This intimate documentary on Ashin Wirathu, the Buddhist fanatic whose ideas have brought down Aung Sun Suu Kyi, is a bleak study of sectarianism by Barbet Schroeder
Barbet Schroeder’s overpoweringly bleak documentary about the Buddhist monk stirring up ethnic hate against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims is the third in what has now emerged as his “trilogy of evil” – a trio of disquieting documentaries of which the first two were General Idi Amin Dada in 1974 and Terror’s Advocate in 2007 about the genial, cigar-smoking Jacques Vergès, lawyer for Klaus Barbie.
The Venerable W delivers a nauseous, almost black-comic jab at any liberal who fondly believed that Buddhism and Buddhists somehow float ethereally free of the sectarianism and bigotry that infect any other religion. And it also emerges as a devastating indictment of someone who is not its subject and appears only briefly: Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader who is...
Barbet Schroeder’s overpoweringly bleak documentary about the Buddhist monk stirring up ethnic hate against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims is the third in what has now emerged as his “trilogy of evil” – a trio of disquieting documentaries of which the first two were General Idi Amin Dada in 1974 and Terror’s Advocate in 2007 about the genial, cigar-smoking Jacques Vergès, lawyer for Klaus Barbie.
The Venerable W delivers a nauseous, almost black-comic jab at any liberal who fondly believed that Buddhism and Buddhists somehow float ethereally free of the sectarianism and bigotry that infect any other religion. And it also emerges as a devastating indictment of someone who is not its subject and appears only briefly: Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader who is...
- 10/10/2017
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
This is the fascinating story of the wheeler-dealer Frenchman Jean-Yves Ollivier, who might have stepped out of a Frederick Forsyth novel
Here is an intriguing documentary, with some impressive talking heads, all about the secret history of South Africa and the end of apartheid. But I wonder if a great deal is still being withheld about its leading player, an urbane, cigar-smoking, wheeler-dealer Frenchman named Jean-Yves Ollivier who might have stepped from the pages of a Frederick Forsyth novel. (He reminded me of the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès, the subject of Barbet Schroeder's 2007 documentary Terror's Advocate.) In the 1980s and 1990s, Ollivier had built up a network of contacts as an international commodities trader. He had charm, style and a knack for cutting deals, and he could do discreet business with various leaders with whom European politicians did not care to associate. So Ollivier offered his services as a secret envoy,...
Here is an intriguing documentary, with some impressive talking heads, all about the secret history of South Africa and the end of apartheid. But I wonder if a great deal is still being withheld about its leading player, an urbane, cigar-smoking, wheeler-dealer Frenchman named Jean-Yves Ollivier who might have stepped from the pages of a Frederick Forsyth novel. (He reminded me of the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès, the subject of Barbet Schroeder's 2007 documentary Terror's Advocate.) In the 1980s and 1990s, Ollivier had built up a network of contacts as an international commodities trader. He had charm, style and a knack for cutting deals, and he could do discreet business with various leaders with whom European politicians did not care to associate. So Ollivier offered his services as a secret envoy,...
- 3/14/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Terrorist? Revolutionary? Or just a cynic? This continent-hopping biopic of Carlos the Jackal suggests greed and ego won out over principle, writes Peter Bradshaw
The Pimpernel of Marxist-Leninist terrorism is back. For years, Carlos was the spectre haunting Europe, known to western newspaper readers by one single photo: a plump, bespectacled and smugly smirking headshot reproduced with such Warholian persistence that it became an icon of menace. His fugitive invisibility made literary theorists of many, entertaining the feverish notion that he did not exist, that "Carlos" was effectively a socio-cultural construct, a bogeyman invented by the media-political complex to sell papers and to justify the erosion of civil liberties. Carlos's eventual capture and imprisonment in the 1990s, revealing him to be abjectly human, was a real letdown, as if Osama Bin Laden had been arrested working in a Carphone Warehouse in Watford.
French film-maker Olivier Assayas has now released for...
The Pimpernel of Marxist-Leninist terrorism is back. For years, Carlos was the spectre haunting Europe, known to western newspaper readers by one single photo: a plump, bespectacled and smugly smirking headshot reproduced with such Warholian persistence that it became an icon of menace. His fugitive invisibility made literary theorists of many, entertaining the feverish notion that he did not exist, that "Carlos" was effectively a socio-cultural construct, a bogeyman invented by the media-political complex to sell papers and to justify the erosion of civil liberties. Carlos's eventual capture and imprisonment in the 1990s, revealing him to be abjectly human, was a real letdown, as if Osama Bin Laden had been arrested working in a Carphone Warehouse in Watford.
French film-maker Olivier Assayas has now released for...
