Yamustafa!

Article by:   Taha Elkhalifa* Watching the 2004 Swedish movie  As It Is in Heaven  directed by Kay Pallok, starring Michael Nyqvist as Daniel Dareus and Frida Hallgren as Lena, brings to mind two ideas. The first one is about the  Quiet Revolution  in Canada's Quebec, which denoted the socioeconomic changes in Quebec of the 1960's where the liberals and the leftists were able to ascend to power through election after the death of the late conservative Quebec Premier  Duplessis . Those changes from conservatism to liberalism; from economic backwardness to development and progress were made possible by the nationalization of hydroelectric power from private companies and by imposing a public educational system that ended the sad control of the church over schools, colleges and universities. The second idea that the movie brought to my mind was about the magnificent short story written by the late Colombian writer  Gabriel Garcia Marquez ...

By: Muhsin Khalid Part Six "Too late!   Too late to save him, In vain, in vain they tried. His life was England’s glory, His death was England’s pride" Rudyard Kipling "A world with no room for the Gordons, is a world that will return to the sands." The narrator in the movie Earlier in this series, mention was made of the Mahdi fighters' plundering of an abandoned cannon in the aftermath of their battle at Kashgel with the thirst-stricken army of Hicks Pasha. Near the closing scenes of the movie, the only time we learn that they could use it properly is when they aim and hit a building, not the desperate soldiers of the besieged Gordon Pasha! The hidden meaning here is that no matter what these fighters earn, they don’t deserve it because they are bound to misuse or abuse it. This structuring of the hidden meaning of worthlessness builds up to the moment when Gordon declines from holding his sword presented to him by his servant and ta...

Article by: Muhsin Khalid Part Five The Mahdi in "Khartoum" is portrayed as a Ghoul, a black vampire whose guest room is noticeably occupied by jars filled with cut off heads, whose talk is threatening to kill women and children, every soul..! The Amazigh  in the "Gladiator" are shown as no different. They sip their wine from the skulls of messengers and mail deliverers who are not, by convention, to be killed. In the movie "300" of 2006, the invading Persians come to fight the Spartans by an army from the underworld; an army of mirabilia ; of exotic creatures as though bred from marine and some monster organisms which, in their onslaught in battle have children and women entangled in the cracks of their hoofs and under their folds , before they meet their doom. In another Hollywood movie we are introduced to a Muslim terrorist . We cannot tell whether he is Palestinian or Egyptian because he uses both accents! He is on board of...

Article by Muhsin Khalid Part Four The Clowning of Olivier Lawrence Olivier's portrayal of the Mahdi is compromised by overacting.  His facial register is obviously exaggerated. His features shiver as though afflicted by an overdose of a drug. He yells at his fighters when they bring him Gordon's  head with an almost comic theatrical movement:   Take it away from me!   His lower jaw is dropped like a camel fed up salt in order to sell it puffy and swollen. This excessive portrayal of the Mahdi defeats the desired outcome of the scene. Olivier as Othello (1965) There is too much that is grasped by  camera which would have looked more effective on stage.  The mixing of film technique with that of the theater, if not done with full awareness of the subject, yields outright foolishness from head to tail. A similar mistake to this I find in Peterson Wolfgang's perspective in his film Troy when he makes...