Audience Member
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.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
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Audience Member
Does Chahine like classic Mexican songs? That's super awesome!
It was always easy to relate Chahine's intrepid style with that of Fellini's vivid environments, even if these environments portrayed Neorealism, harsh life conditions or major catastrophes. This is no exception. Even Fellini's transition to nostalgic impressionism during the 70s has a lot of parallelisms with Chahine's equally ambitious, equally nostalgic and equally "inferior" (compared to his previous better decades) transformation. I put "inferior" in quotation marks because, although this is not as strong as the director's previous legendary pieces of cinema, this is still a pretty bold picture.
So it seems to come a time for big-name auteurs or renowned directors to compose a tribute to cinema halfway through their filmography, if not towards the ending. Italy in particular loves to do this: Fellini, Tornatore, Scorsese, etc. The young boy in the film even precedes some character trademarks of Toto in <i>Nuovo Cinema Paradiso</i> (1988). Nevertheless, this "homage to cinema" acquires several facets that pushed Chahine to be more ambitious than usual, trying to compile a collage about several interconnected stories dealing with love and happiness amidst tumultuous times. That's the aspect that differentiates Chahine from the rest. Although this ambition to balance so many apples in the air with several styles ends up surpassing the director's capabilities, the energy displayed throughout almost completely compensates its main faults.
This "collage" assembles many nationalities and viewpoints under a common circumstance: WWII. In more than two hours, we see acting, politics, anti-American comments against its illusory concept of Democracy, war, ruins, Hitler, Churchill, a boy enchanted with the glamour of Hollywood musicals and his love towards acting, a homosexual English soldier getting involved with a wealthy Arab, a Jewish falling for a Muslim man, the German invasion, a cast of actors singing the Mexican song "Perfidia" by composer Alberto Domínguez in 1939... Was the intention of the film to bring many nationalities and sociocultural trends of the 1940s together to deliver a universal message? That's uncertain to me, but I would buy that description.
Although the scope is maximized beyond what the Egyptian master Chahine could handle, <i>Alexandria... Why?</i> is a film with intrepid filmmaking styles, all put together into a moving tale that cares for its characters while criticizing the futility of war and highlighting the perception people had during that time about the "American dream". The title itself is a reference to one of the questions made by the protagonist: "Why was I even born in Alexandria?"
84/100
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Youssef chahine's Masterful ,potent ,Powerful this is a dazzling,Masterful achievement of an incredible piece of filmmaking ,chahine successed to create a dazzling and potent motion picture about politics,love and pain ,incredibly epic with unforgettable performances ,This is without any doubt my favorite egyptian film of all time
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/02/23
Full Review
Audience Member
One of my favorites, despite the bad lines in the dialogue here and there.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/14/23
Full Review
Audience Member
its really one of the most important movies in the history of Egypt and the world..
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
Full Review
Audience Member
an epic movie.......................
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
Full Review
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