Written by: -
Mamdough Shalaby
Should Egyptian filmmaker Yousry
Nasrallah reach sixty year old in order to his film "after the battle"
to reach the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival? Or should he bear
the pioneer's hardships and sufferings who dared to going against the mainstream
cinema of his native Egypt
Anyway, he
previously participated in the Festivals of Venice and Cannes
Nasrallah might be the only one in the history of Egyptian cinema who
adopted the modernist film stylistic and maintained since his first film
"summer thefts" in 1988, despite of Youssef Chahine who-carried the
banner of the futuristic cinema in Egypt- never dared all his lifetime to
modernizing, he could not also influence Yousry Nasrallah who worked as his
assistant and co-scriptwriter in a number of Chahine's films where a strong friendship
established between them.
Perhaps "the venue" - which in 1973 written and directed by Sobhy Shafiq- regards as the first Egyptian film influenced by modernist theory, but Shafiq retreated early as a director and preferred to continue as a critic and theorist until now.
Yousry Nasrallah practiced film critic in the
leftist Lebanese Al-Safir newspaper before returning to Egypt to continue film
critic for a while- I read a review written by him about a movie had been
screened in a cinema club in Cairo, and I still remember the kind of the vanguard
writing he used to accomplish, and the amount of his awareness and expertise in
the international cinema throughout his
readings in both French and English at a time where the internet hadn't been
discovered yet and the printed books and the monthly film magazines had been
the only sources of the film knowledge, all of these sources were very
expensive comparing with the weak Egyptian currency-
Nasrallah did not continue his critic and theoretical work in Egypt
When the film screened
the ordinary Egyptian audience did not pay attention to the film which standing
in the extreme end of the watching
traditions of movies in Egypt, it seemed more different than movies of Youssef
Chahine that never get any success in the box office since " Alexandria
why?", I remember what Adel Mounir- lecturer of film editing at EFI- said,
" the film is not regular in the Egyptian cinema, and there is something prevents enjoying it but the Chekhovian spirit
encapsulates this film". I watched the film at the time, It was a biography where
the director summoned memories of his childhood as a son of the Egyptian
aristocracy, he criticized his rich class rather than celebrated it, no doubt
such criticism can not occur but via a filmmaker had a dogmatic ideology.
Nasrallah revealed in this film that the wealthy Egyptians in the sixties
did not lose their fortunes, they maintained and returned it after the collapse
of the socialist era, it was the same argument I heard later from the lips of
Youssef Chahine who seemed as he had been influenced by Nasrallah's point of
view.
Nasrallah and Chahine were not only best friends at the personal and
professional perspective, but also at intellectual and political affiliation
perspective, both of them belong to the Egyptian intelligentsia that lean
towards socialism, and perhaps for this reason their friendship lasted to the
last days of Youssef Chahine, and it is important to mention that Youssef
Chahine tore one of his scripts just to obey Nasrallah who claimed that the
script had the same clichés possessed Chahine, so that Chahine rewrote it.
We might
notice that Nasrallah - at the press conference after screening "After the
battle" in Cannes 2012 - was very proud of his latest film, he was not
just agitated by the magnificent achievement that his film won the privilege of
access to the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival , but also
because this movie seemed to achieve what Nasrallah
dreamed about the stylistic since he began his career as a director in 1988,
Nasrallah literally practiced pure stylistic in his film, we may remind the
approach of Jean-Luc Godard in his early long feature movie
"breathless" where improvising, evoking reality and spontaneous
camera were elements of his film, the same with "after the battle"
too, Nasrallah handled a ten paper script to the censorship authority in Egypt about
the film rather than a complete version, and so on.
"After
the battle" is a smart movie because of the central character who supposed
to have a loyalty to the counter revolution, where
the director takes us to minutes of his living details not just to let us
understand his motives but also to let such anti- revolutionist recognizing how
much the revolution is a great deal to him.
