Adieu Bonaparte: History Revisited
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Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte is, to the best of my knowledge, one of the very few Egyptian films, if not the only one, tackling the 1798 French Invasion of Egypt. Based on little historical fact and document, the less-than-two-hour-movie focuses mainly on one Egyptian family, a symbolic representation of Egyptian society, and its different ways of dealing/coping with the Invasion. "Rereading history", Chahine clearly deviates from mainstream stereotypical representations of the Invasion, presenting his audience with a unique version of the period, a point which I am going to try to demonstrate in the following review.
From the very start the spectator is put right in the heart of the struggle of this Egyptian family, (family being a very significant concept echoing such values as bonding and unity), against the new French invader, these two groups being the main components of the film on the level of characterization. Chahine starts off with the typical representation of the invader/other. The French, carrying the White Man’s Burden, are coming to protect the French merchants living in Egypt as well as to restore the “rights” of Egyptians themselves usurped by the Mamluks. Soon, this fiction is deconstructed when the audience sees what the French actually are in Egypt for. Coming to protect and save the Egyptians-- from their own hegemonic point of view--they use and abuse their land, their culture and their history. The French see themselves as going through a journey of suffering, an idea reminiscent of the earlier Crusades. However, they see the object they are suffering for as “primitive” “Bedouins”. Coming to allegedly bring the light of civilization and enlightenment to their downtrodden brethren, they ironically degrade their culture and save no effort in showing their utter disrespect to their religious heritage. This comes to a climax in the movie with their desecrating of the Azhar Mosque, the epitome of the religion, culture and identity that they are there to protect and save, using it as a battleground. The audience is soon disillusioned.
On the other side, the audience is presented with the Egyptian family “emigrating” from Alexandria to Cairo to take part in the struggle against the French, the concept of emigration being a crucial one in Arab context, reiterating the values of struggle and suffering for one’s own beliefs. The members of the emigrating family are also typically represented in terms of the oppressed/self fighting a war of identity against the invaders. We see Bakr carrying the flag of resistance and promoting the concepts of Jihad against the “infidels”. We also have the women of the family immersed in their household and childbirth activities. Typically, there has to be a “traitor” and that is represented by Ali, Bakr’s younger brother who mixes with the French and learns their language. Ali is the one who has to be forced to fight against his will and he is the one who is at the same time excluded and treated as anoutsider.
It is interesting how Chahine soon deconstructs this typical image on a number of levels, presenting his audience with an alternative that is much less typical, much less mainstream. Bakr is not portrayed in terms of the ignorant Barbarian the French see him as. He is rather an enlightened Muslim who stands in the face of superstition and ignorance. Bakr is shown as an organized fighter who, instead of resorting to passive wishful thinking, takes initiatives, recruits people and consults with others before taking action. He is an example of the tolerant militant who will not fight unless circumstances dictate it and who, when he does fight, follows the track of reason.
In fact, Bakr is not the sole example of Chahine’s subversion of mainstream representation. The group of women represented in the film is another very clear example. True these women are not given very personalized characteristics, yet they are there and active. The mother, in addition to taking care of household issues, is one of the characters in the movie that has a highly audible voice when it comes to political matters. Aunt Nefissa, stands in the face of other typically represented women who want to spend their time gossiping and talking sex and declares very decidedly that she is not going to take part in that mess; she is going to “fight” instead. Nahid, Ali’s beloved, has so much power over him; she is the one who pushes him on and urges him to fight. Other women in the film are mostly outspoken, commanding and have very independent views of their own. Here, Chahine is, as typical of his other films, working against the image of women as subservient to men. His women’s activities are not restricted to private space, although there is much of that in the film, but are also crucial to public space. They are the ones that bring their men together at times of dispute. It is interesting that this should be so in the movie when there is very little that patriarchal history records on the role that women played/did not play at the period, choosing to keep silent about them, to marginalize them as if they simply did not exist. It is true that these women are not totally liberated in the sense of entire equality, still the fact that they are there shaping history
is quite significant. Interestingly, Chahine’s women in the film are not given much time; one hardly sees them, but when we do, they are imprinted in our minds, never absent. This is typical of Chahine’s movies which are hardly about one thing or the other, but about everything. He presents his spectator with an embryonic idea and then leaves her/him to exert effort and bring in their own experience and interpretation creating the work of art itself, thus subverting the mainstream on yet another level, that of Authorship this time. A third example of Chahine’s effort of swimming against the current is the character of Ali himself, the main protagonist of the film. In fact Ali’s character is given much more effort in terms of development than any of the other characters of the film. Having seen him as the “traitor” from his fellow countrymen’s point of view, the audience witnesses Ali emerge at the end of the movie totally intact. He is the one character in the film that rejects the invading other, yet chooses to see what this other is really about. Ali is as patriotic as any of the other Egyptians of the movie. It is his concept of resistance that is different. Instead of totally and blindly rejecting the other and fighting them, Ali chooses to learn their language, get to know them better and take the best of them, leaving out what he does not need. Throughout this process of selection, he never compromises his patriotism. He knows what harm has been done and the film is replete with instances when he faces his General friend with it all. In fact it is Ali who significantly creates the motto to be adopted by the other members of resistance, “Egypt will remain dear to me” (Masr hatifdal ghalia ‘alayia), his response to all who call him “traitor”.
