In The Last Days of the City Film Difficulty Ranking: 4
You might have seen Fellini’s La Dolce Vita or Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, two films that honor the city of Rome, but you probably haven’t seen In The Last Days of the City, Tamar El Said’s tribute to Cairo. Instead of a bombastic tour around the city, In the Last Days of the City’s tribute is muted. Instead of a warm film about one man’s love for his home city, In the Last Days of the City charts the director’s growing disillusionment with his home city and the increasingly militant and fundamentalist place it’s becoming.
From: Egypt, Africa Watch: Trailer, JustWatch Next: The Square, La Dolce Vita, The Journey
The Breakdown
El Said wanders around Cairo trying to find a new apartment. He needs a new place to live as his current landlord is evicting him to demolish his apartment block for a new more profitable construction. In his search, he visits many parts of the city, becoming an observer of everything happening. Whilst he wanders the city, he doesn’t interfere with anything going on. He watches the changing city passively and allows us (the audience) to form our own opinions on what we see. He’s like our Virgil from Dante’s Inferno, his role is to guide us around the city and show us what is changing.
Through his eye, we start to see the growing militarization and fundamentalism of the city and the gradual loss of freedom. In terms of the militarization, we see more and more army trucks and soldiers patrolling the city, plain closed policemen chasing people, and policemen beating and arresting protestors. In terms of the growing fundamentalism, we see ‘Thou Shall Not Look at Women’ slogans stuck on walls in apartment blocks and hear prayers playing over loudspeakers in apartment elevators. Backed by a soundtrack with snippets from radio shows speaking to the growing divisions in the country, the future of the city looks bleak.
There’s a scene which serves as a warning of Cairo’s negative future. In the scene, we meet a group of the directors friends in a cafe lit by light and laughter. It’s a rare scene of laughter and happiness. Each one of the group is living in a different corner of the Arabic diaspora and represent the choices that El Said has. Two of the friends are from Baghdad. They represent the extreme direction that Cairo could take. One has left the city for Europe after seeing his home city crumble to ruins. The other can’t leave his roots despite the violence, and continues to live in fear. Both of them fail to recognize the homely city that they grew up in. The third friend from Beirut, represents the middle ground between Cairo and Baghdad. His growing disillusionment and antipathy at the changes in Beirut are conquering his happy memories. But he’s still managing to grasp onto the last remnants of the city he loved before it becomes unrecognizable like Baghdad. Each of their stories are warning signs for the direction of El Said’s Cairo. He can stay and watch the city fade or he can leave the country with some of his positive memories intact.
El Said’s indecision is reflected in his struggles to make the film. He wants to capture the city he loved, the warm city of his memory, but as he’s filming, all he can see is the cities inevitable demise. He slowly comes to realize that he will either watch the city he loved slowly disappear or leave the city and preserve the happy memories that still survive in him.
What to Watch Next
If you want to watch more films which honor the director’s home city, check out Fellini and Sorrentino’s respective odes to Rome: La Dolce Vita and The Great Beauty. You could also check out Thom Andersen’s documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, composed completely out of Hollywood films.
Or if you’re more interested in seeing towns and cities slowly disappear, check out Once Upon a Time in Venezuela and Kings of Nowhere; two documentaries of towns destroyed by nature. There’s also Cuban docu-drama, The Project of the Century featuring one town full of hope destroyed by international politics.
Lastly, for more films set in Arabic cities subject to increasing fundamentalism and war, watch The Square from Egypt, Freedom Fields from Libya and The Journey from Iraq.
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