7 posts tagged “travel”
fittingly for an egyptian boy soon moving to harlem, i just watched youssef chahine's autobiographical alexandria ... new york. surprisingly i have only seen the very average (and that's being generous) destiny by chahine and this isn't the movie to convince of chahine's supposed position as the middle east's preeminent auteur and master-filmmaker.
the film is essentially about film director yeyha's relationship with america.
the rather cumbersome plot tells two parallel stories- that of yeyha's early and formative years studying at the Pasadena Playhouse and that of yehya's son, iskander (played by the same, impressive for egyptian cinema, actor - ahmed yehia - as the young yehya) who the older director discovers and meets for the first time during a trip to New York where the NY film fest is commemorating him.
the parallels tell a tale of changing feelings for america. an innocent love for the idea of america that the young yehya embraces despite facing a bigoted and racist system evolves into a deeply disappointed cynical, crude dislike of an arrogant america that has failed to live up to its ideals (with too many unfortunate references to jews in hollywood / media etc).
the talented and successful iskander, representative of the arrogant america, rejects his arab blood when he discovers who his father is and is uninterested in learning more about his father who after repeated attempts gives up on building a relationship with his son (chahine gives up on the us).
the younger yehya is a prodigious student who overcomes america's xenophobic obstacles to win over the people if not the system. he falls in love with a beautiful classmate called ginger (yousra el-lozy in the film's best performance) who are perhaps the sexiest couple i have seen in egyptian cinema. ginger represents a youthful, giving, strong, confident and loving america. she is yehya's first love and first relationship. there's a comical, clumsy, but cute love scene between the two (egyptian cinema is still v prudish!) and it's an early love that never quite leaves the director.
the film is heartfelt, although as with almost every egyptian film i have watched, it's simplistic and heavy-handed (why do egyptian filmmakers find it necessary to clobber you repeatedly with their 'messages' and what's with all these message movies anyway?!) although ultimately chahine expresses his disappointment with america, i wouldn't situate the film alongside straight-out anti-americanism arab fare as the washington post does. it's a little more thoughtful and less reactionary than the songs of Shaaban Abdel Rahim! you sense chahine has grown exasperated with america, but as with his love for ginger, america was his first and perhaps greatest romance.
israel comes up again and again, either through the jews' claimed 'hold on hollywood' (with an especially silly clobber-scene where a jewish producer at columbia studios rejects yehya's pitch) or through violent images of palestine on the news that at one point upset yehya so much he threatens to cancel his trip to the NY film fest. this is the kind of one-sided anti-israel sentiment that disappoints me. but it's becoming clearer to me as i spend more time in egypt that the anti-srael view is well-ingrained in society. there was a short scene at yehya's NY film fest press conference where he deflects responding to a belligerent american journo by introducing three childhood friends from alexandria - a muslim, an orthodox christian and a jew who have all moved to america. a brief but longing reference to a more open, cosmopolitan egypt (more on heterodoxy soon). all quite amusing to me; my favorite arab film is an israeli production by an arab-israeli director - elia suleiman's sublime chronicle of a disappearance.
chahine's feelings about egypt, america, israel are pretty scattershot and as he nears the end of his career, that might simply reflect a genuinely hazy heart.
the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -marcel proust.
back in cairo after over a year and my longest stay here in five, i'm proud to still not feel proud of my roots. its good to see visible signs of a growing economy and sad to see the continuous conservative religious spiral that threatens to devour the whole nation and worrying to feel the city become increasingly aggressive. hidden away in the 6th october city (which i just found out is the day egypt launched the yom kippur war) we're sheltered in a personal familial slice of paradise, at least for a couple of days.
