Iskanderija... lih?

I love this movie simply because every time i watch it, i can see myself, my life and my family in every scene. I can see my depression and my dreams, how hard it was to commence a dream and how much it took to start. I can see my parents waving. I can see my sister in Beirut while the war started and we try the best to get her out. I can see how my parents managed to save every penny to send me here to study what I want. I can see my poring job and my girl, my friends and how we became apart. In short this movie is all about me. My roots in Alexandria. I miss it very much. I have been here over two years now. But I am sure I will be back one day.

I was quite impressed with "Alexandria, Why?" It is just the second film I've seen from Egyptian master Youssef Chahine, but I can already see why many scholars have praised his work tremendously. This film captures both its' time and setting quite eloquently. It is clearly inspired by Italian neo-realism and uses dubbing as many Italian films of the yesteryear have so often done. The film is perhaps an autobiographical one as it depicts a young man in World War II Egypt who wants to immigrate to California and become a filmmaker. I sense the reason this film is so rated so poorly here is because it has a production value which is very minimal in scale. You realize that many shots are shot in a studio and backdrops, particularly ones with the Meditterranean shore, are ones from stock footage. This is something which is more often in B-movies from the '60s here. But, I am sure this was due to inherent financial limitations which Chahine had too work around. If one compares this film with ones from Turkish and Indian films made in this era, it seems as though Chahine effectively utilized what he had. And, if you compare it with films from other African countries, like Senegal, well it seems like an MGM production! I imagine if George Lucas had the film's producer, these things would have been remedied but as it is, very little artistic integrity is compromised here. We are drawn into the characters' lives and we are captivated by their struggles too find love and freedom. In the end, some things are sacrificed too achieve one desire over another and thus we are left with the brutal reality of the immigrant experience. And, the result is one sterling film which suggests that if an artist truly believes in their work, they can achieve the same artistic merits as filmmakers from more developed nations.

A dense, difficult, and, unfortunately, sloppy film from Egypt. It deals with a group of characters in Alexandria during (and shortly after) WWII, and is kind of a portrait of an artist type of story. The main character is a teenager, Yehia, an aspiring actor and filmmaker who knows that Alexandria will stifle his creativity if he doesn't get out. He strives to go to England or America. Then there are half a dozen other plotlines running concurrently. All of them are interesting, including a terrorist plot to kidnap Churchill and turn him over to the Nazis when they arrive in the city, a wealthy family that decides to move to Palestine and finds that the land is being occupied by the Jews, and a man who abducts British soldiers and kills them as an act of patriotism, that is until he befriends a particularly innocent-looking one. The movie jumps around breathlessly, and it's almost impossible to follow it completely. Still, there are so many moments of grace and beauty, so many good performances, that I did end up approving of it, if just a little. 7/10.

For a director who has been making movies for nearly 60 years, Youssef Chahine is still criminally unknown outside of Arabia and Europe, even in critical circles. The widest release outside of Europe for any of his films was a very limited run in the US for 1997's "Destiny", and only five or six of his films are available on Region 1 DVD. Still, dedicated cinephiles who have studied world cinema will inform you that Chahine is considered one of world cinema's great masters. He has been nominated for no less than seven awards at Cannes, five of them either for the Palme D'Or or its predecessor, the Grand Prize. Chahine won a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 at Cannes, as well. He has been awarded numerous other awards over the course of his illustrious career and has made some of the best regarded works in Arabic (specifically Egyptian) cinema. So why hasn't he achieved recognition across the Atlantic? His films are dense, rich, colorful, articulate, controversial, and endlessly fascinating, but they are also difficult. Few Chahine films can be watched and fully understood in one sitting, and even fewer are fully enjoyed on first viewing. Occasionally Chahine's films fall prey to his complex plots and multiple layering, and though it is still a good film, "Alexandria… Why?" is one of his most difficult and muddled films.

The film, set during World War II tells multiple stories, one being Chahine's own story through the character of Yehia (played excellently by Mohsin Mohieddene), a young man in Egypt with directorial ambitions but the passion to be an actor, who frequently watches the same film repeatedly at his local cinema out of fear that he missed something the first time, performs Shakespeare, struggles with social and familial pressures, falls in love, and pursues his dream of studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. This is the film's main story, but subplots include a Jewish-Muslim romance where the female character is pregnant, a homosexual romance between a gay English soldier and a wealthy Arab, and a wacky, often funny plot featuring a group of communists who plan to kidnap Winston Churchill in hopes of ending the war.

