An examination of the career of Jacques Vergès (1925- ), attorney for members of Algeria's FLN, Palestine's FPLP, the Khmer Rouge, Carlos and associates, Klaus Barbie, and other revolutionaries and outcasts. Archival footage, news articles, and photographs mix with contemporary interviews of Vergès, friends, associates, and historians. Connections with Nazis are explored, as well as Vergès's marriage to Djamila Bouhared, his courtroom methods, his disappearance from 1970 to 1978, and the roots of his radicalism. Throughout, Vergès remains playful and charming, with a soupçon of arrogance. The film suggests Vergès's anti-colonial nature is at his center.
Genre(s): Documentary, Biography, History
Runtime: 135 minutes
Rating: 7.1/10 (665 votes)
Country: France
Languages: French, German, English, Khmer
Company: La Sofica Uni Etoile 3
Sound: Dolby Digital
Director(s): Barbet Schroeder
Producer(s):
Brahim Chioua – co-producer
Rita Dagher – producer
Cast:
Jacques Vergès – Himself
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
Music: Jorge Arriagada
Tagline: Dictators. Terrorists. War Criminals. Meet the man who defended them all.
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Barbet Schroeder's portrait of French attorney Jacques Vergès. You'veseen him defending people like Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal, Pol Potas well as other dictators and terrorists.
This is a complex story of a complex man and it essentially tells thetale of the man from World War 2 until today. (And even at 140 minutesthe film leaves a great deal out). Here is man of his time, who met anddefended with many of the famous and infamous people of the last fiftyyears. He seems to be a man who generally believes in the right of theoppressed to stand up to their oppressors and to have some one to standup for them. However this is not just the story of a man who fights forthe oppressed but it is also the story of a man entangled in thingsthat will cause many to question just how slick a guy is Verges. Manyof the terrorists and dictators he defends are in fact his friends, andhe is not doing it for the love of cause but also for the love of thefiner things.
I liked the film a great deal. To be certain I was lost as to bits ofthe history and who some people were, but at the same time the filmisn't about the history, so much as Verges moving through it. This isthe story of the man, his causes and to some degree his women. Whatexactly are we to make of Verges? I don't know, but I sure do thinkthat he and his life make for a compelling tale. I loved that my ideaof what Verges is changed. I loved that I was completely confused atthe end as to what I thought, confused in a way that only a film thatforces you to think can do. In the end I don't know what I think ofVerges, and I love that I will have to sit and reflect on whattranspired on screen and in the man's life for a good long while.
Certainly one of the better feature length theatrical documentaries tocome down the pike in a while.
See it…probably more than once. See it and then discuss it, it willget the gray cells of your brain working.
8 out of 10.
Terror's Advocate is a must-see for anyone interested inanti-colonialist movements or the politics and terror attacks of Europein the 1970s and 80s. In many ways, attorney Jacques Verges' tale playslike a who's who of late-20th century international intrigue. Viet Nam,Algeria, Zaire, Cambodia, China, Pol Pot, Yasser Arafat and Carlos theJackal are but a few of the hot spots and honchos to play a part in theduplicitous attorney's life.
As a film, Terror's Advocate is not without its shortcomings. At wellover two hours and consisting almost exclusively of interview footage,it is more reminiscent of the documentary style of yesteryear,employing no editing tricks or clever voice-overs that lend appeal tothe more modern style of filmmakers like Michael Moore or MorganSpurlock. From an entertainment standpoint, the film definitely couldhave benefited from a greater use of file footage as well as betterintroduction to some of the major players, whose backdrops are oftenrelegated to a single, brief subtitle. A prime example is the mentionof the murder of Lumumba, a onetime communist ruler of the freshlyindependent Belgian Congo. After being overthrown and murdered by CIAdirectives and an aggressive colonel named Mobutu (who would eventuallydespotically rule Zaire for over three decades), Lumumba was replacedby Tshombe. Both Lumumba and Tshombe are mentioned in the film withouta single reference to Zaire or the Congo. Similarly, little backdrop iscreated for Carlos. In doing so, the film assumes a lot of knowledge ofevents from its viewers, probably too much.
Nevertheless, Verges is a fascinating character. His path, oncepristine, very clearly strays from the light. Modern history generallycredits the agenda of the Algerian "terrorists" that expelled theFrench in 1962. Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers is a cornerstone ofrevolutionary anti-colonialist film-making and interestingly is usedtoday as a reference by anti-terrorist government luminaries likeRichard Clarke, the onetime anti-terrorist czar and biggest proponentof eliminating Al Qaeda in the presidential administrations prior tothe 9/11 attacks. Somewhere along the way, though, Verges lost thefaith, for the struggles of the proud Algerians can hardly be comparedto the mercenary and ruthless murders committed by Carlos, aRussian/Columbian fighting in the name of Palestinian extremists, butmore for his own profit. The former terrorist Stein hilariously refersto Carlos as a psychopath and laments the sad state of Algeria when itsleaders later tell him that Hitler was a great man.
