cinematic cairo: the yacoubian building

Sometimes the movie really is better than the book. I had high expectations for The Yacoubian Building, having heard praise from several Cairo-based friends whose cinematic tastes I trust, but I was still deeply impressed. Umaret Yacoubian is the best mainstream Egyptian film I've seen yet.*

Alaa al-Aswany's novel, hailed as a "taboo-shattering" portrait of modern Cairene life, was the bestselling novel in Arabic for two years running--but while I found the book intriguing and at times moving, my enjoyment of it was circumscribed by my irritation at the narrative style (Laila Lalami's review touches on some of the same elements I found jarring.) It might have partly been a result of translation, but I found many of the characters remained flat, half-realized, even as the momentum of the plot carried me along.

Marwan Hamed's film version, though, finally brought to life the men and women who people the once-gloried apartment building of the novel's title, each of whom--from the aging, louche aristocrat, to the harassed and spirited shopgirl, or the populist politician on the make, and the doorman's son who dreams of a better life--represents a facet of modern Egyptian society. Lalami is right that there was something cinematic about the novel already, with its rapid cross-cutting between intertwined plotlines, and it transitions unusually well to the screen. The result is a inspired tragicomedy, a mash-up of the melodramatic verve of the musalsal (Egyptian TV serials, like telenovelas) with the critical cynicism of cinema engagé. And it remains engaging throughout its nearly three-hour duration. The performances--from some of Egypt's best-known actors--are generally strong, and some of the film's more stirring moments are charged with real power--such as a vivid scene of the buildup to a clash between the police and a group of Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) student protesters.

I was particularly interested in the movie's politics: while issues of class and corruption are at the fore--and Islamism's appeal to the young protagonist Taha is couched primarily in terms of poverty, class-based discrimination and ridicule--it takes on a wide range of contentious themes. While it would be a stretch to call the film feminist per se, it foregrounds the book's more implicit critique of sexism and sexual violence in particular--such as the vividly-evoked harassment Busayna (played by the wonderful Hind Sabry) must endure to keep the job that she can't afford to leave. The depiction of the torture meted out to the Ikhwan activists in prison--and a sickening scene of the leadup to the rape of one of the young men--was unsparing, and I was somewhat surprised that the filmmaker was able to get away with such an unrelentingly negative portrayal of the state, its representatives, and its institutions, from the members of parliament down to the police force.

(In an email to a dear friend afterwards, I found myself musing about the film's unflinching portrayal of sexual harassment and prison rape in light of the prominence of those issues in human rights scandals in Egypt this past year--particularly with respect to public outrage over the mass assaults of women in Cairo during Eid, and the revelation of a cellphone video depicting the brutal sexual assault of a young man during a police interrogation. In both cases, Egyptian bloggers played a crucial role in publicizing the crimes and garnering support for civil society action in protest.)

Finally, the film--like the book--has gotten a lot of attention for its "frank" depiction of homosexuality, in the character of half-French newspaper editor Hatem Rashid. My reaction, in both cases, was mixed--while it is surely a more candid account than I've seen in most other Arab novels or films, Hatem's portrayal is still disturbing--not because he is a troubled, flawed man, but because of the stereotypes he embodies, and in particular the disturbing "explanation" of the supposed cause of his sexual orientation. Nonetheless, I felt the film pushes the envelope further than the book here--partly as a result of some minor changes to the story, but perhaps most because Khaled el Sawy plays the role of Hatem with great empathy-even if the audience is meant to be repulsed by him, we are nonetheless invited to feel compassion, too, and perhaps even anger at the injustice he endures. (It's still a problematic element, though, and was a consistent source of unease in my experience of the film.)

And the pervasive presence of injustice, leavened with a sort of bittersweet, compromised redemption, is what drives The Yacoubian Building. It's still a comedy of sorts--we found ourselves laughing often, at the recognizable and the ridiculous alike--but it's a dark one, indeed.

*I am no expert, but having studied under a certain Egyptian cinema-obsessed anthropologist, I've been exposed to somewhat more of it than your average ajnabi girl. Although I still have not seen al-Irhab wal-Kebab (Terrorism and Kebab) and I deeply regret this failing.