Mohamed El-Assyouti finds a counterpoint to sloppiness in Kamla Abu Zekri's Malik wa Kitaba In order to have something to teach one has to learn from lived experience. Oftentimes an academic career is an escape strategy, a barricading of oneself behind stacks of books to avoid living. But as the title of the Marco Tullio Giordana film goes, once you're born you can no longer hide. Mahmoud Abdel-Salam, the protagonist of Kamla Abu Zekri's Malik wa Kitaba (Head and Tail) and one of Mahmoud Hemeida's best performances to date, is a professor of acting at the Academy of Arts who holds a doctorate from Russia and leads a stable married life. One day his class is cancelled and he returns home unexpectedly only to discover his wife in the arms of a young man under the shower. After the divorce he is a wreck until he meets the young actress Hind -- a superb performance by Hind Sabri -- who never studied academically but plays small parts in films and whatever else comes her way. When she once attends his class she is shocked by his outdated theatrical demonstration of Hamlet and, after she confronts him with her opinion, he comes gradually to realise his personal and professional shortcomings. Eventually he acknowledges that he has been lying to himself, that what he called principles were actually strategies to hide his cowardice, lack of self-confidence and inability to understand others, let alone himself. Such simple tales of a mid-life crisis that turns a character from conformity and self-righteousness to rebellion and self-criticism obviously appeal to Hemeida, as evidenced in his performances as Mounir Rasmi and Adli, the protagonists of Osama Fawzi's Ganat Al-Shayatin (Fallen Angels' Paradise, 1999) and Baheb Al-Sima (I Love Cinema, 2004), respectively. In contrast to the nihilism of these films, Malik wa Kitaba, written by Ahmed El-Nasser and Sami Hossam, holds out more optimistic possibilities. It is not with larger than life powers that the protagonist must contend once he opts for change but simply life itself. Professor Abdel-Salam had lagged behind a changing world and it is possible for him to catch up if he is sufficiently realistic. He does not, for instance, have to be possessive of Hind now that he knows he loves her and owes her his insight into himself; she is too young for him and has other options. Hence the film contrives a happy ending without uniting the protagonist with his love interest in a fashion closer to that of a Marvel comic story, Spider Man say, than to a Woody Allen movie. This separation from the beloved who inspired a radical change to a preference for lived experience where one unites with the whole is akin to the ending of Luchino Visconti's screen version of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1971). But where Professor Von Aeschenbach's death is a liberation from an obsession with abstraction and idealism that uses a sham morality to disguise a profound inability to experience life, the fate of Malik wa Kitaba 's protagonist is to become wiser without falling from a pedestal of artistic achievement like Aeschenbach. Abdel-Salam is, after all, just a cog in the wheel of an outdated academic institution frozen in time. Thanks to Hind's mediation he is able to work in the cinema which he loves, thus liberating a desire he had always repressed. Abdel-Salam finds peace by reconciling his mediocrity with that of his surroundings. He learns to look on the bright side. Malik wa Kitaba pays homage to cinema in different ways. At one point Abdel-Salam proposes to watch Giuseppe Tornatore's period formal exercise Il nuovo cinema paradiso (1990), ironically falling asleep in front of the screen, while Hind's young friends watch a hyper-paced post-modern film -- perhaps Lola Rent (Run Lola Run). Abdel-Salam looks down on advertisements and music videos while Hind and her colleagues are willing to work in them to survive. The two films Abdel-Salam works on feature cameos from directors Mohamed Khan and Khairi Beshara and cinematographer Tareq El-Telmissani -- a trio synonymous with the 1980s cinema appreciated by critics and filmmakers but rejected by today's cinema industry because of its intellectual pretensions, emphasis on realism and refusal to make "entertainment for entertainment sake". Even the protagonists' names, Mahmoud and Hind, are, in a self-reflexive nod, the names of the actors who play them. This film is about cinema today, and how filmmakers should not compromise to the extent of complying slavishly with the dictates of the handful of businessmen who seek only to profit from cinema, though neither should hold to an idealism and aesthetic formalism that is more dated than unfeasible given the economic and socio-political conditions surrounding the film industry. Director Abu Zekri demonstrates a good grasp of her material and successfully guides the cast: not only the principals, Hemeida and Sabri, but Khaled Abul-Naga, Aida Riyad and Lutfi Labib give their best performances in years. Abu Zekri opts for minimalist and eloquent camera work that allows for a leisurely-paced story unlike other films which ape American cinema's fast cameras and editing without having a story to tell. Ahmed El-Mursi's cinematography and Khaled Shukri's music were slightly disappointing in an otherwise fair piece that stands out by virtue of the sloppiness of the competition as much as by the effort of its makers.
