Antigone

The pretention of this film is to make us believe that it is a tragedy because it takes its title from a famous Greek tragedy and because the protagonists it shows bear Greek names picked from the tragedy. In 2020 it sounds absurd to have North African emigrants called Antigone, Ménécée, Ismène, or Étéocle!. More over the story ignores totally the original content of the tragedy. The result is an amateurish film badly acted and badly directed. The only positive aspect is the beauty of Nahema Ricci's facial expression. Unfortunately because of the inexperienced director her expression remains the same all along the movie.

Antigone is a naive teen, a good high school student, who idealizes and loves her two older brothers. Their family is a refugee from some violent middle-east area, arriving to Canada as small kids with their grandmother for sole support. Unbeknown to Antigone, her brothers are now small time criminals instrumental in the death of some other youth. During a police operation, one brother dies and the other can expect expulsion to his former country.

And that is intolerable to Antigone. No matter what her brothers could have done, one is dead and the other is to be repatriated. So she takes it onto herself to defy the justice and prison systems, to organise her remaining brother's escape and to take whatever rap happens. Her mind is now set, no matter what, to pursue its dramatic logic.

She could be defended in court like any other misguided juvenile delinquent. However her clever lawyer devises a crusader defence to shore up popular support. And the issue becomes should she follow the law of loyalty to her family members and those of society. Antigone makes her choice irrevocably, not acknowledging that it is the laws of her host society that have protected, fed, schooled and medically cared for her family from the moment they set foot in Canada. But the film doesn't make that acknowledgement either; it rather makes it look like cold white society set against poor migrants. And so, Sophocles' masterpiece is recuperated to advance the victimisation rhetoric of the time.

Sophocles' Antigone was a discussion of the dilemma between the necessity of applying laws to protect society versus the duty that one senses to accomplish another duty (family, religious, moral, etc.). This film is less interested in Sophocles' issues and more in showing how someone can lose all senses, and everything else, to pursue a noble if misguided aim. No service is paid to the idea that individuals make decisions that can destroy their families, not to mention their lives, and therefore they should act carefully and responsibly. And so, the film is mostly (good) show and little substance.

Firstly I applaud any adaption of ancient archetypes. Changing the times is interesting, and the ancients authors fundamentally changed even the morals of the archetype stories. There are very different lessons/conclusions in the Daedalus, Prometheus, Iphigenia & Electra, etc. of course Antigone, part of the Oedipus cycle, was dealt with very differently by Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. . That said this telling is a total failure. It is shallow and pedantic and absurdly puts Antigone'S fate on everyone, making the story nonsense from any perspective.

After the screening of Antigone, I was in shock, filled with awe and admiration. How to explain the conviction that I ( and all the audience) we were witnessing the birth of an important piece of art? I think it might be by dissection, by studying its internal parts.

The first main quality of Sophie Deraspe's "Antigone" is the choice of the theme: the author suggests an analyze of the moral of our society. It is a film about integrity in a society where the rules are fixed and should be respected no matter what. Sophie Deraspe's script it is a meditation about our own implication by adopting an unconcerned view about other people's needs. It is very important to notice the mastery of the plot, the suspense created by the rise of hope that Antigone will be liberated. And to understand the scene in the Juv facility when Antigone's indignation is provoked by the way one of the girls is humiliated. I am in awe about how the author used the role of the chorus in a stunning modern vision: young people follow Antigone's statement "Mon Coeur me dit". My heart told me. Yes, it is a film about the importance of what your heart tells you. The moving scenes of Ménacée, the grandmother, singing in front of the facility where Antigone is prisoner, brings us to understand the real meaning of love. But this same love also triggers the climax : when Ménacée, not to leave Polynice alone, decides to go back to her country, Antigone's fight to keep her family together is broken. She is left alone. This replaces Sophocle's play which ends with Antigone's death with the contemporary meaning: alone in a society that rejects her, Antigone is like being dead. This is the way I understand the last shot of Antigone, the end of Sophie's film. The directorial mastery might be explained by one scene: Eteocle's death. The scene is filmed in a large shot, we barely see the cell phone in Eteocle's hand, we hear the gun shot and Polynice's shout. We want to see it again, to understand how it was possible. And that is mastery. The cast is outstanding. Nahema Ricci's performance is a great tribute to the art of acting. But not only Nahema. Every character brings that aesthetic pleasure to dive into a real world: Ménacée ( Rashida Oussada), Ismène, the judge, Haemon and his father. The movie, filmed by Sophie Deraspe (it is difficult to find a position that was not Sophie's direct work) brings the aesthetic of cinematography to a the highest level: I am still haunted by the intensity of the C.U's, the pure beauty of shots and last, but not least, the editing (yes, Sohie's again) not only of the images but also of the sounds. Antigone is an important film in the world's cinema, a film that makes one think and evaluate his/her own choices.

To anyone who has ever read or watched the tragedy of Antigone, this film is nothing but a cheap joke. They should have never dare a comparison, and if they hadn't, the film could be watchable, still very average, common, one dimensional, full of cliches, but watchable. Now it's insulting. The character of Antigone is only 50% of the tragedy. The other 50% is Creon, who guess what: he doesn't exist in the film! I guess it wasn't very easy to find an up to date parallel for him so they just ignored him... I'm actually begging: stop messing with the masters, Sophocles in this case, you can't beat them! 3 stars only for the powerful performance of young Antigone.