But Jacques Vergés, best known as the lawyer who defended Klaus Barbie, The Butcher Of Lyon, is rather more than an opportunistic ambulance chaser.
Born in Thailand to a Vietnamese mother and a father from Reunion Island, his admirable anti-colonial streak has earned him some terrifying friends. A former resistance fighter, he attended the Sorbonne with the Khmer Rouge leader and saved the heroine of the Algerian War of Independence from the guillotine. He married her but soon disappeared into the underground. His whereabouts between 1970-78 are still unknown. Considering the rogues and activities he’s more than happy to discuss on camera, it’s hard to even guess what he might have been up to.
Before he became Mr. Hollywood pot-boiler (Single White Female, anyone?), Barbet Schroeder was the author of such finely crafted documentaries as The Charles Bukowski Tapes and Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait. He has, evidently, lost none of his touch. Terror’s Advocate, an admirably dispassionate march through 20th century is a timely reminder that the only real difference between the terrorist and the revolution is semantic. In the grand scheme of things, yesterday’s left-wing dictatorships are tomorrow’s Islamic republics, guerrillas soon become parliamentarians and one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend. (Vergér’s legal defence for Barbie, we learn, comes from the lawyer’s association with pro-Palestinian, Swiss neo-Nazis.)
Time and again, friends assure us that Vergér is a sentimentalist and a decent guy. Even if that’s not the case, he’s fascinating company for the film’s duration.