Talking about Nasrallah should mean great
deal because despite the importance of such exceptional filmmaker in Egyptian
cinema, the amount of what had been written about him did not commensurate with
his importance, I feel frustrated because the Internet does not contain
sufficient information about him and his films, this may be a reason to
understand why the Egyptian cinema are not known worldwide if compared with the
Iranian cinema. the Egyptians critics failed to investing such historic event that
their native recent cinema reached the official competition of the Cannes Film
Festival - despite the repeated presence of Egyptian cinema in other sections
of the festival, as well as Chahine's prize on the fiftieth anniversary of the
Cannes Film Festival- we do not even remember that a single Arabic film had got
the Palme D'or except Algerian director Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina`s Chronicle of
the Years of Fire in 1075.
Nasrallah born in 1952 and graduated from Cairo University after
studying Economics and Political Science, and then studied at the EFI to
graduate in 1973, Taking into account that he had graduated at the age of 21
years, he may had joined the EFI at the same time of the University, or the
information transferred about him over the internet are not specific.
He began his film critic at al-Safir newspaper from 1978 to 1982, it is
known that this newspaper is the mouthpiece of the Lebanese leftist, so there
is a certain acknowledge that Nasrallah has a loyalty to the Arab leftist,
namely Marxism-Leninism ideology because it is unacceptable that a partisan
newspaper such as al-Safir to hire an Egyptian film critic had not been consistent
with its political and Social loyalty.
The friendship which brought together Nasrallah with leftist poet and novelist Lebanese Elias
Khoury - the author of "Gate of the Sun`s novel" which Nasrallah
based on to make a feature length film of two parts "Exodus and returning"-
to indicate the continued loyalty of Nasrallah to the leftist, but If Nasrallah
still maintains a political loyalty to leftist, it is undoubtedly intellectually
not organizationally, he is not a member of a political party. But this
political loyalty remains firmly presenting in his films, and we can not understand
these films separately from his political background or we might lose our
compass in the interpretation and understanding his films.
His reason to choose the modernist because it represents the revolutionary
cinema, or it is the closest shape that corresponds with his political
affiliation, this modernist had been taught early in Egypt in sixties by Sobhy
Shafiq who translated and wrote many essays related to the French New Wave and
Jean- Luc Godard who regarded as the most important theorist and filmmaker of the counter cinema which are not a
film trend but a revolutionary approach in order to turn the cinema into a tool
for revolutionizing. It's like the epic theater theory which founded by
Bertolt Brecht to inciting rather than entertaining the audiences and
directing them to solve their social problems by revolution, this is exactly
the case of the cinema Nasrallah adopted and faithfully maintained throughout
his career until now.
But he also has been exploring new possibilities of the modernist in each
film he made; in "Mercedes" he seemed to be influenced by
Albert Camus's existentialism, where the main character "Nobby"
seemed expatriating from his society as Camus's vision that influenced by
existentialism which spread in Europe after the world war2 and the beginning of
the Cold War between the socialist camp and the capitalist where the European
citizen had been experiencing marginalization which led to the expatriating, the
expatriating of "Nobby" apparently took place due to the social
transformation that has prevailed Egypt in the beginning of the capitalism`s
blooming, there is criticism in "Mercedes" accusing such ugly capitalist society which deteriorated
the values behind the frenzied pursuit of fiscal benefit. "Mercedes"
makes viewer pondering the reality he lives, where mentally patient character
"Nobby" - starring Zaki Abdul Wahab – does not help the
spectator to
unite with him, but to view him from a distance, and so the estrangement and distanciation have been achieved in
this film to neutralizing the viewer to stir his
mind rather than his emotion.
In "the city" starring Bassem
Al-Samra, Nasrallah continues his modernist approach through an Egyptian chap
likes acting so that he immigrates to France, but he forced to work as a boxer
in order to get money, the film successfully presents the character in an
educational approach, it is known that immigration is a common possession for
most of the Egyptian youth, especially sons of peasants and labors, the main
character living a full experience either in his popular neighborhood in Cairo
between his friends and family or via the details of his experience amid
illegal Arab immigrants exploited outside law in France and fall victims of
fraud, the main character encounters the fraud too, He has to think that he has
lost all his savings, but he later discovers that his money had been sent to his
family in Cairo, and that money was the source of the richness of his father. The film is filled of details and this is a kind of estrangement, because we find ourselves (viewing) rather than (relieving),
the big difference between the two words exists in Arabic language where the spectator
can be translated as (reliever) referring to the conventional dramatic cinema and
as expressing of emotional involvement with the film. But in "The city"
we (view) in emotional neutrality.
