People used to watch The Wire and rave about how it explained so much about ‘institutions’ and ‘the state of the modern city’ or whatever else they read in a David Simon interview.

Now people watch Mad Men and get drink recipes and go buy Mad Men inspired clothing.

Progress? I actually think it is.

“The funny thing is – on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook.”

Malik El Djebena, the lead character in A Prophet, is not an honest man, straight as an arrow. He’s a two-bit hoodlum, utterly powerless and naive. He enters prison as a nineteen year old, having to serve a six-year sentence. In those six years, he’ll become a real crook, playing off various groups in order to survive and make a life for himself.

In a way, A Prophet is the anti Godfather. In Puzo and Coppola’s gangster epic, Michael Corleone is a victim of his own desires. He is the legitimate son and has the best chances out of all of the Corleone children to make an honest living, and it’s what he’s being groomed for. But partly out of family ties and partly out of his own ambition, he enters the world of crime and becomes a loathsome figure in the process. We are never truly with him, since his transformation is ultimately a defeat.

Malik’s situation is the opposite. He has no hope in life, being illiterate, having no family, and being jailed so young. He enters the life of crime unwillingly, forced by a Corsican mafia who threatens to kill him unless he kills for them. We do sympathize with him, since he hardly has free will. And yet, throughout his quest to become a powerful criminal, he is never really deplorable. His crime ring consists of an old prison friend who is trying to care for his young wife and child, and a harmless dealer. He learns to read, write, to speak different languages, and advances courses. While it would be preferable that his life was more honest, it’s hard to begrudge the guy.

The film is successful in the way that The Wire was successful: it allows us to sympathize with people who are completely removed from our own experiences, because by explaining the world they grow up in we can understand why they are what they are.

Writer’s block? Theme block? Brain atrophy?