Could one real person somehow have a personal connection to the stories portrayed in films as different as Persepolis, La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers), Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), The Killing Fields and Munich? The answer is yes, and Barbet Schroeder’s documentary L’avocat de la terreur (Terror’s Advocate) paints an unusually dense if still incomplete portrait of the man in question: Jacques Vergès. The lawyer is perhaps most well-known as the defendant in the trail against Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie but his client list includes terrorists/freedom fighters from at least three continents. Though the film comes with a warning that it expresses only the point of view of its director, in reality, what Schroeder seems to offer is a portrait of a glib man who simply defies any conclusive description.

 

As a French citizen with a Vietnamese mother and a father from the French island Reunion in the Indian Ocean, Vergès might have the lust to free himself and the world of colonial oppressors in his blood. Briefly married to Algerian freedom fighter Djamila Bouhired after he defended her in court and finally succeeded in having her death sentence for terrorism pardoned, Vergès has since had a career unlike many others, with the most enigmatic part being an unexplained absence from public view from 1970 through 1978. Rumour has it he was in Cambodia with Pol Pot, whom he knew and befriended at university, but Schroeder, in an aside that is too long for what is essentially a simple refutation, visits Pot’s number two in command in Thailand to get a definite ‘no’.

 

The title L’avocat de la terreur (Terror's Advocate) is of course a play on the devil’s advocate (while avocat in French also means lawyer), which is a pretty apt description of his tactics in court. To paraphrase Vergès: someone’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

 

With the enormous amount of clients (sometimes referred to as "clients, and, of course, friends" by Vergès), Schroeder has had the difficult task to decide on which clients to focus, and he is not entirely successful in creating a picture that conveys the enormous breath and variety of Vergès’ career, notably never touching on his work for dictators from sub-Saharan Africa (though some of their pictures and names accompany the end credits) ,which is odd for the man who also directed Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait (General Idi Amin Dada: Self Portrait).

 

Not mentioned either are his controversial defence of Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy and his formative work in Prague in the 1950s – in the middle of the Cold War, though possible connections with secret services and many underground organisations in countries ranging from Germany to Israel and Algeria are hinted at and explored.

 

At over 130 minutes, the film is long but never less than absorbing. In fact, it is so stuffed with talking heads that continuously bring up little asides that would warrant further exploration that the film could have been much longer or even a series. Besides many people involved in Vergès long and colourful career, Schroeder also interviews Vergès himself.

 

What he says and does not say is certainly the most interesting material for a film that does not succeed in pinning the man down – something that might well be impossible, so Schroeder has done the next best thing: make an engaging excursion into some facts (and perhaps some of the fiction) associated with the man’s life.

 

Browse for DVDs, soundtracks, books and more: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr, amazon.de, dvdGO.es, internetbookshop.it, nl.bol.com, allposters.com.