In the two parts of "Gate of the Sun" "Exodus and
returning",
we notice the integrated times where the film begins from the present time
where we see "Yonis"- the central character- is a target of a
murder's attempt, and while he is in a long coma during an attempt to heal him,
the film recites the contemporary history of Palestine throughout a village forced
to leave after failing to defend themselves against the Israelis, the film focuses on the enactive struggle of
the villagers compared with full armed Israelis soldiers, it's a kind of
self-criticism for the Arab, and Nasrallah in fact criticizes the entire
Palestinian status and its institutions, accusing all for the failure of the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
In "Gate of
the sun" we recognize facts about the Palestinians who living under
occupation, the movie concerns of the living details of the characters, we view
the main female character in a scene where she is interrogated by the Israelis
because of the appearance of her carrying despite the fact that her chased husband
is absent, she tells them that she is a prostitute, while we know that the reason
for her carrying is her husband and she wants denying his existence to save
him.
"gate
of the sun" is an epic movie due to addressing with details of a whole
society in exceptional circumstances, perhaps for this reason alongside
adopting Khoury's novel, the endeavor of Nasrallah was stylistically by
utilizing integrated times what make the viewers (view) by minds rather than
emotions, despite the fact that the film which dedicated to the Arab viewers
touches a sensitive question to them, so the film belongs to the modernist adopted
by such vanguard director.
In "Aquarium" we see the characters speak directly to
the camera, this is disillusion,
one of the most important elements of the counter cinema. We notice also that
Nasrallah fragments the story into two worlds are not linked to each other-
between a female radio presenter and an anesthetist- that they never meet or
have any link but in the last third of the movie we just see that the
anesthetist is calling the presenter by phone as a guest, Nasrallah also fulfills
the disillusion not just by utilizing speaking directly to the camera but also
by the kind of such speaking, the
characters talk about themselves as an actors playing characters like "Bassem
Al-samra"
who plays" zaki" the director of the radio program.
Then we come to "recite Scheherazade" and we really shock by
the fact that veteran scriptwriter Wahid Hamed was the writer, because he maintained
loyalty throughout his long career to the traditional drama, confirming the
catharsis element on every movie, that we always see his movies retaliating
against rich or symbols of power even killing them in the end of his films, Wahid
Hamed apparently suffering a parental complex and dedicates his all efforts as
a scriptwriter to revenge on a childhood's experiences that still spoil his
life, but his films always success because the Egyptian society suffering the
parental complex too but on a political and social perspective. Therefore,
it was a surprise that two different artists such as Hamid and Nasrallah can
work together, but the film belongs to the modernist too as all Nasrallah`s
movies, the estrangement element accomplished throughout storytelling, a TV talk
show presenter (Mona Zaki) addressing in her episodes four different stories,
covering all contemporary Egyptian reality, there is a saleswoman in a shop
selling cosmetics lives a double life, she meets elegant women in the morning, while
in the evening she lives in the forgotten outskirts of Cairo surrounded by
piles of garbage, Then we see a story of spinster living in a psychiatric
hospital, she recites her experiences with the men through her life's stages,
she is in fact recites the feminist question in Egypt in the last four decades.
Then we see the story of three girls who inherit their father's shop and how one of them was forced to commit murder.
Then we see the story of a spinster's hunter who has a political position, he gets marry rich spinsters girls in order to blackmails them.
Then we see the story of three girls who inherit their father's shop and how one of them was forced to commit murder.
Then we see the story of a spinster's hunter who has a political position, he gets marry rich spinsters girls in order to blackmails them.
Finally, we see the TV presenter herself as a subject of an episode.
The element of storytelling is one of the elements of modernist film, and it was enough to achieve the modernist, so Nasrallah in this film did not maneuver stylistically and made his film in traditional format, but he is confident of modernist stylistically.
The element of storytelling is one of the elements of modernist film, and it was enough to achieve the modernist, so Nasrallah in this film did not maneuver stylistically and made his film in traditional format, but he is confident of modernist stylistically.
Nasrallah deserves the glory of being involved in the official
competition of the Cannes Film Festival 2012, and also deserves to write about
him for his extraordinary film career.
Mamdough Shalaby.
