About a
week ago, to celebrate the start of Eid al-Fitr, a holiday that comes at the
conclusion of Ramadan, Azza and I drove to Bandar Cinema, a multi-screen
complex located in Maadi, and bought tickets to see Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest,
an over-the-top, campy thing called The Dictator. To give you a little taste of what was on
offer that evening, I’ve included the official movie trailer.
Earlier in
the day, a few hours before we set out for the theater, I had Azza call the
place just to make sure it would be open for business and to check that the
film would come with Arabic subtitles.
The woman who answered the phone gave us an affirmative to both queries
and then warned, speaking in a really serious voice as she did so, that the
film was definitely not for children, a fact that was also made clear to anyone
who happened to look at the movie poster on display at Bandar’s front
door.
Because I
was familiar with some of Cohen’s earlier work, I knew what we were in for, and
I tried to warn Azza about the director’s acting style and sense of humor
before the film began. I explained how
much he liked to lampoon things. I told
her that he enjoyed making many moviegoers feel really uncomfortable.
To this
day, I feel that Borat is one of the
funniest and most interesting films of all time. At the conclusion of The Dictator, I was a lot less sure that Cohen had succeeded. I felt, many times during the movie, that he
was being way too self-indulgent. That
said, I would still recommend the film to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
I suppose I
mainly wanted to see the movie because I was curious how an Egyptian audience
would respond, especially given the country’s recent history and the current
political situation. How, I wondered,
would viewers in this part of the world react to a film about a dictator? Plus, I wanted to know if they’d be able to
handle a work that portrayed North Africans in stereotypical (and even
offensive) ways.
My answer
to these questions came as soon as those around me laughed uproariously at
Cohen’s first gag. From that point
forward, I sat back, relaxed, and got into the film.
