The Closed Doors: Exposing the Taboo

Atef Hetata's controversial Egyptian film The Closed Doors (Al Abwab Al Moghlaka) marks a moment in Egyptian cinema where the nation began to more openly acknowledge its tense cultural and religious problems, particulalry those concerning sexuality. The film follows the story of 13-year-old Mohamed, known as Hamada to his mother, as he comes of age and battles with urges he's been taught are wrong and the unsettling idea of his mother as a sexual being.

The film opens with an eye peering through a hole in a wall. The audience soon sees that the eye is gazing at a group of girls. As the image continues to grow, we see a young boy, Hamada, distracted in class by the passing girls. His teacher is quick to reprimend him and remind him that he is at school, not at the movies. Hamada is thrown out of class and after closing the classroom door behind him, he is approached by another teacher and told to go to the mosque to escape the hardships of school. Hamada sets off on a walk through his neighborhood, and images of an impoverished Cairo provide the backdrop for the film credits.

Before the credits roll, The Closed Doors, has already given audiences a lot to consider. The image of an eye through a hole in a wall suggests a voyeuristic quality to the film. The camera both stares back at the eye and assumes the eye's vantage point, thus building a twofold relationship between the eye's beholder and the audience. First, the audience is gazing at Hamada, observing and judging him. Next, the audience becomes Hamada, joining in his curiousity of the female form and seeing the world as his inexperienced eyes see it. This relationship persists throughout the film.

Next, there is the remark from the teacher, that this is a class, not a cinema. For Hamada, it is a class pretending to be a cinema, but for the audience, this is a cinema acting as a class. Hamada is being taught literature and writing, but not the things he wants to learn: sex and sexuality. For that, he uses his symbolic cinema in the form of the hole in the wall.

On the other hand, the audience comes to the cinema to experience the sensuality and pleasure of seeing images on the screen. There is a fascinating satisfaction gained from viewing human bodies, particularly beautiful bodies, on the theater screen. This is why movie stars are pressured to be so picture-perfect. However, The Closed Doors closes the door, in a manner of speaking, on this saught-after satisfaction and instead turns every image of beauty and sexuality into one of tension and discomfort. The human body is feared and uncertain in The Closed Doors, for this is the way Hamada interprets it.

Finally, in the opening sequence, Hamada closes the door behind him when he leaves his class. This act seperates him from the boys and teacher inside the room and leaves a void for another door to fill. When one door closes, another opens. In this case, the next door opens towards religion. Hamada closes the door on his education and takes another step towards the door to Islam. And this is where we meet him at the start of the film, and from this point on Hamada will bounce back and forth in his beliefs, struggling with his growing sexuality that has changed his perception of the world.

One way to read through The Closed Doors is to examine the role of doors, both literal and metaphorical. There are in fact many doors in the film that dictate the fate of Hamada and his mother.

As a metaphor, the door is an in-between place and a barrier. It can be used to hide behind or block others out, or it can be removed to bring people together. It can be the threshold for something great, or something devastating.

In that respect, the characters are constantly situated near doors in the home or at school or even car doors. The doors serve as either a separation between two types of people--man and woman, mother and son--or as a barrier to keep things hidden and safe.

For example, when Hamada accidently sees his mother changing in her room, he quickly closes the door to protect himself from seeing her and to protect her from being seen. The door is being used to hide and protect his mother, but at the same time, it was by accidently opening the door that Hamada caught a glimpse of her undressed. The door is neither friend nor foe for Hamada and it is clear that no door remains closed forever.

For the film itself, the door it opens is the one blocking any public discourse on sexual practices or issues, such as incest or extra-marital sex, both of which are major elements of The Closed Doors. Hetata opens the door with a shocking and riveting drama that is rich with metaphors and yet tragic in its realism.

The Yacoubian Building: The Modernist Paradox in Egypt

Egypt is, without a doubt, the most prolific Arab nation in terms of film production. The old Egyptian classic melodramas and musicals are recognized and appreciated throughout the Middle East. Today, Egyptian films are increasingly focused on a number of social and political issues. However, heavy censorship in Egypt is a major obstacle, though filmmakers are finding ways to slowly overcome boundaries.

The 2006 film The Yacoubian Building (Omaret yakobean) by Marwan Hamed and starring Egyptian legend Adel Imam stands out as a breakthrough in censorship and conservative ideals. The film broke box office records in Egypt and was the nation's official entry for the Academy Awards.

Based on a bestselling novel by Alaa Al Aswany with the same name set in 1990, The Yacoubian Building tells the stories of the tenants of the film's namesake and uses the building, an actual building in Cairo, as a metaphor for modern Egypt. The characters face a slew of social problems--poverty, religious radicalism, sexual harrasment, aging, homesexuality, adultry, abortion, drugs, political corruption, police brutality--and each of their morals is put to the test, and most of them fail.

The depiction of modern Egypt is scathing, to say the least. Very little redemption or hope for Egypt's future is presented.

The film tackles so many issues that it would be futile to attempt to analyze all of them here in this blog. I will most likely return to this film in the future to analyze more specific themes, but this entry will focus on a prevailing theme that I believe is exemplified by each of the characters' personal story: the fear that social progress will ruin tradition and humanity. This is also known as the modernist paradox.

The tenants of the Yacoubian Building all want change. Soad (Somaya Al Khashab) lives with her mother and siblings in a shanty on the roof of the building. She wants to make more money, but cannot hold a job because she rejects the sexual advances of her bosses to maintain her honor. Her mother tells her a woman can learn to tolerate a certain amount of harassment and still keep her dignity and make money. This story represents Egypt as a place where people must forgo their morality in order to make money and survive.

Soad clings to her beliefs in the face of a society that has moved far past her notions of honor. She is at odds with the world around her. At one point, she gives in to her boss and allows him to dry hump her in a back room. Everyone else is unbothered by this, but Soad is crushed and represents a victim of modernity. In this case, the modernism is an immoral and evil thing.

Zaki Al Dessouki (Adel Imam) is the Yacoubian Building's oldest tenant and an heir to a Pasha. In one scene, he drunkenly proclaims to Soad that Cairo had gone to the dogs, that it was once a city greater than Paris but was now full of buildings that were "slums on the top and deformed in the basement," a reference to the poor people that lived on the roof and the morally empty rich tenants inside. Zaki demands a return to the old glory of Egypt, a proclamation that is fitting to be made by one of the greatest actors in Egyptian cinema.

Despite their drastic age diffrence, Zaki and Soad marry at the end of the film, serving as the film's only ray of hope. The two represent a merging of old and new, rich and poor, Muslim and Coptic. The audience is left to believe that through their marriage, Zaki and Soad are preserving the dream of transforming Cairo, since every other subplot ends tragically.

The Yacoubian Building is an attempt at a sweeping portrayal of contemporary Egypt that is a landmark in terms of breaking boundaries in cinema, but it also suffers from trying to cram too much into one film.

Each of the subplots is just as important as the next, and depth and insight into the issues is sacrificed to preserve screen time. Nonetheless, this is a crucial film to see to get a more honest and humanist representation of Egypt and an introduction to the social perceptions of a variety of issues.

Photo Caption: Somaya al Khashab and Adel Imam dance together in The Yacoubian Building.