The best of intentions

By Nur Elmessiri
Take by storm the film-viewer's consciousness, keep him at the edge of his seat in terrible suspense, tease his thoughts, open his eyes, provoke him, Khaled Youssef's directorial debut Al-Asifa (The Storm) does not. Lubricate the old tear ducts, maybe. Also, the film is entertaining enough that it would not cross one's mind to walk out in the middle. The Storm is full of good non-mercenary intentions. Much thought, it is clear, and hard, dedicated work went into its production. Yet, somehow, in the end one leaves the cinema feeling that one has not sunk one's teeth into something that can be chewed, and then mulled over. The film is neither nourishing, nor difficult to digest. In French, one would say it is inoffensif; in Arabic, yitshaf (seeable). In English, one would say, after post-film drinks with the friend who took you to the movies -- and during which no discussion of the film would take place (since any discussion would have quickly run its course on the way out of the cinema) -- "Thank you for a pleasant evening."
A widow and her two sons, politicised, nationalistic, struggling to make ends meet -- a middle class family with values: these are the protagonists of The Storm. The widow, Hoda (convincingly and engagingly played by Youssra whose performance was the best treat the film offered) is not really a widow. Her husband, a maimed 1973 war hero, left the house after seeing on TV the raising of the Israeli flag on Egyptian soil with the opening of an Israeli embassy in Cairo -- and never returned. Hoda is now a (conscientious) schoolteacher of history and geography who does not earn enough to "prepare" her sons for marriage, that is, provide them with the flat necessary for Marriage Middle-Class-and-upwards Egyptian style. Her older son Nagui's sweetheart has been pressured by family into accepting the hand of a more financially suitable man -- and so Nagui (played by Mohamed Nagati), to avoid the same fate befalling his younger brother Ali, decides to seek his fortune in Iraq.
Ali (played by Hani Salama) is in love with Hayat, a bright, beautiful, idealistic young thing played by Hanan Tork whose womanly virtues, alas, got in the way of her making a convincing fresh flower of youth -- all the more so, because her love-interest partner seemed more cuddly baby-brother than husband-to-be. In fact, Youssra's Hoda had -- in her relationship with fellow schoolteacher Mahmoud, played dashingly-handsomely by Hisham Selim -- far more virginal, girlish charm than Tork's Hayat). The problem again is money. Hayat is the daughter of a business tycoon (played by Sami El-Adl) who has wheeled and dealed his way out of the modest middle class neighbourhood, in which, together with Nagui and Ali, Hayat had spent her childhood, and into the world of tacky mansions and yachts.
So farewell, then Egypt -- and hello Iraq. Farewell fatherless Egyptian family -- and hello Arab world become money-driven market. Farewell black and white TV -- and hello colour. The dynamic song-writing-and-singing duo, Nagui and Ali -- an allusion to Palestinian caricaturist Nagui'l Ali?, and why not, since the film, in addition to many other political things, sends pro-Palestinian messages whenever it can -- part.
The year is 1989, and a young Egyptian man finds a job with the Iraqi army. The metaphorical "brother pitted against brother" of Arab vs. Arab, Iraq vs. Kuwait, we know, once Nagui takes the job, will soon be made literal. Nagui is part of the Iraqi army that invades Kuwait; Ali, a conscript, is in the Egyptian army that sets out within the International Alliance to liberate Kuwait. Not quite Greek tragedy because the Greeks -- in addition to laying the slow build up of the inevitable not merely thickly, but also tightly -- believed that Big Tragic Boys Don't Cry. Khaled Youssef may not have intended to follow Aristotle's formula for tragedy (and one certainly need not when making a film), but, really, where on earth are men in combat fatigues on the battlefield allowed by their unit commanders a leisurely weep .... and to the accompaniment of Abdel-Halim Hafez?
Where on earth? We are not -- once we leave the impressively attentive-to-detail interior of Hoda's modest middle-class home, once The Storm leaves behind the homely and attempts the epic -- on earth. We are in the land of allegory, one that could have worked (since allegory is not intrinsically a bad thing), but that did not. What begins in the first half of the film as an engaging story, in the second half loses substance. The scale becomes too grand; the clichés less palatable. The net of the plot is cast over what proves an unmanageably wide field of action and possibility, and in the end we are left with the kind of open end that is more cop-out than art. A weeping Nagui pulls the rope that sends a missile flying in his brother's direction -- cut to: a weeping Ali pulling the rope that sends a missile flying in his brother's direction -- cut to the film's final scene: Hoda, Mahmoud and Hayat participating in the student demonstrations outside Cairo University protesting against the International Alliance's bombing of Baghdad, the film scene so reminiscent of the documentary footage of which Youssef Chahine made use in his Cairo is Illuminated by its People that it is almost impossible to tell whether or not such footage was also used here.
There are many cleverly self-referential bits -- direct and indirect allusions to films (Cairo, Al-Ard and Al-Akher) by Youssef Chahine, Khaled Youssef's mentor, and playful moments of foregrounding film as medium. We watch with Hayat's father a television screen showing a video (Hayat's graduation project) of Hoda recounting her husband's war time experience; this then cuts to big-screen "flashback" mode; then to video -- and then, in mid-sentence, to Hoda telling her story to Mahmoud. Neat, without crossing over to the realm of pretentiousness -- and quite clever.
But a film viewer will demand more than cleverness. S/he might demand depth of character and complexity of vision. Certainly s/he will not want to ignore the wrong chemistry between two pairs of characters and make a leap of faith every time they appear on screen: Hanan Tork and Sami El-Adl did not make a convincing father-daughter twosome; Hanan Tork and Hani Salama did not make a convincing pair of young lovers. Proper casting might be a mundane matter in the great world of the silver screen, still, it is something to which attention must be paid if a film is to be successful. Having cast this particular actress in this particular role, someone ought to have told her that less cleavage displayed on a visit to a Kodak store might go a longer way in the direction of realism. A thing or two could have been learned from a more experienced actress.
Thank you Youssra. You were a treat to watch. Taking a heavy handed symbolic touch (when the chalk portrait of the older son falls on a wet floor and is erased) and making of it a believable moment of motherly anguish, was no small feat. Khaled Youssef did well to chose such a competent, graceful Atlas to carry Al-Asifa on her shoulders.
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