Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/18/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Adieu Bonaparte (Youssef Chahine, 1985)

Patrice Chéreau in Adieu Bonaparte

Cast: Michel Piccoli, Mohsen Mohieddin, Salah Zulfikar, Patrice Chéreau, Mohamad Atef, Ahmed Abdelaziz, Abla Kamel, Hassan Husseiny, Huda Sultan, Dahlia Younès, Christian Patey, Gamil Ratib. Screenplay: Youssef Chahine, Yousry Nasrallah. Cinematography: Mohsen Nasr. Production design: Onsi Abou Seif. Film editing: Luc Barnier. Music: Gabriel Yared.

Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte is about a clash of empires: the nascent one that will be led by Napoleon Bonaparte and the crumbling one that saw Islamic culture spread across much of what was Eurocentrically called "the known world." But its point of view is primarily that of the people caught between these two powerful forces, the people of Egypt, when French forces under the command of Bonaparte, not yet emperor, clash with the Ottoman Turks who then ruled Egypt. Mostly it's about the relationship between a fictional character, the young poet and interpreter, Aly (Mohsen Mohieddin), and the French general Maximilian Caffarelli (Michel Piccoli), an intellectual who had lost a leg in an earlier conflict when the French annexed a territory belonging to Belgium. (The movie repeats a witticism that Caffarelli doesn't care what happens because he'll always have one foot in France.) Caffarelli befriends Aly and his brother Yehia (Mohamad Atef) partly because he's sexually attracted to the young men, but also because he has a curiosity about Egyptians and their culture. Meanwhile, Bonaparte (Patrice Chéreau) suffers a defeat when Admiral Nelson destroys his fleet and forces him to stay in Egypt. Chéreau gives a wonderful performance as the preening but determined man who would be emperor, and Piccoli is equally fine as Caffarelli. Mohieddin holds his own with the French stars, as Aly struggles with his admiration for Caffarelli and his loyalty to his brother Bakr (Ahmed Abdelaziz), a leader in the struggle for Egyptian self-determination. It's a handsomely filmed production, with fine work by cinematographer Mohsen Nasr and an epic score by Gabriel Yared. But it's also often hard to follow, with its swarm of characters, many of them members of Aly's family, and its historical backstory. Chahine has a tendency to overload his narratives with incidents that distract from or seem only tangential to the main story.