Prospect recommends: A Prophet

There’s the teenage world of High School Musical, the art films on the festival circuit, the blockbusters like 2012 whose posters are plastered on bus shelters, and the indie pics that rely on viral marketing. But every now and then a film comes along that delivers on the whole palette of cinema’s pleasures: the sensation of action cinema, the contemplation of art cinema, the relevance of social cinema and the transcendence of the spiritual filmmaker.

A Prophet is such a film. It is the sixth feature directed by 57-year-old Parisian Jacques Audiard, whose last movie, The Beat that My Heart Skipped (2005), was like early Scorsese. A Prophet is the best gangster picture since Goodfellas, but because its central character Malik is a young French Arab, its social scope is broader. Malik, played by Tahar Rahim, is sent to prison for six years (we don’t know why). That setting distils the drama; the scene where he hides a razor blade in his mouth to kill another inmate is fascinating, and an encounter with a deer is numinous.

Violence usually has a steroid effect on film, pumping it up artificially, but here the testosterone in front of and, presumably, behind the camera combine to deliver a powerful, controlled, torque. If the movie playing field were level, A Prophet would win five Oscars. It’s the kind of stylised masculine movie that Michael Mann should be making.

On general release from 22nd January