- 10/21/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
- I didn't get the chance to see the doc William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe in Park City this year, but I had the impression that it would touch upon some of the qualities found in Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate – a behind a scenes look into a controversial lawyer in his own right: Mr. Jacques Vergès. That is where the comparisons probably end --- as this docu was made by Kunstler's own kin. Midway through last week's festival, PBS picked up the docu for its P.O.V. Series (to be aired in 2010), and today, documentary film distribution specialist Arthouse Films picked up theatrical and DVD rights to the pic with a mid-2009 release in mind and look for this to be at either the doc fests such as the upcoming editions of True/False, Silverdocs and Hot Docs festival in Toronto. This spotlights the late civil rights attorney
- 1/29/2009
- IONCINEMA.com
By Michael Atkinson
It is surely a first . an international movie star (Sandrine Bonnaire) making a patient, respectful, thoroughly unnarcissistic documentary about her own handicapped sister, and stumping for policy change as she considers painful mysteries about family and the passage of time in the process. "Her Name Is Sabine" (2007) is a simple, unpretentious piece of work . Bonnaire spends an enormous amount of time simply observing the managed-care home where Sabine, nearing 40, lives now with a handful of other adults with varying modes and manifestations of autism. Slowly, Sabine's history is dripped in . as a child, teen and young adult, she was different, "off," but lucid, literate, energetic and capable of playing Chopin. She went without diagnosis for decades. As her siblings . ten of them . grew up one by one and left home, Sabine, robbed of stimulus, began to deteriorate; a series of hospital stays and hired nurses followed,...
It is surely a first . an international movie star (Sandrine Bonnaire) making a patient, respectful, thoroughly unnarcissistic documentary about her own handicapped sister, and stumping for policy change as she considers painful mysteries about family and the passage of time in the process. "Her Name Is Sabine" (2007) is a simple, unpretentious piece of work . Bonnaire spends an enormous amount of time simply observing the managed-care home where Sabine, nearing 40, lives now with a handful of other adults with varying modes and manifestations of autism. Slowly, Sabine's history is dripped in . as a child, teen and young adult, she was different, "off," but lucid, literate, energetic and capable of playing Chopin. She went without diagnosis for decades. As her siblings . ten of them . grew up one by one and left home, Sabine, robbed of stimulus, began to deteriorate; a series of hospital stays and hired nurses followed,...
- 3/11/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
- You'll never hear a first-grader claim he/she wants to be a lawyer when they grow up - but there are some determining factors in a youngsters' life that may push them towards the trade. In this case, a young Jacques Vergès, perhaps involuntarily found out early on in life his reason for being. This is a captivating, talking heads doc about a fascinating individual - agree to disagree or hate the man. What he does is almost noble. A suivre.... Today, Magnolia Pictures releases a documentary film that explores one man's mindset and life's work. Via the sophisticated hand of Barbet Schroeder, this Cannes-selected, Un Certain Regard, French production aims at giving viewers everything but an easy, open and shut portrait. Today, Ioncinema.com brings you an exclusive clip (early contacts with Mao) from Terror's Advocate - to view it skip on over the film's synopsis below. This is about Jacques Vergès,
- 10/12/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
CANNES -- This movie's English title is a misnomer. The French noun "l'avocat" means attorney, while the English word "advocate" means something entirely different. The subject of Barbet Schroeder's in-depth documentary, included in Un Certain Regard sidebar, is Jacques Verges, a French attorney who has made a career defending unpopular individuals, more than a few considered war criminals and terrorists. But as the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. So what Schroeder wants to do is probe the moral complexities in a man capable of defending those who commit heinous crimes.
Verges, who agrees to be interviewed, proves a slippery figure, using his lawyer's guile to sidestep questions and spin facts. But he is a fascinating figure, and "Terror's Advocate" is a fascinating film even if it never completely pins him down. The film should do extremely well in European festivals and art houses although North American viewers' heads may spin as the film leaps through the history of foreign terrorist organizations of the past half-century.
The key thing about Verges is that he was born in Thailand in 1924 or 1925 -- even here he apparently is slippery -- to a mother from Vietnam and a father from Reunion Island, the Indian Ocean island that is part of France. He thus came of age as multiracial in a colonial setting, which as one interviewee notes, means "to be against things," to be anti-establishment, anti-colonialist and anti-government. So even when this seemingly leftist lawyer defends Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, from his perspective he sees the trial as an opportunity to show that French collaborators were no different from evil Barbie.
As a young attorney, he was asked to defend Djamila Bouhired, an Algerian woman who came to symbolize her country's hopes for freedom when she was arrested and tortured by France for planting bombs in cafes in 1957. Eventually, he obtained her pardon after she was sentenced to death. Subsequently, he married her.
But his reward was to be turned into "the husband of Djamila Bouhired" and to be banished to divorce cases. So it was that Verges abruptly disappeared. Last seen at a political meeting in Paris in February 1970, he didn't re-emerge until 1978.