It is to bring out the true nature of Ali’s character that characters like the father are there. Such characters choose to cooperate with the French for the sake of their own interests, financial, power-related and otherwise. What they do is what is described in the film as a process of “normalization”, a term carrying many negative connotations if seen in the current historical moment’s context. Ali, on the other hand, remains the one character who mixes with the French out of curiosity and being thirsty for other types of knowledge than what he was brought up on. His close relationship with the French, verging on the erotic at times, is a sign of his attraction to the other, an attraction that does not at any point contaminate his national sense. This is very clear at the end when he salutes his General friend with “adieu Bonaparte” –also read “good riddance, Bonaparte”-- and goes off with Sayyid Darwish’s song Anal Masri (I am the Egyptian) symbolically playing in the background. Ali, it could be argued and researched, is the living example of Franz Fanon’s third stage of development in the relationship between the self and the other where the self/oppressed starts to acknowledge the existence of the other/oppressor, without losing one’s own values and nationalistic concepts.
Ali’s character is paralleled by his General friend’s. In fact the General is the one French character in the film that is humanized and personalized. Like Ali, he can see the good as well as the harm done by the Invasion. He is the one character that stands up for the rights of the Egyptians at times. Significantly, at the end of the film, it is he that tells Ali that he (Ali) has also taught him much, responding to Ali’s comment on having had a great master (the General). It is this gratitude, this sense of acknowledgment, equality and mutual interest that enables these two characters to have this solid friendship despite their opposite backgrounds, a friendship based more on companionship than on power relations. No wonder that these are the only two characters in the movie seen interacting and conversing with members of the other camp comfortably.
These are but a few examples of how Chahine deconstructs the prevalent value system, presenting his audience/recipient with a more tolerant, humanistic view of matters. Seeing his French invaders for what they really are, he can still find a middle ground dealing with them.
 In a sense, Chahine is presenting us with the current Arab intellectual’s dilemma in dealing with the West-- possibly his own, especially in the light of his recent interest in autobiographical work. This intellectual, like Ali, seems to be expected to either reject the west totally or reject his / her. S/he, however, cannot do so having been exposed to this other and affected by them. One is torn between these two opposing forces. In his postmodern subjective representation of Ali, Chahine seems to be telling us that the solution lies in preserving one’s rootedness in one’s own culture, yet being open to difference. It is the one character in the movie that does this, Ali, that seems to be at peace with himself. Only when he absorbs the other’s culture can he make up his mind about what to take and what to leave out. Through Ali, his mouthpiece, Chahine is revisiting history, searching for the hidden among the obvious, contextualizing the past in the present and projecting the latter on the former. And the final message seems to be that what is needed is a process of reasoning and selection.
Walid El Hamamsy*
 
 
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* Walid El Hamamsy is Assistant Lecturer at the Department of English, Cairo University. He studied at both Cairo University and the American University in Cairo. His MA dissertation was a comparative study of two works by Alice Walker and Hanan al-Shaykh. His interests include comparative literature, cinema and gender issues.

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