Hani Mustafa demystifies the phenomenon that is Mohamed Saad For five years now comedy superstar Mohamed Saad has sought to ingratiate himself with film goers not only as a respectable racehorse but, even more importantly, as the stud worth LE5-7 million per course. With the exception of Katkout, indeed -- prevented from showing in the summer season, the film made only LE18 million -- Saad's features, released at the rate of one per annum and breathlessly anticipated by an ever growing core of devoted fans -- El-Limbi, Elli Bali Balak, Okal, Bouha and Katkout -- made no less than LE25 million each. None of which would have been possible without the cult figure of El-Limbi, which Saad managed to introduce through a secondary role in filmmaker Sherif Arafa's 2001 Al-Nazir, written by Ahmed Abdalla and starring the late Alaa Waleyeddin. In Karkar, his sixth film, Saad is more eager than ever to display his powers; and here as elsewhere his phenomenal popularity invites theorising. On the one hand he plays the lowest common denominator -- whether urban, as in El-Limbi and Okal, or provincial, i.e. Upper Egyptian -- Bouha and Katkout; he is the disinherited, marginalised Egyptian whose desperate efforts to survive the viewer can identify with at a deeper level. Both the failure of the antihero and his eventual success contribute to a sense of engagement that readily sustains attention, keeping the viewer not only entertained but gripped; the tension is released, giving way to joy, when Saad as intensely local Everyman wins in the end. And all through the process there is laughter: Saad's street-wise characters, in life as on screen, are often hilariously amusing; he imbues them with a hot temper and a capacity for taking offence that seems to work miracles of recognition. On the other hand there is the actor's own performance skill, which seems to surpass other so called new-wave comedians like Mohamed Heneidi, Hani Ramzi or Ahmed Helmi -- in more ways than one. First, it finds expression in grotesquery, something that hankers back to early comedians like Ismail Yasine -- in however different a form -- and answers rather more readily to the ever crazier contradictions of society. Secondly, unlike the aforementioned three, Saad does not play himself over and over; he does significantly more than modify his persona to suit the role. It is the character that takes over; so much so that when he sings in the course of a film, there is an undeniable sense that it is the character, not Mohamed Saad who is singing In every character Saad transforms into multiple personas, each as engaging and as funny as the other; when he plays several parts in the same film, as he has done in Karkar, his utter virtuosity becomes apparent. Karkar is the story of an aging scrap-iron merchant, massively rich, who disapproves of his son's marriage to the girl he loves. The son, Karkar, has an accident in which he loses said girl on the wedding night and goes crazy, prompting his father to contact the family, of whom Reda, Karkar's cousin, begins to take care of Karkar with the motive of baggin his money. Saad plays Karkar - before and after the accident: two completely different characters -- as well as Karkar's father and the high-voiced Reda, who also dresses up as a woman as part of his ruse to swindle Karkar. Saad thus plays a total of five very different characters. And in three out of five cases the huge amounts of make-up required leave him only his eyes and body as means of expression -- instruments that turn out to be sufficient for his purposes. The father, Hannawi, uses an old- fashioned, partly standard Arabic and Saad's trademark temper to express anger with his son, while Reda the woman is slutty and streetwise, but it is Karkar in his madness -- perhaps Saad's most grotesque persona to date, who proves most amusing. The script develops along conventional lines, with Hennawi seeking the support of the family whom he has avoided for many years since he became rich in his moment of need. He feels his life is nearing its end and he is eager to have an heir -- a grandson, now that his son is incapable of managing the business. And script writer Ahmed Abdalla uses this dramatic setup not only to introduce Hennawi's brother and sister, Reda's mother (Hassan Hosni and Ragaa El-Geddawi) but also to generate no end of comic situations. Karkar spends some time in a mental institution, for example: an occasion for a scene reminiscent of, though no match for, the asylum interns' operetta in Ismail Yasine if Mustashfa Al-Maganin, which nonetheless shows a capacity for the grotesque imagination. When one intern cuts his finger, the others bury him. Henawwi's brother introduces his daughter Zuhaira -- actually one of his restaurant-bar employees (Yasmine Abdel-Aziz) -- who pretends to be Japanese because he just happens to have a real daughter in Japan (about whom the film gives absolutely no information) -- thereby competing with Reda and his mother over Hennawi's wealth. Most of the comedy derives from these games; and though Saad predominates, Abdel-Aziz manages to force herself through at certain moments -- with rather powerful results. A happy ending as always: suddenly cured, with his memory back, Karkar realises his family have been deceiving him and gives a moralistic speech about Hennawi's desire to bring the family back together. This multi-character mania no doubt emanates from a sense of professional challenge, with Saad eager to prove himself beyond any doubt. The same tendency affected many stars of early Egyptian comedy at the time when the likes of Youssef Wahbi and Zaki Tulaymat were presented high drama on stage. Pure comedians like Naguib El-Rihani were looked down on in relative terms; the atmosphere was such that the very profession of acting was looked down on as a whole. And perhaps it is this kind of inferiority complex that still drives comedians to challenge themselves in the way Saad has. In this respect, at least, he has precedents: Rihani in Si Omar ; Ali El-Kassar in Ali Baba we El-Arba'in Harami ; Yasine in his well-known masterpiece El-Melionair ; and Fouad El-Mohandes in Akhtar Ragul if Al-Alam. In each case the comedian played two opposite roles: good and bad; poor and rich; serious and frivolous... And having established himself as a master of such dualities in Elli Bali Balak and Katkout, Mohamed Saad is now clearly seeking to liberate himself further -- and take the process of challenging his talent to extremes. Sadly, in the absence of a convincing plot and meaningful material, however impressive Saad's performance, it has more to do with the circus than the silver screen. It is well to remember that in his two most powerful films, El-Limbi and Bouha, Saad played a single character; and that the films worked because there was more to them than his admittedly very impressive performance.