Cultivating an enigmatic image, Verges merely says, "I was among people". He was spotted occasionally by friends in Paris. Theories of his whereabouts otherwise range from Cambodia, where Pol Pot was a friend from student days, to Palestinian camps or even China.
When he returned, he defended terrorists from Magdalena Kopp and Anis Naccache to Carlos the Jackal and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy. When he defended Kopp, German-born terrorist married to Carlos, history repeated itself. He apparently fell in love with his prisoner-client. Only this time she was married and turned her back on him once she was freed.
One can easily get lost amid the endless talking heads of defendants, experts, politicians, historians and attorneys. But what seems clear is that the defining moment in Verges' life came in his aggressive defense of Djamila Bouhired. That young, passionate and committed man was never able to repeat such a pure legal-political act. So he gradually, especially after his eight-year walkabout, drifted from advocate to l'avocat, becoming a man who knows how to legally help a client in the profitable business of terror or who can associate with anti-Semites and quarrel over the body count in the killing fields of Cambodia.
Schroeder eschews narration, letting the interviewees give the time lines and paint the portraits. Thus no one fills in all the blanks or provides a historical context for the many terrorist groups. Schroder also scrupulously avoids passing judgment -- or at least does so only in his selection of what comments or revelations he chooses to include.
A rich symphonic score by Jorge Arriagada helps flavor this visually thin broth of talking heads and a little archival footage.
L'AVOCAT DE LA TERREUR (TERROR'S ADVOCATE)
Magnolia Pictures
A Wild Bunch/Yalla Films co-production with participation of Canal Plus and the Center National de la Cinematographie
Credits:
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Producer: Rita Dagher
Director of photography: Caroline Champetier, Jean-Luc Perreard
Music: Jorge Arriagada
Editor: Nelly Quettier
Running time 137 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Verges, who agrees to be interviewed, proves a slippery figure, using his lawyer's guile to sidestep questions and spin facts. But he is a fascinating figure, and "Terror's Advocate" is a fascinating film even if it never completely pins him down. The film should do extremely well in European festivals and art houses although North American viewers' heads may spin as the film leaps through the history of foreign terrorist organizations of the past half-century.
The key thing about Verges is that he was born in Thailand in 1924 or 1925 -- even here he apparently is slippery -- to a mother from Vietnam and a father from Reunion Island, the Indian Ocean island that is part of France. He thus came of age as multiracial in a colonial setting, which as one interviewee notes, means "to be against things," to be anti-establishment, anti-colonialist and anti-government. So even when this seemingly leftist lawyer defends Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, from his perspective he sees the trial as an opportunity to show that French collaborators were no different from evil Barbie.
As a young attorney, he was asked to defend Djamila Bouhired, an Algerian woman who came to symbolize her country's hopes for freedom when she was arrested and tortured by France for planting bombs in cafes in 1957. Eventually, he obtained her pardon after she was sentenced to death. Subsequently, he married her.
But his reward was to be turned into "the husband of Djamila Bouhired" and to be banished to divorce cases. So it was that Verges abruptly disappeared. Last seen at a political meeting in Paris in February 1970, he didn't re-emerge until 1978.
Cultivating an enigmatic image, Verges merely says, "I was among people". He was spotted occasionally by friends in Paris. Theories of his whereabouts otherwise range from Cambodia, where Pol Pot was a friend from student days, to Palestinian camps or even China.
When he returned, he defended terrorists from Magdalena Kopp and Anis Naccache to Carlos the Jackal and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy. When he defended Kopp, German-born terrorist married to Carlos, history repeated itself. He apparently fell in love with his prisoner-client. Only this time she was married and turned her back on him once she was freed.
One can easily get lost amid the endless talking heads of defendants, experts, politicians, historians and attorneys. But what seems clear is that the defining moment in Verges' life came in his aggressive defense of Djamila Bouhired. That young, passionate and committed man was never able to repeat such a pure legal-political act. So he gradually, especially after his eight-year walkabout, drifted from advocate to l'avocat, becoming a man who knows how to legally help a client in the profitable business of terror or who can associate with anti-Semites and quarrel over the body count in the killing fields of Cambodia.
Schroeder eschews narration, letting the interviewees give the time lines and paint the portraits. Thus no one fills in all the blanks or provides a historical context for the many terrorist groups. Schroder also scrupulously avoids passing judgment -- or at least does so only in his selection of what comments or revelations he chooses to include.
A rich symphonic score by Jorge Arriagada helps flavor this visually thin broth of talking heads and a little archival footage.
L'AVOCAT DE LA TERREUR (TERROR'S ADVOCATE)
Magnolia Pictures
A Wild Bunch/Yalla Films co-production with participation of Canal Plus and the Center National de la Cinematographie
Credits:
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Producer: Rita Dagher
Director of photography: Caroline Champetier, Jean-Luc Perreard
Music: Jorge Arriagada
Editor: Nelly Quettier
Running time 137 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 5/21/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.