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The
Story of The Message
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By
Maged Hebtah
Translated by Abdelazim R. Abdelazim
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09/08/2004
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Poster for the film the Message
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“A
director over here is the same as a director over there. There is no difference
between one director and the other. Creativity is creativity. Creativity is not
confined to the so-called ‘international’ cinema; it is itself an
international language.”
Al-Akkad
did not say these words out of modesty but out of a firm belief that
international and Western cinema do not in the least outshine the Arabic cinema
in individual creative capacity. They are merely more advanced in a technical
and economic sense as well as in the mechanisms of cinematic production. He
mentions the Egyptian actor Abdullah Ghaith’s performance in the Arabic
version of The Message, which greatly surpassed superstar Anthony
Quinn’s performance in the English version.
The
Message in Court
Despite
its huge international success, The Message has been banned in both
Egypt
and
Syria. However, leafing through the movie’s censorship file, I was surprised to
find not a single paper referring to an objection against the film, either from
Al-Azhar[1] or any other party. On the contrary, the file
contained evidence that the movie’s screenplay had been approved by a number
of scholars from Al-Azhar.
Al-Akkad
himself affirmed the approval of Al-Azhar. “In fact, I was sitting side by
side with Sheikh Muhammad Mutwalli Al-Sharawy as he was watching the film, and
in the end he asked for more. I brought Harry Kiggaf from
Hollywood
to stay in the Cairo Nile Hilton for a year to write the screenplay for the
film in cooperation with Abdul-Hamid Jodda Al-Sahar, Tawfik Al-Hakim[2],
Ahmed Chalabi[3] and, from Al-Azhar, Dr. Abdul-Moneim Al-Nemer
and Dr. Al-Beisar. Thus, I find the ban imposed on the movie an insoluble
puzzle. I filed a lawsuit against the bans 28 years ago, which is still being
studied by the court!
“What
makes the puzzle more complicated,” Al-Akkad adds, “is that more than one
Arabic channel showed the film without either asking my permission or anybody
informing me about a lifting of the ban.”
The
Essence Is Profit-Making
In
addition to his well-known Islamic productions, Al-Akkad has produced a number
of high-profile
Hollywood
films.
Most
of these movies do not bear Al-Akkad’s name, such as the Halloween
series, which already has eight sequels. Reflecting on the large audiences that
such movies draw, Al-Akkad notes that in Hollywood a director-producer should
ask himself two questions before producing a film: Who is your audience and what
would you like to say?
“The
cinema,” he adds, “is about entertainment in the first place. However, a
good director employs entertainment to put across the ideas he would like to
transmit. In this lies the artistic cleverness of the author and screenwriter.
The essence of every piece of work is to establish a channel of communication
with the audience and reap enough profits to produce the next movie.
Unfortunately, some believe that success and making profit is a crime and
shame.”
“The
success of a movie,” Al-Akkad resumes, “depends on the audience and on the
profits it makes. This does not involve degradation, but we have to come down to
the audience, however low its level may be, and then try to subtly raise them
up. This can be done neither by mystery, haughtiness, or the use of pedantic
cinematic language.
“Neither
Oscar prizes,
Cannes
prizes, critics, or decorations equal the success of a movie in the theaters.
If you managed to produce a masterpiece movie without being able to gain the
audience’s approval, the movie is a total fiasco. We, as cinema professionals,
consider ourselves to be the link between the idea, the art, and the audience.
Our success lies in our ability to employ the idea and the art to bring about a
reaction: to make people cry, laugh, suffer and be thrilled.
“Furthermore,
home entertainment devices have passively affected cinema and theater; at home
you sit in front of a big screen, smoking, eating, and drinking. Accordingly,
the cinema-goers in the
USA
and the rest of the world are mostly the young; 80 percent of the total
audience thus imposes its interests—sex, fear, and love—on the cinema
industry.”
In
the Interview: Read Also
Maged
Hebtah is a journalist based in Cairo, Egypt
1
Al-Azhar, located in
Cairo
,
Egypt
, is the biggest and most well-known institution of Islamic learning in the
Islamic world.
2
Famous Egyptian novelists.
3
Famous Egyptian scholar of Arabic language and linguistics.
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