Among all art forms, film has always been the slowest to reflect on the continuing reality of any given society, especially when dealing with a complex one like Egypt that has been undergoing radical transformations over a short span of time.
All things revolution-related were in vogue in the immediate aftermath of January 25, 2011. For filmmakers hoping to cash in on the revolution, the task was quite simple. The 18 days of Egypt's largest popular uprising were delineated by a straightforward narrative with distinctive signposts easy for the average viewer to identify. The sense of sheer euphoria and catharsis induced by Hosni Mubarak's resignation on February 11 provided perfect ingredients for a stunning resolution dramatists can only dream of.
Two categories of narrative fictions emerged in the subsequent 12 months: productions made before the revolution that decided to incorporate the January events at the last minute (An Ant's Scream, El Fagoumy) and mainstream comedies shot shortly after the revolution (Tick Tick Boom and Good Luck).
All such films were shallow, reactionary and cheap; exploitative pieces aiming to make a quick buck out of a colossal event that galvanised the entire country. All flopped at the box-office, prompting producers to steer away from the subject (a half-dozen revolution-themed films planned for production were consequently scrapped).
Indie and serious dramas such as Yousry Nasrallah's Palme d'Or nominee After the Battle and Ibrahim El Batout's Dubai Film Festival winner Winter of Discontent fared somewhat better (critically if not in terms of ticket sales). Ending before the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood into power, both films, despite their numerous virtues, already feel dated.
The uncertainty induced by the military reign following the removal of Mr Mubarak created a need for escape, a need instantly seized upon by film producers whose medium-budget entertainments exceeded all expectations at the box-office.
The temptation of tackling present social politics never left the producers and this year we witnessed a return to mainstream social comedies, in the shape of Tattah and Samir Abu El Nil, the two biggest Arab hits of this year's brief summer season.
Both films are produced by El Sobky films, the unabashed kings of crass whose brand of distasteful, lowbrow and heavily moralistic films have found box-office gold locally and regionally.
The Sobky brothers perfected a formula that combines a heavy dose of sex, vulgarity and emotional titillation redeemed at the end of each movie by a religious message.
The realism of ensemble dramas such as Cabaret - a panorama of a seedy Cairo nightclub - and An Hour and a Half - an overblown reimagining of the 2002 Al Ayat train crash - is wrapped in easily digestible packages teeming with different transgressions that are ultimately judged and punished at the end of each picture.
Tattah and Samir Abu El Nil are deeply entrenched in a bleak reality that, unlike the 2011 comedies, are practically devoid of any hope; a reality that both anticipates the June 30 events and underlines the grave challenges lying beyond the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Both films are superficial and disposable, but the truths they unintentionally expose are quite startling and dispiriting.
Starring the one-time box-office king Mohammad Saad (Ellembi), Tattah revolves around a failed, dim-witted, uneducated newsagent who embarks on a journey to retrieve a monetary bounty belonging to his mysterious neighbour. Along the way, he encounters a multitude of characters and experiences various situations that shed light on a number of issues: the absence of security and growing distrust of police, disillusionment with the political opposition, and overwhelming contempt for the current ruling party.
All situations are played for laughs, but there's an acidic undertone to the comedy. The sense of faux patriotism that informed many of Saad's pre-Revolution pictures has no echo here, but is replaced by an abiding feeling of loss and bitterness.
Saad's protagonist is the most passive character he has played in his career; an easily-manipulated nitwit trampled by both a cruel, cannibalistic society and an incompetent government. Saad's Tattah is no Buster Keaton, a hardworking man fighting against the odds to reach his goal. Tattah's fortunes rely almost entirely on a farfetched chance encounter; a stroke of luck lying outside the realm of a rather hopeless reality.
The most telling element of the story is Tattah's relationship with his neighbour, played by Lebanese singer Marwa. A nymphomaniac with an unjustifiable fixation on Tattah, Marwa's character spends the entire duration of the film chasing after the balding, penniless buffoon, only to be dumped again and again by the morally superior Tattah.
Although cartoonish and over the top, the relationship reeks of repugnant misogyny, inadvertently reflecting Egypt's epidemic disdain for women.
Marwa's character - a male fantasy feeding on the widespread Egyptian conception that female sexual desire is uncontrollable - is constantly ridiculed, dumped and discarded, painted as another corrupted element of today's Egypt. Any strong-headed woman unashamed about her sexuality is always painted as a hussy; a devious creature threatening the patriarchal structure.
Women are allowed certain degrees of independence as long as it doesn't touch the moral fabric of society. The everlasting virgin-whore dichotomy still governs the portrayal of female characters in mainstream Egyptian film.
While Tattah tackles many pressing topics, Samir Abu El Nil is primarily focused on a specific one: the corruption of the media. Egypt's hottest comedy star, Ahmed Mekky (Teer Enta, No Retreat, No Surrender), plays the eponymous character, a stingy graduate handed a fortune of 550 million Egyptian pounds (Dh288m) by his dying cousin.
Abu El Nil decides to invest his cousin's money in a new TV network operated from head-to-toe by him. His guileless persona and simple rhetoric win him millions of credulous viewers and turn him overnight into a bona fide political force shaping people's opinions.
Offering a tame, watered-down treatment of a highly convoluted issue, Samir Abu El Nil is neither biting enough to be media satire, nor original and funny enough to be slapstick comedy. Although less despairing than Tattah and more colourful, the film, nonetheless, shares the same sense of acrimony; a perplexity towards a surreal, unfathomable reality governed by chaos.
The stylised comedy and silly one-liners fail to conceal a palpable antipathy towards a self-destructive nation drowning in an ocean of ignorance.
Abu El Nil is modelled after Tawfik Okasha, the artless, popular TV host who found fame and fortune in the aftermath of the revolution. Amid the ambivalence of the revolution's early months, Okasha's sensationalist demeanour and folksy mannerism struck a chord with a large audience that felt alienated from both the political elite and the leftist media.
Director Amr Arafa doesn't place the blame on the viewers, but he doesn't absolve them from it either. Fifty-years of dictatorship have stripped the people of their will, of their ability to make up their own minds. And even though the revolution gave the people considerable freedom to "emancipate themselves from mental slavery" (to quote Bob Marley), they continue to chase after some form of guidance, warming to any hack offering a comfortable message that corresponds to their belief systems.
The picture that emerges at the end of Tattah and Samir Abu El Nil is one of a gigantic circus; a beaten-down society in the throes of a revolution that did not fulfil its promises.
The new-found hope that Mohammed Morsi's departure injected into the country is intoxicating, but the euphoria of January 25 has been replaced by cautious optimism. Doubt, anxiety and fear remain the order of the day.
Egyptians will always rise again, rebel again, fight again. But when the dust settles, the same points of contention will persist, the apprehension and confusion will not be obliterated, and the reality of a directionless revolution hijacked by numerous opposing factions will remain intact.
Joseph Fahim is a Cairo-based film critic and lecturer. He is concluding a series of lectures in Germany on the history of Egyptian musicals
