Thursday 27 april 2006
From hero to zero
Ihab Shaarawy
Gazette staff
"It's nations and not the cities that fall," said one of the Iraqis watching the Egyptian movie The Night When Baghdad Fell.
And this is what Mohamed Amin, the writer and the director of the film, tries to prove in 107 minutes of a daring black comedy.
In his sarcastic, critical way, Amin attempts to explore the weaknesses that have led the Arabs to the humiliating position in which they now find themselves, surrounded by their enemies and unable to defend themselves.
The movie tackles the effects of the American occupation of Iraq and how Arab minds have become haunted with a simple question: 'Who's next?'
Chaker, the headmaster of a secondary school in Cairo, played Hassan Hosni, imagines what it must be like to be an Iraqi citizen, who appears on TV being humiliated by GIs.
Then he has a brainwave. Why not sponsor a young scientist to help him invent a weapon that would enable him to defend himself if something similar happened to him?
He wracks his brains, thinking of all the ingenious pupils he's taught over the past 30 or so years, when he suddenly remembers Tareq (Ahmed Eid). He finds his address and goes round to his mother's flat, where he's reunited with his star pupil, who's now in his late twenties.
Tareq is only too happy to help him and soon they're busy creating the ultimate defensive weapon.
Amin uses their efforts to construct the weapon as a medium for criticising the indifference and lethargy of the Arab world, while the scientific and technological gap between it and the West is growing ever wider.
He shows how the Americans have been penetrating Arab societies, in order to stymie any attempts at progress. The scene where a CIA officer leads the prayers at an old mosque in Islamic Cairo indicates the extent to which our societies are infiltrated.
Amin knows what he's doing. He's very aware that, for ordinary Arab men, sexual prowess is connected with manhood and dignity. They influence each other.
As for women, they come across in his movie as more aware of danger than men and better prepared to face it. They also have the ability to calm their husbands when they get frustrated.
Amin is able to deliver these hard and serious messages through comic, simple situations without long, tedious speeches that often spoil films in this part of the world.
These situations touch the hearts and the minds of the audience. But one scene, in which Chaker imagines Cairo with all its landmarks destroyed and smoking, cuts like a knife, sending shivers through the spines of the audience.
However, Amin has his shortcomings. His biggest mistake is introducing some of the features of commercial cinema into his work. Some critics believe that the scene where Basma dances 'in a hot American fashion', in order to reignite the romance with her husband, Tareq, has nothing to do with Amin's serious messages.
The picture was screened at the recent Cairo Film Festival. It got good press.
The audience gave the movie a hero's reception. Veteran actor Salah el-Sadani expressed his admiration for the film and its director, describing it as one of Egyptian cinema's greatest-ever movies.
At the closing ceremony of the Festival, the film and its director went from hero to zero. It didn't get a single prize, leaving the Egyptian audience speechless.
But it's not Amin's fault. He respected the terms and conditions of Egyptian filmmaking. He chose a subject that would immediately arouse the sympathy of his fellow Egyptians.
He forgot that cinema is an international language. If he'd used his tools properly, he could have turned his work into an international movie, winning the sympathy of audiences worldwide.
It is one of the faults of Egyptian cinema that it is unable to produce a movie that can talk this international language.
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