You hear the term “muscular filmmaking” thrown around a lot when it comes to Athena, but that doesn’t quite do justice to how steroidally jacked it is. This movie has muscles on its muscles and muscles on its eyeballs. This is the Schwarzenegger of muscular filmmaking. Athena is a French film that follows the story of four brothers in the urban projects of Paris: one a soldier, one a protest leader, one a drug dealer, and one a victim.
Athena has by far the best opening scene in recent memory – it’s like a Gareth Evans take on the famous Boogie Nights opening oner mixed with the grandiose scope of the long take in Atonement. And then director Romaine Gavras (and co-writer Ladj Ly, director of the similarly themed 2019 film Les Miserables) doesn’t take his foot off the pedal even from then on. In this day and age, the unending string of showy long takes can feel a dime-a-dozen, showy, unnecessary and even a little wearisome. You might have feel that at times during the course of this film, but that’s only because the opening scene sets such an impossibly high, adrenaline-infused bar that the rest of the film struggles to match that giddying intensity and pure mayhem. Gavras lets you know right off the bat that this 1 hour and 37 minute ride is an unrelenting one.
The best part is that in addition to being insanely cool, it’s also purposeful – setting up the story and the characters in an unforgettable way. The long takes also serve the purpose of ratcheting up the tension, you don’t get any cuts or breaks as a viewer because no one else in the movie does. The film is a kinetic and immersive experience. You feel the sweeping elation of the protestors, the consuming trepidation of a rookie cop walking into an urban war zone, the fear and anguish of a fleeing mother, and the rage and grief of the brother of a murdered child. You can smell the smoke and feel the heat of the flames licking up against the crowd. The camera is the ultimate audience surrogate. And this was all just watching it on Netflix at home – imagine watching this in theatres.
The strength of Athena is that it displays a sense of urgency that too many films lack. But at the same time, it fails more often than not on the human, character-based level. Save for the charisma of the two lead actors playing Karim (Sami Slimane) and Abdel (Dali Benssalah), the cast could basically have been any plug-and-play actors and it wouldn’t have made a discernible difference. And the ending is frustratingly limp for such a muscular film. Athena is a little bit like the thousands of roman candle fireworks being set off in the film – loud, noisy, awe-inspiring, and ultimately transient. But that almost doesn’t matter because for most of the time you’ll be too busy wondering “how did they do that???” and marveling at the action that is unfurling in front of your eyes. Flip on Netflix if you haven’t seen this already, but you might want to have your blood pressure medication handy first.
Now streaming on Netflix.
