El chergui / The Wind From The East screened at the Tate Modern in London on 12 March 2011. Director Moumen Smihi was in attendance.
Cinematically speaking the two main sources of inspiration for El chergui, are Dziga Vertov and Jean Rouch. Vertov's influence can be seen in the editing and in the fragmentary city shots, Jean Rouch through the preoccupation with shared anthropology. El chergui is a film that, like a film of Rouch, is part ethno-documentary, part fiction, and very interested in ritual, it is also a city portrait of Tangiers in the 1950s.
As well as historically being a cosmopolitan multiethnic city, Tangiers was designated an international city from 1923-1956. The story that underlies the movie concerns the crisis of Aïcha, whose traditionalist husband is planning to take a second wife. The arrival of a second wife would lead to the subordination of Aïcha and her son, Aïcha's mother-in-law is sympathetic and the two attempt to deal with the problem via witchcraft. The husband is a lazy numskull type whose time seems to be split between stroking his beard, reclining on a couch, enjoying the camaraderie of his male friends, and collecting his rents from an agent. Whilst it would be very easy to demonise him, the film, in my opinion, opts for the Marxist perspective of viewing him as a product of his social and economic circumstances and is quite non-judgemental. I can feel safe for once in interpretation as Smihi admits to being a big fan of Roland Barthes and his idea that the author is dead (with this death arrives the birth of the reader). The director, in common with Freud, sees polygamy as a natural and harmless instinct, he was keen to stress that it's just as common in Paris as in Morocco, the level of formalisation merely varies, and so again the husband escapes judgement.
Despite the Marxist-Freudian-anthropological view (emphasised by the use of non-professional actors), the film clearly has a lot of sympathy with Aïcha, who is suppressed under the system in which she lives. The freedom of men, and also of Europeans within the city is also very clearly highlighted. The only way out that Aïcha feels she can access is provided by witchcraft, and a number of attempts to hex the husband are attempted. These rituals are partly invented and involve Smihi overtly embracing the Barthes' idea of the scriptor (as opposed to the author), that the modern artist merely combines previous texts in new combinations. The showering of coins for example is taken from Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible. There are scenes of incredible poesy involving Aïcha, for example when she unveils in front of a laughing beggar. I quite liked about this film how a lot of Smihi's juxtapositions were not straightforward, but oblique and pure.
The witchcraft is something that Smihi is seeing as shared anthropology. Using Freud again, the idea is that witchcraft/ritual behaviour/religion and western neurosis have a lot in common, both being symptoms of taboo, reactions to crisis.
Moumen grew up in Tangiers, but was educated at IDHEC in Paris (now La Fémis) and attended seminars at EHESS given by some of the most prominent intellectuals of the twentieth century including Foucault, Lévy-Strauss and Barthes. This left wing intellectual nurturing definitely informs the film. El chergui does a good job of portraying anger, although refreshingly it's not directed at anyone, but at a system, and by the end the film is quite the call for revolution.
A note on the director, Moumen Smihi appeared as a rather well-to-do rambling polyglot intellectual forged in the crucible of the 60s and 70s when people dared to think greatly and live greatly. I think he was rather bemused that film history has forgotten him, frankly, on the evidence of this film, I am too.
I would just like to mention how well the film captures this sense of North African listlessness. I particularly liked a cloudless shot of a boy on a rooftop, in the distance scudding whites on a sea disturbed by dry stirrings of wind. The sound design in this film, perhaps unusually for its era is pretty critical and easily overlooked as one doesn't expect it, a kind of constant murmur of anaesthetised dissent. Whilst this discontentment is present there's also a level of bonhomie towards certain aspects of the society. The husband and his friends have a picnic in the countryside where they reflect that what is important in life is to eat, drink, dance, and enjoy nature, which is somewhat more in the tradition of the Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam than modern ideas of how Moslems lives. Smihi was keen to stress in his introduction to the film that Arab culture and Moslem culture are not the same thing.
A few worthwhile aides-memoir that don't easily thread into my review. Another brilliant poetic shot is probably of a black rooster, on top of a bay viewed from high up that looks like a golden shield. Montage shots of tiny prison grilles, at different zooms work very well. The final ritual is full of danger and fragility, and touchingly evokes this idea of crisis/neurosis. The delicacy of frog couscous aught not to be forgotten as well!
