L'avocat de la terreur (2007)

Calificación de los usuarios:

7.1/10   

Director:

Barbet Schroeder

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

12 octubre 2007 (USA)

Género:

Documental | Biografía | Historia

Frase comercial:

Dictators. Terrorists. War Criminals. Meet the man who defended them all.

Plot:

A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla who has defending unpopular figures such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.

Plot Keywords:

Nazi | Anti Colonial | Radicalism | Khmer Rouge | Historian

Premios:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Comentarios de los usuarios:

The Life and Times of a Joker

Reparto

Jacques Vergès	...	Himself
listado alfabético del resto del reparto:
Bassam Abu Sharif	...	Himself
Klaus Barbie	...	Himself (archive footage)
Abderrahmane Benhamida	...	Himself
Djamila Bouhared	...	Herself
Bachir Boumaâza	...	Himself
Maître Brahimi	...	Himself
Louis Caprioli	...	Himself
Carlos	...	Himself (voice)
Nuon Chea	...	Himself
Isabelle Coutant-Peyre	...	Herself
Jean-Paul Dollé	...	Himself
Zohra Drif-Bitat	...	Herself (as Zohra Drif)
Guillaume Durand	...	Himself (archive footage)
Lionel Duroy	...	Himself
Claude Faure	...	Himself
David Flinchheimer	...	Himself
Horst Franz	...	Himself
Rolande Giraud-Arnaud	...	Herself
Tep Khunal	...	Himself
Hans-Joachim Klein	...	Himself
Magdalena Kopp	...	Herself
Alain Marsaud	...	Himself
Gilles Menage	...	Himself (as Gilles Ménage)
Claude Moniquet	...	Himself
Colonel Raymond Muelle	...	Himself
Anis Naccache	...	Himself
Karim Pakradomi	...	Himself
Yacef Saadi	...	Himself (as Yacef Saâdi)
Barbet Schroeder	...	Récitant / Narrator (voice)
Oliver Schröm	...	Himself
Siné	...	Himself
Mahab Suleiman	...	Himself
Martine Tigrane	...	Herself
Patricia Tourancheau	...	Herself
Neda Vidakovic	...	Herself
Tobias Wunschik	...	Himself

También conocida como:

Terror's Advocate (USA) (new title)
El abogado del terror (Spain) [es]

Duración:

France:135 min

País:

France

Idioma:

Francés | Alemán | Inglés | Khmer

Color:

Color

Relación de Aspecto:

1.85 : 1

Sonido:

Dolby Digital

Clasificación:

France:U | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Canada:14A | USA:Unrated | Sweden:15 | Brazil:12

Locaciones de Filmación:

Algiers, Algeria

Compañía:

La Sofica Uni Etoile 3

Citas:

Jacques Vergès: I was asked "Would you defend Hitler?" I said "I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty."

Conexiones de Película:

Referenced in "Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: The Best of 2007" (2007)

The Life and Times of a Joker

After having seen Schroeder's Idi Amin and Kiki the talking gorilla, I was disappointed by L'avocat. From an artistic point of view it is not on the same level. I found it difficult to recognize the organizing, guiding hand of the director. Also, the subject is strangely out of focus – but that is maybe just one of the points the movie wants to make. Maître Vergès must be a pretty elusive fellow and certainly not someone who let himself manipulate by a movie maker. And - contrary to Amin and the gorilla - Vergès is just not very telegenic. That's certainly nobody's fault, it's just a fact.

What remains for me are the many „bonmots" this movie contains. It did not become clear to me if Vergès ever was a good lawyer. I suspect he always saw the court of law principally as a stage for making political statements or for furthering a certain self image. But he certainly is a great story teller. „My only war wound", he tells the interviewer, „was self inflicted – I cut a finger when I closed my pocket knife after eating a dish of oysters". „Mao listened to me attentively – or maybe he just wanted to be polite." It is fun to listen to him telling these anecdotes and being disrespectful, even to himself. Many, maybe too many other people make their entrance as interviewees. Even for someone who has a notion of the last few decades of world history it is not always easy to follow.

Saying all this, I have to credit the movie for forming a pattern of statements, places and time periods that recount events which brought a lot of pain and sorrow to this planet. The central question - is Maître Vergès a man with a cause? - remains unanswered. Somehow he shifted from one „liberation movement" to the next, maybe connected to secret services, maybe not - his aims apparently as fuzzy as those of the said movements - never drowning like others but always ending up seemingly comfortably on the surface. It is never clear how much Vergès was a prime mover on the terrorist scene or a teleguided pawn. After seeing this movie I would liken him to a joker in a pack of cards.

Someone not very deep into history might be surprised at how L'avocat shows that there were always connections and sympathies between old, active Nazis and young, seemingly leftist revolutionaries. Others know the old French saying: Les extrèmes se touchent.