Hani Mustafa watches Bahib Al-Sima, and finds that the censor's office, for once, may well have done a decent film a favour There are few films, apart from comedies and action flicks, that get to see the light of the Egyptian day. Yet once in a while a film does get made, and released, that aspires to a little more depth than the two most popular genres command. In Egypt, though, such films face another constraint other than that imposed by the logic of the box, and that is the censor's office. Madkour Thabet, the head of the censorship bureau, was apprehensive about screening Osama Fawzi's Bahib Al-Sima. He was worried that the film might offend the Coptic Church, and that he would in turn become the scapegoat for any subsequent criticism. Given a host of well-publicised withdrawals -- of Maxim Rodinson's book Mohamed from the curriculum of the American University in Cairo, for example -- and the uproar occasioned by the Cultural Palaces' Authority publication of the novel Walima Li Ashab Al-Bahr (Banquet of Seaweed) to name but two cases, Thabet has reasons to be worried. He had to either pass the film for screening and accept the responsibility of his position as a censor, or else ban it and shoulder the criticism of those calling for freedom of expression. Thabet looked for a compromise and finally settled on holding a screening of the film for the clergy, a tactical throwing of the ball into their court. He also held a special screening for Gaber Asfour, head of the Higher Council for Culture, and a number of intellectuals. A number of filmmakers also saw the film in a private screening and their opinions were polled. All of which manoeuvres appear to strip the censorship bureau of an important part of its power -- its exclusive right to permit, ban or demand cuts. Those of incurably optimistic disposition might see such moves as a prelude to the end of censorship. The censor has gone from being a person to being a large group of people. Gradually, one might hope, the audience as a whole will emerge as the only censor. The director Osama Fawzi, his brother the producer Hani Girgis Fawzi, the script writer Hani Fawzi and the rest of the crew sought to make a film that criticises all forms of oppression. The narrator, who is in his forties, tells of his childhood in 1966 in the Cairo district of Shubra, speaking about his relationship with his father, his mother's disappointments and his love for cinema -- his breathing space in the midst of an oppressive family atmosphere. The film, though, does not create a clear link between the child and cinema except through one piece of information -- the child's uncle, Nabil, first took him to the movies. We do not see how attached he is to cinema at the beginning of the film, nor do we understand his motives in opposing his father on the matter. We can, however, stretch the motives of the child protagonist to extend the confrontation as being between a child striving for some imaginative freedom and a paternal authority determined to curb that freedom. Adli (Mahmoud Hemeida), the father, is a staunch Copt who rejects all modern forms of art, especially the cinema that is so admired by his son, Naiim. We understand this case of extreme religiosity through a monologue delivered by the father. It is the product not of love, but of fear of divine punishment. He lives in constant fear of hell. It is this fear that leads him to ban his son from going to the cinema, and to refuse to allow his wife to hang her own paintings -- of nudes -- in the house. The turning point in the character of the father mingles religion with politics. Adli is shocked by the corruption that occurs in the school where he works. A confrontation with the headmaster ensues and he assaults him. The father is then referred to an administrative investigation. The headmaster accuses him of "adopting destructive thought" -- effectively denouncing him as a communist -- at a time when Nasser was repeatedly hounding them. Adli is then tortured, an experience that precedes the father's most important scene, in which he gets drunk and it is revealed that he has a serious heart condition, and that his son, too, is ill. All of which culminates in a lessening uptightness. He agrees to his son going to the movies and buys a television. Nimat (Laila Elwy), the mother, feels that she has been forced into a state of celibacy by her husband's extremism, which places marital sex on the list of things forbidden, along with the painting she practised before their marriage. We find out from a dialogue between Nimat and the arts supervisor (Zaki Abdel-Wahab) that she had been an art teacher who happened to enroll in and pass the training course for headmasters. But it is Naiim, the narrator, who is the central character in the film, though quite why he is recounting his childhood while in his forties remains unclear. The film is filled with the details of daily family routine, in a way that brings it to life. This is especially true when we see these details through the child's eye. Naiim, for example, notices kisses between his aunt (Mena Shalabi) and her fiancé and uses this to blackmail them into taking him to the cinema. The film is mainly built on the metamorphosing ideas and discovered worlds in the eyes and mind of the child. Cinema is Naiim's ultimate dream. This is apparent when he goes to the movies with his aunt and her fiancé. A little fantasy enters here as he sees the theatre as heaven and the man at the door as St Peter on the Pearly Gates while the ushers are angels. Whatever the commotion surrounding the film, it certainly provided a very useful burst of publicity, whetting the appetite of an audience for a film that, if it had to rely simply on its not very commercial poster, might have passed unnoticed. Launched at the beginning of the summer season, when most students have not yet finished their exams, it was always likely to struggle at the box office. Thankfully, though, the censorship has given the film a boost, providing, for once, some good for a reasonable film.