In many ways, Terror's Advocate leaves more questions than it answers,especially with respect to the attorney's self-imposed 8-year exile,during which he was clearly doing more than just hiding from friends.He also appears to boldly lie to the camera when asked point blankabout his connections to Carlos and some of the others (Pol Pot and hispeople deny Verges was ever even in Cambodia) and thus it becomesdifficult to know when to believe him and when not to. It is also clearVerges hubris was ever increasing, as when he takes the Barbie case andfaces an army of 40 lawyers for the prosecution (he insinuates thateach is only equal to 1/40th of him).
The DVD features a time line as a bonus feature. It is definitely worthlooking at as it fills in some blanks and adds a little context to theaccounts of the interviews.
This really hadn't any beginning, middle or end. It simply was a longconversation with various persons and Jaques Verges, the advocate ofterror.
The idea is an intriguing one, that of a lawyer who defends thereprehensible because he believes in due-process and the law more thanabstract ideas like morality and goodness.
But this isn't what it was, because Verges never believed his clientslacking in morality or goodness. He represented these clients becausepolitically he felt he had to.
It'd been more interesting (I think) to understand the psyche of alawyer who represents clients he himself (or she herself) detests andholds no political allegiance to.
The runtime is a bloated two-hours and seventeen minutes, and in thattime holds very little focus. It's very interesting subject-matter, butit's presented in such a wandering manner that leaves us bored. Onlytwo or three trials are explicitly discussed and played out for theviewers. The rest of this film is Verges political tendencies and howthey have got him in hot water with the French government.
the film begins with a credit, as stated in other reviews, that itrepresents the point of view of the director. the material is ambiguousbut it seems to me pretty clear that Schroder respects Verges. Idisagree strongly with the person who imagines it'd be more"interesting" to watch a doc about lawyers who represent people theydespise and wonder what at all would be interesting about that. yes thefilm leaves some questions unanswered and in the interest of coveringmore ground on its subject does not get bogged down with some detailsabout the role in history of some of the figures involved. this hardlymeans that the film was formless, incoherent, but as another reviewermentioned the film requires the viewer to think, does not hand overconclusions wrapped up in a nice package with a bloody bow on top. Itseems indisputable that Verges was a *collaborator* with those of hisclients involved in "the struggle" against colonialism, whom he viewedas nothing more or less than soldiers, some honorable and some not somuch. He took on the indefensible case of barbie to hold up a mirror toFrance's record in algeria. I don't really understand peoples'confusion about schroder's point of view of this complicated but farfrom unfathomable character. I appreciate that this film points the wayto other viewing cf the battle of algiers.
After having seen Schroeder's Idi Amin and Kiki the talking gorilla, Iwas disappointed by L'avocat. From an artistic point of view it is noton the same level. I found it difficult to recognize the organizing,guiding hand of the director. Also, the subject is strangely out offocus – but that is maybe just one of the points the movie wants tomake. Maître Vergès must be a pretty elusive fellow and certainly notsomeone who let himself manipulate by a movie maker. And – contrary toAmin and the gorilla – Vergès is just not very telegenic. That'scertainly nobody's fault, it's just a fact.
What remains for me are the many „bonmots" this movie contains. It didnot become clear to me if Vergès ever was a good lawyer. I suspect healways saw the court of law principally as a stage for making politicalstatements or for furthering a certain self image. But he certainly isa great story teller. „My only war wound", he tells the interviewer,„was self inflicted – I cut a finger when I closed my pocket knifeafter eating a dish of oysters". „Mao listened to me attentively – ormaybe he just wanted to be polite." It is fun to listen to him tellingthese anecdotes and being disrespectful, even to himself. Many, maybetoo many other people make their entrance as interviewees. Even forsomeone who has a notion of the last few decades of world history it isnot always easy to follow.
Saying all this, I have to credit the movie for forming a pattern ofstatements, places and time periods that recount events which brought alot of pain and sorrow to this planet. The central question – is MaîtreVergès a man with a cause? – remains unanswered. Somehow he shiftedfrom one „liberation movement" to the next, maybe connected to secretservices, maybe not – his aims apparently as fuzzy as those of the saidmovements – never drowning like others but always ending up seeminglycomfortably on the surface. It is never clear how much Vergès was aprime mover on the terrorist scene or a teleguided pawn. After seeingthis 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'avocatshows that there were always connections and sympathies between old,active Nazis and young, seemingly leftist revolutionaries. Others knowthe old French saying: Les extrèmes se touchent.