The film won Best Picture at this year’s London Film Festival, the Grand Prix at Cannes, Best Actor at the European Film Awards, and is nominated as Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Golden Globes.
Tahar sat down with www.nus.org.uk to discuss the difficulties and joys in playing such a complex character who is on-screen for almost every second of the film’s 155 minutes.
First off, congratulations on your European Film Award for Best Actor.
Oh, thank you very much. It’s good!
What brought you to the role?
I had a lot of auditions [laughs]. Eight auditions during three months.
How much did you bring to the role of Malik?
TR: I don’t know how to answer. Because Jacques is a great, great director. He’s always there. When you have a question he gives you. He created and I wear it. You know? And he gives us a lot of freedom. I mean, he gives you direction, and then if you want to go walking or running or crawling or jumping, you do. If it’s good for the movie, if you can do it, do it. If it’s not, stop. Don’t crawl. Go walking. You know? It’s the same thing about the way of talking.
I found it interesting that we are not given any information on Malik’s past.
He has a past. It’s represented by [the scars on] his back. He’s homeless, that’s all.
And the movie’s really about his present. And his future. It’s interesting that in the film the criminals don’t get punished, but succeed. Hollywood criminals get punished. Is Malik punished?
Ah, he had six years in jail.
But that seemed to give him the only life, the only success, he has?
Yeah, but he’s punished by his master first of all, I mean Cesar. He’s a victim, Malik, at the beginning. He’s forced to do those things, he doesn’t want to do it. He’s a criminal when he’s forced to be a criminal. Or when his life is threatened. So what else do you do when you’re in war? Before that he didn't kill anyone. You know what I mean?
But he doesn’t seem a victim. When is shoes get stolen, he fights back, getting beat up twice.
He’s a victim but he’s wild. You can be a victim and be wild. When people make bad things for you, then you are a victim. But you can defend yourself.
The film is doing well. What do you attribute its success to?
Oh, yeah. I’m happy. It’s a great movie. I don’t know, really, maybe because first of all, Jacques is a great director. It’s an amazing script, too. Because the whole team is near to perfection, there was something human inside. It’s a genre movie, so a genre talks to people fastly. Even if it’s something artistical that you can talk about for hours and hours, there is something that people can understand very fastly, so they can join the movie.
What genre would you say it is?
It’s a jail movie first, and it’s also a novel. Malik is building and writing his own life. This is a genre movie but Jacques moved the genre in introducing another genre inside, something like fantastic, with the ghosts. But it’s not free, it’s something…there’s a sense. So it means something. It’s the interiority of Malik that means he’s guilty.
What did you think when you saw the movie?
I was shaking [laughs]. It was surprising, thanks to the montage. It was amazing. Wow. I was surprised every time.
Was it a gruelling shoot?
No. Not that much really. The prison was a set. It helps me, because the set looks so real. But no, it wasn’t because you know you’re not in a real jail, really. Just stop lying to yourself. At the end when he says cut and at the end of the day you go home, you recognize your friends, you recognize your girlfriend, your family…there was such a beautiful mood in this movie, so you’re happy to go to jail.
A Prophet is out at cinemas everywhere from 22 January.