Though certainly not Chahine's first controversial film (his masterpiece "Cairo Station" was banned for twelve years in Egypt after its first run of screenings in 1958, and understandably so, being a film about a sexually frustrated, handicapped fetishist), "Alexandria… Why?" created quite the furor in conservative Islamic Egypt upon first release, it made bold statements on global politics, suggested (truthfully) corruption in Egypt's political structure, supported communism, and featured a homosexual relationship between a British soldier and a wealthy Arab, among other taboos. Chahine designed his script not only to tell the story of himself as a young man, but to tell his story as part of a bigger one, the story of the social and political climate in Alexandria, and the story of what he clearly believes to be incorrectly considered social taboos come to life. This is a brave and challenging film which affected me more than most films I've seen recently, all the more surprising since I thought it was a lacking effort from a director whose films are generally quite brilliant.

The words 'stock footage' have negative connotations in any film fan's mind because it is so often used ineptly, but here the stock footage of WWII used brings the war to life at an appropriate distance and is edited cleverly and realistically into the film, so we never feel that we are watching a cheap production. That said, the overall production design on this fairly low-budget film is minimal, but when the film does look expensive in about three or four scenes, the money is used well. Unfortunately Chahine slips into some unfortunate mistakes like using footage from "An American in Paris" when that film was released several years after the Second World War ended. The photography is on occasion sloppy, but more than often it is precise and adds a lot to the mood of the film. There is not much of an original score used in the film as Chahine prefers to use a variety of music clips from various sources to suit whatever point the film is at. The music works perfectly with the film, but it so varied I cannot imagine it would make good listening as an album.

Ultimately it is the film's occasional sloppiness that lets it down, as well as Chahine's tendency for complex plotting. This would have been perfect as a two hour film about Chahine as portrayed through the character Yehia, but his desire to comment on more than himself brings the film's quality down. Its script is excessive and often incoherent, and although there are some exceptionally shot scenes like that in which Yehia directs his first theatrical performance, the film on a whole is more remarkable for its ambition, scale, viewpoint, and characters than the end product. It is muddled and messy at times, worth watching but certainly not Chahine's best as sometimes named by critics. Chahine's later films in his autobiographical trilogy, "Egyptian Story" and "Alexandria Again and Forever" are better ways to appreciate Chahine's cinema and the character Yehia, as is his very best, most original, and bravest film "Cairo Station", which I honestly consider one of the great masterpieces of cinema.

7/10

Yehia has big dreams of Hollywood, utterly preoccupied with the American Dream. His classmates are lighting their cigarettes while he's entranced by the glitz and glamour of cinema, before paying for another ticket to see the same movie again. He's obsessed with acting and filmmaking but confined by financial circumstances. Though I can't say I identified with any of the remaining characters nearly as much, I still think their storylines are all given, to varying degrees, enough consideration to be of interest. Some people are mislead and blinded by the status quo, with their only concern being to change it, oblivious to the danger that may entail. Case in point, we see people anticipating an imminent German invasion in hope it would liberate them from the British occupation. Others are pretty content with things as they are for they're technically surviving, and thriving, on sleaze. And then there are people who are simply passive, some of them are yet to be disillusioned.

Besides the main storyline revolving around Yehia, the script attempts to juggle multiple subplots but hits only a few barricades in the process. For one thing, it lacks a smooth flow due to muddled editing, resulting in some distracting shots. For another, it's unpolished when it comes to its tonality, as if the film regularly tries to attune itself to the characters focused-on at certain moments, coming across as out of place. Additionally, Chahine seems to adopt here more than one cinematic style, the thing that made the movie feel inconsistent. Then again, I think Chahine successfully managed, by and large, to squeeze all these characters, with their own plot threads, under the umbrella of WWII, which provides the backdrop of the story.

Alexandria... Why? Is an ambitious and clever effort, which shows in every inch of its mosaic structure and artistic decisions. Cheerful music played over scenes interspersed with footage showing destruction to emphasize that war has become an essential part of their life, while underscoring the nefariousness of their world in a comedic light, and POV shots that involve us in Yehia's dreams. It's a film of cosmopolitan proportions; centring around British occupation yet flicking through other parts of the globe, all while being quintessentially Egyptian, even giving singularity to each household of different cultures and classes. Occasionally, it may feel a pretentious, jumbled mess or a pastiche of Italian cinema - with Fellini being the main inspiration, for sure - Mostly, though, it's a dramatic allegro of making the most of one's opportunities, executed at full throttle with a comedic vein running throughout, cemented by a genius ambiguous ending.