Cinema in an Age of Terror: North Africa, Victimization, and Colonial History

2. Mapping National Identity and Unrealized Union: Rachid Boucha reb’s Indigènes

2 Mapping National Identity and Unrealized Union Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes In Le Syndrome de Vichy historian Henry Rousso identifies the return of memories that had been smothered under a reassuring myth of French national resistance during World War II as a period of time best captured by the image of “le miroir brisé” (broken mirror) (120). A number of developments after 1968, particularly during the period from 1972 until 1980, unsettled the mirror image of resistance that many French people had of the nation under occupation. Amongst the most significant developments, at least in terms of cinematic history , were the release of Claude Chabrol’s La Ligne de démarcation in 1966, Marcel Ophüls’s Le Chagrin et la Pitié in 1969, and Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien in 1973. These works ushered in a new period when France’s troubled relation to its wartime past became a central cultural concern manifested on screen. This period, according to Rousso, was then followed by an obsessive focus on the wartime experience, a national obsession exacerbated by high-profile trials, such as that of Klaus Barbie and the fiftieth anniversary of the “dark 50 Mapping National Identity years” of the occupation (140–60). This retrospective gaze directed toward the experience of the occupation has been qualified as a nationalist vision steeped in tones of nostalgia and characterized as a fetishization of national memory. For Rousso and Eric Conan the prominence even of diverse and competing memories of the occupation signals “la sacralisation de la mémoire de la dernière guerre mondiale” (the sacralization of the memory of the last world war) and defines national memory by its “caractère paralysant” (paralyzing character) (44, 21). French nationalism emerges within this paradigm of memory as the obsessive search for national definition and character in vestiges of history. This search for national identity, as Richard Golsan points out, is observed not only in the terms of national introspection evinced by the retrospective national gaze but also in the fact that public debates related to the events of the occupation and its historical context have become defining features of political culture (23–29). Upon first consideration it might seem inappropriate to insert Rachid Bouchareb’s recent award-winning film Indigènes, written with Olivier Morelle, within the historical parameters set by Rousso. The film has been an immediate success since its release and competition in the category of Best Foreign Film at the 2007 Oscars. Indigènes, which translates to “natives” in French or, in this case, “indigenous soldiers” and has been attributed the English title Days of Glory, treats the overlooked role of North African soldiers in the French army during the liberation of France in the waning years of World War II and Vichy France. Tens of thousands of North African soldiers served for France, contributing to a larger total of roughly three hundred thousand colonized soldiers from Africa, Indochina, and other colonies; Indigènes is one of the first films to examine this topic in an epic and popular form, and it is certainly the first film treating this topic, as I will discuss below, to have been immediately influential within the political realm. In this chapter I examine the politicized nature of Bouchareb’s portrayal of colonialera victimization. Placing Bouchareb’s work within the context of  Mapping National Identity 51 the 2005 riots in France, referred to as an exemplary instance of the “clash of civilizations,” I examine how a return to the victimization of colonial history in the postcolonial revisionist account might occlude instances of contemporary neocolonial oppression related directly to the age of terror. Indigènes invites instant comparisons with Bouchareb’s awardwinning film Little Senegal (2001). Bouchareb, who has referred to himself as a Franco-Algerian, was interested in the mapping out of histories of oppression related to the African experience of imperialism in his earlier film as well. Little Senegal follows the journey of a Senegalese guide, Alloune, who gives tours of the coastline where his ancestors were imprisoned and shipped to America in the Atlantic slave trade. One day Alloune travels to the plantations of the South in the United States in search of his ancestors, eventually locating descendants in New York City. While the focus in Little Senegal remains the search for ancestry within the imperialist space by the “native,” the focus in Indigènes is the “native” and his...