sparks controversy but draws crowds with harsh depiction of Egypt
By Nadia
Aboul El-Magd
First
Published: September 23, 2006
It's an odd choice for Egyptian popular entertainment: a bleak movie about
corruption, torture and political stagnation in a country where cinematic
happy endings are the norm. But audiences are still packing the
theaters at a time of widespread discontent in the Arab
world. The Yacoubian Building has been
raising controversy, too, and it seems the crowds are coming both for the
cast of all-star
Egyptian
actors and because the unusually in-your-face criticism of
the government has struck a chord. In one scene, a police officer
calmly tells a young man he's about to be brutally tortured. Behind the
officer, a portrait of President Hosni Mubarak hangs prominently on the
police station wall – an unsubtle hint at the blind eye that the government
has often turned toward police abuses. "I didn't expect it to be
welcomed this way by the Egyptian audience as it's very different from the
comedies that attract average Egyptians. The movie is full of taboos and
controversial issues," said the
film's
director, Marwan Hamed. "Many in the cinema industry
thought it wouldn't be popular among ordinary audiences because it's not an
optimistic movie." The production, the most
expensive ever in Egypt at $4 million, also has won praise abroad. It was
named best movie at July's Arab World
Film
Festival in Paris and was shown at the Cannes and Berlin
film festivals. At New York's Tribeca Film Festival, Hamed was judged best
new
filmmaker under the narrative category. The Yacoubian Building is based
on a best-selling novel by Alaa El-Aswani, a dentist turned author. It tells
the stories of several disparate characters linked because they all live in
the grand and decrepit early 20th century building of the title, a symbol of
a bygone golden age in Egypt. The building was named for an
Armenian-Egyptian businessman who built it in the 1930s, before the
government's turn to socialism chased off the foreigners who once
invigorated Egypt's business life and the growing trend toward
fundamentalist Islam killed off liberal social attitudes. El-Aswani has said
that in his novel, "The building represents the social history of Egypt."
Each of the several plots in the movie depicts an aspect of the county's
decline. The poor young man in the police
station is raped by his interrogators and turns to Islamic extremism. A
corrupt businessman buys a parliament seat, deals drugs and forces his
secret, second wife to have an abortion. A young woman has to endure her
boss' sexual advances to keep her job as she dreams of leaving Egypt. "Egypt has become so harsh on its
people," she says in one scene. "If there is a chance, the whole nation
would leave, not out of hatred, but because people can't put up with the
oppression any more." At the center of the
drama is an alcoholic "basha" – a member of Egypt's
pre-1950s elite – nostalgic for the glory days, played by Adel Imam, the
country's most popular comic actor but in this film a tragic figure. In another of the film's secrets
behind the political and social oppression, one character is gay and takes a
policeman as his lover. That plotline was the most controversial since
homosexuality is strictly taboo here and, if depicted on film, usually is
played for
comedy. In this case, the two men talk openly about
homosexual love and are even shown getting in bed together. "The movie is very honest, I
didn't find it vulgar at all," said Rana Ayad, a 16-year-old student who saw
the film. But her friend Naglaa Ismail
disagreed. "Does this really happen in Egypt?" she said. "I didn't like the
gay part." But after initial shock over the homosexuality, the political
themes resonated more deeply for many, especially after fighting erupted in
Lebanon less than a month after the movie opened. The bloodshed heightened
worries among many over the future of the Middle East and increased
discontent with Arab governments. "The movie reflects the reality,
but the reality is more bleak and dark than this," said filmgoer Dina
Abdel-Rahman, 31, who works in television. While the Yacoubian Building in
the movie may be a symbol for Egypt, she noted, "with what's going on from
the destruction and frustration in the Arab world, this could be an Arab
building." Though the movie is set in the
1990s, at the height of an Islamic militant campaign to overthrow Mubarak,
its angst rings true today. Mubarak remains in power, opposition activists
still are regularly rounded up and promises of political reforms are
unfulfilled, Weeks before the film opened, a pro-democracy protester gave a
public account of how he was sodomized and tortured in a police station. "There is a big similarity about
what's happening in the movie and what is happening now in the region," said
Hamed, the 29-year-old director. "Life remains very difficult in the region,
citizens are oppressed and suffering from the difficulties of daily life.
Hardly anything has changed since the 1990s. Things might just be worse."
Still, that the government even
allowed the film to be shown points to a greater freedom of expression won
as Egypt's reform movement has become more vocal. In the past year and a
half, the government has for the most part tolerated street protests that
openly denounced Mubarak. The government even had a pretext
to take the censor's knife to the movie amid complaints over the gay scenes,
but didn't use it. More than 100 lawmakers demanded the homosexual scenes be
cut, but a parliament committee decided to leave the movie intact.
Still, some critics deny The Yacoubian Building movie accurately reflects
life in Egypt.
"I'm not going to count the abnormal characters in the movie, which is a
series of homosexuals and sexually frustrated people," columnist Hamdi Rizq
wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. "I have no idea from what
garbage bin they picked up all these psychological deformities."
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