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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 April - 3 May 2000 Issue No. 479 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 April - 3 May 2000 Issue No. 479
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A melancholy wedding
By Khairiya El-Bishlawi
The message that script writer Hani Fawzi wanted to communicate in Tawabi' Korsi fil Kolob (Earthquake Mayhem), is lucid enough: the earthquake that hit Egypt in October 1992 brought down not only people's houses but also the masks behind which human realities are hidden. A wedding is about to take place when the earthquake hits Cairo, and the resulting developments are depicted in detail, and in such a way as to reveal what lies beneath the thin layer of happiness and hope in which the characters start out.
What counts is not the message itself, however, but the way in which it is cinematically communicated to the audience; and it is on the basis of this, rather than anything the script writer might want to say, that filmmaker Samih El-Bagori's debut should be assessed. It is the "how," not the "what," that determines the difference between artificial frabrication and true artistic creation. In all fairness, though, it must be acknowledged without impunity that achieving what one might refer to as creative truth under the cinematic conditions current in the Egyptian industry is a task well nigh impossible, and that the glitter and glow of art that speaks definitively and perfectly is too much of a demand to put on a young filmmaker starting out with a night-club-owner-turned-producer, a lead actress (the producer's wife) whose original profession is belly-dancing and a far from buoyant film market the workings of which can only be described as unreliable. What we must seek out in these debuts is, rather, the promise of such artistic truth as we dream of, the merest glimpse of hope pointing to some cinematic renaissance.
Ironically, the chance combination of these apparently undesirable elements was propitious: Fawzi, with his overbearing message, was nonetheless eager to transcend current ready-made recipes for Egyptian filmmaking; the producer wanted to create a different kind of entertainment, preferably as far from the nightclub environment as possible; Lucy, despite being a belly dancer, also happens to be a serious actress who understands the value of acting, particularly in serious films, egged on no less by her own talent than by the relationships she has established with critics, writers and filmmakers with whom she worked, often in her husband's productions. Thus there are, in the midst of the showbiz jungle, ironies and contraditions capable of generating a far from commonplace production; and Earthquake Mayhem belongs to that group of new and exciting films that attract attention by exuding novelty and difference despite the problems that continue to haunt the cinema.
At the beginning of the film the filmmaker successfully plays on the audience's curiosity by presenting a younger woman showering in a modest bathroom, wiping the condensed water vapour off the mirror that hangs on those depressing bathroom walls in order to contemplate her face, then contemplate it some more. The woman's tweezers remove a single hair from her eyebrow while the sound of drums and singing, seeping in from outside, heralds the happy occasion for which she is preparing herself. Shoushou exits the bathroom cheerfully, joining the family and friends who have congregated in the hallway of a small and simple flat. This is her wedding night, and she has been showering prior to going to the hairdresser's to be properly coifed for the occasion -- a "young" woman getting on in years, an intelligent girl about to take a leap out of the cheerless poverty that has constrained her ambition for far longer than it was supposed to.
But who is going to marry a penniless girl already past the ideal marriageable age except a man who has just returned from the Gulf? He too will most likely belong to these social environs, but he will be too old himself, in no way handsome and straining under the weight of his obligations towards his family. In fact no two actors could have been more perfect for the roles of the bridegroom, Said, and his insolent mother, a string of obscenities constantly pouring forth from her mouth and all over her children, than Salah Abdallah and Aleya El-Gabbas. The mother is of course unhappy with the marriage and remains unconvinced of the eligibility of her son's future wife, as thin as she is poor. In portraying this and other characters, down to the most insignificant extras (an old woman who lives with her son and his wife and appears only once before, once after the earthquake), the filmmaker was particularly successful, effectively casting and directing the right actors in the right dramatic situations, paying careful attention to the rich visuals of the setting and the social stratum. In this he was no doubt aided by his director of photography, Samir Bahzan, and an equally remarkable art director, Mokhtar Abdel-Gawwad.
The use of stairs as a central motif in both Shoushou's family flat -- the earthquake destroys the building -- and the modern apartment block into which she will move with her husband and mother-in-law, not only heightens the contrast between two equally depressing worlds but also exemplifies the film's ability to effectively sustain the dramatic thrust of the script writer's message, which operates through an impressive, moving but above all realistic attention to detail. The sight of Said running up and down the stairs, depicted from extreme vertical angles, points, more than symbolically, to his thwarted attempts at satisfying his mother and his wife, each of whom has her own utterly impersonal and in this case contrary agenda. The photography, in these scenes, demonstrates Bahzan's aesthetic sensitivity and his ability to smoothly translate El-Bagori's vision into straightforward scenes, no less effective for being accessible. Another striking image: the car decorated by Ibrahim (singer Medhat Salih), the only character whose psychological makeup contains feelings other than desperation and thwarted ambition, for the zaffa, i.e., Shoushou's ultimately unrealised bridal procession.
A rare example of an Egyptian catastrophe film that manages to be successful despite a low budget and a "message" -- something that is not normally expected of such films (Hollywood provides many recent examples) -- the acting in Earthquake Mayhem was sometimes true to life, sometimes caricature-like and in many cases hardly even competent (Medhat Salih's performance was tasteless and cold). Yet the script writer and the director have managed to carry something off, something that is promising even if it is not complete. One can only salute the producer for providing a worthy filmmaker with what he needs, hoping that he and others will do so again and again.
