Arab cinema: themes and cultural representation

¶ … Yacoubian Building is essentially a 'slice of life' movie, adopted from the novel of the same name, written by Alaa Al Aswany. It seems to be a rather high budget film, with powerful visual effects and a strong cast of actors. The film centers around an actual building in Cairo known as the Yocoubian Building; a housing and commercial structure in which the characters of the movie all wind up having ties to. It is a modern building in a traditional nation -- a building that once signified affluence but whose rooftops have now deteriorated to a slum like habitat. The Yacoubian building ultimately represents the changing urban landscape of the city of Cairo.

The lower portions of the building are still inhabited by the wealthy, mostly in offices and luxury apartments. The characters represent strong class divisions, which became especially pronounced after the Egyptian coup d'etat of 1952. Although the film takes place in the 1990s, the ripple effects of that war continue to effect people's lives. For example, the character of Taha el Shazli is unable to overcome his lower class status and fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer despite his good grades and strong work ethic. So he ends up joining a militant Islamic group instead of the police academy, simply because his lower class status was considered to render him not 'good enough' to become a police officer.

The character of Taha el Shazli is a direct contrast to the character of Haj Azzam, a hypocritical upper class businessman who claims to be religiously pious, but is actually an immoral manipulator who uses his money to get whatever he wants. There are dozens more characters in this movie, all with their own secrets. In many ways, the movie plays out like a soap opera. There is the story of the closet homosexual and his forbidden love affair with a soldier; the skirt-chasing aristocrat who ends up alienating his family and friends because he refused to grow up; and numerous romantic tales and troubles, including the rocky relationship Taha has with his girlfriend Bosnaina.

Although there are definitely some soap opera-like plot points in this movie, the deeper message is about the way class divisions can so significantly affect people's lives. The rich are no happier than the poor, because all of them are slaves to the expectations of their own class. All of the characters seem to feel trapped in an a frustrating and unhappy existence, which is ultimately a reflection of their lack of freedom to shape their own lives because their class status has already shaped their lives for them.

This is a very long film (over three hours) but it needs to be this long to capture all of the stories of its multitude of characters. It could practically be divided into two separate normal length films without losing any of its meaning because there is so much going on that it can be difficult to keep all of the characters straight.