Ambition underplayed

By Khairiya El-Bishlawi

Despite the fact that this film is set in the 1920s, it echoes the same preoccupations of Ali's directorial debut, Ya Donia Ya Gharami, set in the 1990s. Technically, however, the film has its merits. Tarek El-Telmissani's cinematography is sensitive in its evocation of the past. Salah Mar'ei's studied and well-executed sets enhance the film's technical merit.

As for the plot itself, it weaves around three main characters, each representing one aspect of the general idea the director wants to communicate. Houda Kalawi (Ahmed Zaki), Hassan (Mohamed Heneidi) and Petro (Mustafa Amar) are three friends who symbolise facets of the Alexandria of the 1920s.

The changes in each of the three friends mirror the changes in the city itself. Houda replaces his father, after his death, in the same carpentry workshop owned by an old Greek. He supports both his mother and sister Fatma who falls in love with his friend and wants to marry him. Hassan is the son of a poor artisan. The third friend, Petro, is the offspring of a mixed Egyptian-Greek marriage. Hassan and Petro, who have no specific job, are fond of singing and one of them loves a female singer of foreign extraction. In short, the three friends' existence verges on the vagabond, occasionally veering in the direction of small-time conmen.

Wandering on the Corniche they describe themselves as the fish, and Alexandria the sea. Their pleasures consist literally ó as they themselves put it ó in picking up women. And indeed there are plenty of scenes involving their womanising: there is Petro with his singer-lover in the bedroom; there is Hassan bringing a fat prostitute to a cabin on the beach for the use of the three friends; there is the young wife of the Greek carpenter for whom Houda works. It would have been better for both the director and the script-writer to do away with these unnecessary scenes which simply divert the viewers' attention from the main theme of the film and make it look like yet another vulgar, commercial film.

The main theme is the three friends' emulation of a hero (in Arabic, batal, as in the title): Saad Zaghloul, the leader of the 1919 revolution. Houda writes letters to the exiled Saad Zaghloul and dreams of him day and night. Houda also wants to be a hero, though in a different field ó he is a boxer who aspires to become a champion, something which he eventually achieves. His new-found success allows him to enter into a relationship with a young woman from an aristocratic family, though he soon discovers that the gap separating their worlds is unbridgeable. He then turns for solace to a neighbour who has always loved him.

As for Hassan, a meeting with an anti-British activist turns his life upside down and, turning into an activist himself, he is mortally wounded by a British bullet fired on demonstrators shortly after he had married Houda's sister, who is now pregnant. The longing of both men for a cause to link their lives with and their dreams of a brighter future are given voice in the songs sung by their third friend, Petro, which help enhance and give colour to their quest. However, this grand theme falls flat through a poor and fragmented script which seems to be divided between two aims: satisfying the box-office and saying something of significance.

If the main characters remain unconvincing, minor characters are more rounded and real. Abu Hanifa, masterfully played by Hassan Hosni, the blind man who can distinguish gold from copper by its sound, is possibly the most memorable character in the film. Magda El-Khatib in the role of Houda's mother likewise puts in a skillful performance, salvaging a role that would otherwise have been redundant.

The gap between what the director intended and what he does say in the final product is a very wide. It would seem that his intention was to show a transformation from the aimless dolce vita of wining and womanising into a meaningful life with a cause: that of a people struggling for their independence in the context of the 1919 revolution. Unfortunately though, the national cause is reduced here to sloganeering and the whole thing is feels fabricated.