Last month, British newspaper The Observer published an insightful article entitled “Can films change the world? written by leading British film producer Nick Fraser. In it, Fraser raises the ever-so-pressing debate over whether or not films can act as a substantial agent of change in society.
Fraser remembers posing his inquiry to late legendary American film critic Pauline Kael who politely dismissed his argument. “I’m not saying it’s impossible to make a film that has everybody going out of the movie house saying, ‘We must do something about X’, Kael replied. “But where are the films like that?
Indeed, throughout the long history of the medium, few films have succeeded in prompting a tangible kind of change on a mass scale. The impact most great films have is usually measured on an individual level. However, there have been a handful of pictures that did indeed bring about some significant social change.
Said Marzouk’s “Oridu Halan (I Need a Solution, 1975) famously helped change personal status laws in Egypt. Davis Guggenheim pushed global warming to the forefront of world politics with his 2006’s monumental documentary “An Inconvenient Truth . Recently, Laurent Cantet’s Palm d’Or-winning “The Class incited a re-evaluation of France’s education system.
The aforementioned films share two fundamental traits: They’re solid works of great artistic value; and each one of them was conceived with an articulate vision.
Neither of these qualities can be found in Ahmed Atef’s latest picture “El Ghaba (The Jungle), a blunt, big-headed power-point presentation about the world of Egypt’s street children.
The grim world of Atef’s ‘Jungle’ is controlled by two conflicting figures. El Turbini (Bassem El Samra) is a monstrous gang leader and amateur drug dealer who entertains himself by scratching his victims with a razor blade. El Turbini is released from jail, seeking vengeance from new leader Hamousa (Ahmed Azmi), a part-time police informant responsible for El Turbini’s imprisonment.
El Turbini enlists his girl Bershama (Hanan Motawie), a prostitute and drug addict, to seduce Hamousa who hides a stash of drug money that once belonged to El Turbini. Hamousa’s pregnant pot-head girlfriend Gameela (Riham Abdel Ghaffour) catches the two in the act and impulsively slashes Bershama’s face.
Except for Bershama’s compelling storyline, boosted by Motawie’s exceptional, restrained performance, which represents perhaps the film’s only saving grace, nothing much happens to these principle characters until the big confrontation at the end of the film.
Meanwhile, Atef traces the unfortunate Ramadan (real former street kid Ahmed Abdel Qawi) as he struggles to outlive this chaos. A police force ships him over to a juvenile delinquent center where he becomes subjected to physical abuse from the sadistic wardens and suffers a rape attempt by one of the inmates. After he escapes, he tries to save his mother and two sisters from their abusive father, who rapes the older daughter and attempts to rape her eight-year-old sister.
Atef is a director of limited capabilities whose previous two features were commercial and critical flops. His first feature “Omar 2000, despite its major flaws, was – I have to admit – somehow intriguing and original. His follow-up, “Izzay Tekhalli El-Banat Tehibbak (How To Make Girls Love You), was a failed endeavor to penetrate mainstream cinema in the shape of a worthless romantic comedy.
After receiving his MFA from the University of Southern California (USC), Atef returned to revive the dream project he started 15 years ago in the form of a short film titled “Sabares (Cigarettes). “Sabares was Atef’s graduation project from Egypt’s Higher Cinema Institute, notorious for belonging to an infamous group of controversial short films banned by the establishment.
The conditions Egypt’s forgotten kids continue to endure, the horrors they encounter every day, and the increasing schism between the haves and the have-nots, makes for vital subject matter that must be tackled with sensitivity.
Astoundingly, Atef fails on every single front, presenting a shallow work of enormous predictability.
The main problem with “El Ghaba is its lack of focus and weak dramatic unity. In 90 minutes, Atef manages to take on the issues of incest, pedophilia, homosexuality, human organ theft, prostitution as well as police brutality and corruption.
None of these topics are explored deeply enough; none of them are presented in a different light from daily news reports. Instead, the entire film feels like a collection of fragmented news clippings devoid of any emotional wallop or intellectual integrity.
Atef tries to force viewers to sympathize with his characters, relying heavily on Amro Ismail’s over-dramatic, sappy score to set the stage for his manipulative, hollow images. But because none of his two-dimensional characters are fully developed, he fails miserably to engage the audience in his narrative or elicit any kind of sympathy.
His disjointed plot threads are distancing and unabsorbing, which is made worse by the stiff, artificial performances by the kid actors – save for the praiseworthy Abdel Qawi – and the average turn out from most adult actors. Atef’s direction is flat and uninspired, despite the rich backdrop he never fully exploits.
To compensate for his jagged script, co-written by “Hena Maysara scriber Nasser Abdel Rahman, Atef injects his film with cartoonish grisly images for shock value. And despite the fact that such scenes rank among the goriest, most violent images in Egyptian film history, they fail to leave a lasting impression.
“El Ghaba’s greatest misgiving though is the condescending, preachy stance of its filmmaker. In one incendiary scene, one member of a group of young female volunteers helping the kids ingenuously refers to their rather disingenuous efforts as “their portal to heaven.
Ironically, that’s what the film eventually feels like. There’s no such thing as a selfless act, and Atef’s blatant message eventually appears as another pompous stab at creating a work of social importance. Compare “El Ghaba to Tahani Rached’s stupendous documentary “El Banat Dol (These Girls). Rached succeeded in crafting an incredibly heartfelt, raw picture that did indeed change perceptions by simply capturing the reality of female street children as it is, with no exaggeration or intent to push forward a particular agenda.
The fact that the greater part of the half-filled theater watching the film earlier this week spent the tedious 90 minutes cracking one joke after another, reacting with utter coolness and indifference to Atef’s ethics lecture, speaks volumes regarding his immature, failed venture. to Atef’s moral lecture, speaks volumes regarding his immature, failed venture.
