algerian_militant_collusion
Mr Levy should stop denying and face the reality of these damning allegations which have gained more and more credibility as more Algerians, including Algerian military officials, speak the truth.
Algerian army accused in massacre of French monks (AFP)
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MONDAY 06 JULY 2009
A retired French general told a judge probing the 1996 killing of seven monks that Algerian army helicopters hunting Islamist rebels had opened fire on a camp and hit the abducted monks by mistake, according to French media reports.
French general has told a probe into a 1996 massacre of French monks that the Algerian army killed them by mistake and the French state covered up the tragedy, a source close to the affair said.
General Francois Buchwalter was at the time France's military attache in Algiers and was told of the incident by an Algerian soldier whose brother had participated in the killings of the seven abducted monks, the source said.
The now-retired general was told that Algerian army helicopters, hunting Islamist rebels, opened fire on a camp they spotted in the mountains of the former French colony...
The helicopter crews realised afterwards that not only had they hit members of the armed group but also the monks, Buchwalter last month told a French anti-terrorist judge probing the killings, the source said.
A former colleague of Buchwalter at France's elite Saint-Cyr military school, whose brother was the head of the helicopter squadron in question, told him of the blunder a few days after the monks were buried.
It would be nice if one of the four or five theater chains that control movie distribution in the United States would devote at least one of their 100 or more screens in each major city to showing good international films.