CARLOS THE JACKAL
The man known as Carlos the Jackal said that Marxism was his religion and that he was dedicated to the Palestinian cause. Having seen the long version of Olivier Assayas' remarkable “Carlos,” I conclude that for Carlos his religion and his cause were the same, and they were himself. This is a terrifying portrait of an egomaniac who demands absolute obedience, and craves it even more when his power and relevance are drained away. All he has left at the end are a few pathetic nonentities who obey him.
If Carlos is a shabby excuse for a great man, “Carlos” is nonetheless a powerful film from recent history, considering in (largely fictionalized) detail how the myth of Carlos shadowed the years from 1975, when he led a raid on OPEC oil ministers in Vienna, until 1994, when he was betrayed by former comrades, arrested in Sudan and returned to France for trial. He is now serving a life sentence and from prison has complained that this film is inaccurate.
I have no knowledge of the real Carlos and can only review the film. On that basis, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan born in 1949 and educated at a Cuban training camp and Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, used his ideology primarily to dominate others and excuse his megalomania. Toward the end, even his superiors in the Palestinian liberation movement were fed up with him, and after exhausting the hospitality of Libya, Syria and Iraq, he became a man without a country.
Carlos is played by Edgar Ramirez, an actor of great vitality and conviction. He speaks five languages, and in “Carlos,” he performs dialogue in even more, as he functions in France, Spain, Germany, Egypt, Iraq, Russia and North Africa. (The film is largely in English, the international language of terrorism.) Without using any apparent makeup tricks, he successfully ages from a young hot-head to a middle-age “Syrian businessman” with a nice little pot belly, while passing through a period when he is lean and muscular after guerrilla training. His side burns flourish and disappear, beards and mustaches come and go, and yet clearly he is Carlos if you take a good look. He passed through many passport controls where apparently nobody did, though once years ago at London's Heathrow, I was pulled aside on suspicion of being Carlos. He ran on the plump side, for a jackal.
In notes and anonymous phone calls taking blame (or “credit”) for bombings, murders and missile attacks, he identified his group as “the armed branch of the Palestinian Liberation Struggle.” I have no idea what the reality was. In the film, this group seems to consist largely of himself as the autarch of a small group of submissive followers who had loose connections with better-organized cells in Germany and France.
Carlos The Jackal Real-Life Terrorist Extraordinaire Seeks Appeal Over Bombing Conviction In Paris Court
https://www.ibtimes.com/carlos-jackal-real-life-terrorist-extraordinaire-seeks-appeal-over-bombing-conviction-1254533
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