In 1997 Christophe André was kidnapped while serving with Doctor Without Borders in a township near Chechnya . Guy Delisle ’s surety recounts the three months that André spent in imprisonment and show the idea that all you really need to make a grand comedian is a enamour story and a good sense of style .
Published by Drawn & Quarterly , Hostageopens up like something out of a Liam Neeson movie . Armed men ambush André in the night , hustle him out of his apartment , and shuttle him forth to an unknown location far enough away from his surroundings to disorientate him . He ’s put in a series of stark , empty rooms , and slowly comes to realise that he ’s being hold surety . Day in and sidereal day out , André ’s solitary fundamental interaction with his captors are moments he ’s set aside to eat watery , disappointing broth and take to the bathroom . There are abbreviated illustration where he feels as if his captivity will be fleeting but , as Hostage spread out , we rapidly realize that this — a meager four wall and a room up windowpane — is it .
In a way , reading Hostage find like croak through André ’s cognitive process of realizing the situation he ’s in . betimes on , there are brief inkling of promise that his loved single are desperately looking for him and that his captors are negotiating the term of his release . But tardily , André realizes that his captivity wo n’t be for the unforesightful term and bit by bit , his world view — and Hostage ’s prowess vogue — begin to change over .
To be kept in a room is to have one ’s world shrunken and shift into a hyper - focussed state . When the only thing you have to keep you company is the radiator you ’re latch to , it becomes more than a radiator to you . It ’s your captor and the symbol of everything that ’s awry with what ’s fall out to you . But it ’s also your friend , in a uncanny way . A constant quantity in your life that stay steady disregarding of all the mental confusion that ’s invaded your life .
There ’s a beauty to Delisle ’s approach to telling André ’s news report that ca n’t be minimize . Though Hostage ’s fine art and its word are thin , they talk book to the sort of headspace that a person might see themselves in if trapped in a way for a act of workweek . In the decidedly cartoonish style of the comic , you get a sense of how André might have divorce from his lifespan as a hostage , view it more as a peculiar affair that happened to someone else rather than to him .
The book is quick to remind you that everything André goes through — mild starving , psychological misdirection , and utter panic — are very actual , but the story is told with the sort of breathlessness that gives you the sense of a person urgently wish it was all a ambition .
In its dark , somber line drawing of life trapped in a elbow room , Hostage divulge a trueness that ’s bigger than the level it ’s recite : art can be mere and powerful at the same time . Delis;e ’s style is cartoonish in a mode that makes you focus on the words being spoken and the aim being draw . In favor of hyper - reality , Hostage instead make you study the burrow vision that unavoidably overcomes a person whose world is abruptly reduced to a few square foot .
Hostage is a testament to simple drawing and honest storytelling . It build a domain using minimum color and words that are carefully chosen to make you find the hopelessness that André ’s grapple with . Because that ’s what Hostage is really about : a valet snatched from his post in the public and leave with picayune to hold up onto in his non - existence . He ’s tied and confused and raging with little understanding of who those emotions should be directed towards .
And yet , in its staring scariness , Hostage deal to make itself into a piece of work of art that secernate a deeply personal story . While most of us will never go through what André did , the book of account bring his loneliness and how , gradually , his intellection turn inwards . André ’s is a story of finding recourse in one ’s ego as everything around him turns dusty and hard . It ’s elusive and at meter disturbing to protrude yourself into but ultimately , it ’s a story more than deserving travail into .
Comicsgraphic novel
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