Jacques Verges is such a compelling, complex and contradictory character that if he didn't exist someone would be obliged to invent him. It is the gift of "Terror's Advocate," Barbet Schroeder's riveting new documentary, to simply present Verges as is, to say "here is the man" and let things speak for themselves. Do they ever.
Though he's all but unknown in this country, French attorney Verges is familiar in Europe for defending the indefensible, for serving as the lawyer for those whom society, with reason, considers to be monsters: notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal, Khmer Rouge leader and architect of genocide Pol Pot, fugitive Nazi Klaus Barbie and many, many more.
Yet whatever image this list conjures up, the sybaritic, cigar-smoking Verges likely confounds it. Formidably intelligent, effortlessly articulate, a witty raconteur, Verges is not only the smartest guy in the room, he knows it. His arrogance is the real thing, not the store-bought kind, and his contempt for the "mindless fools" with "tiny brains" who oppose him is as understandable as it is completely mesmerizing.
Sure of his ability to control any situation, Verges cooperated completely with the film but allowed Schroeder final cut, and, with a lesser director, that strategy would have been effective. But Schroeder, who has a documentary on Idi Amin as well as the Oscar-winning "Reversal of Fortune" among his credits, is a savvy, fearless director who is not so easily manipulated. "He's a combination of Alan Dershowitz and Claus von Bulow," said Schroeder of his subject at Cannes, where the film was the talk of the festival. "You get two for the price of one."
Schroeder not only gives us Verges' fascinating personal history, he understands that in telling it he is also conveying the spellbinding half-secret, half-forgotten history of revolutionary terrorism in the 20th century, a movement Verges was present at the creation of and knows intimately.
So "Terror's Advocate" shows us the stranger-than-fiction inner workings of what sometimes plays like an especially deadly political soap opera, complete with romance, bullets and blood. It's enough to make you wonder if people like Frederick Forsyth and Robert Ludlum simply took notes on reality when they wrote their thrillers.
