Cairo -
20 years have passed since the premiere of the series "The Morning and Evening Talk", and every time it is shown, social networking sites are busy talking about it morning and evening, so what is the secret in it that makes it so attractive?
The secret of the series makes it all this attraction that attracts viewers to follow it without getting bored, to the point that some of his followers have expressed - in posts on the communication sites - their desire to repeat it more than once a day on more than one channel.
And in November every year, the morning and evening talk is renewed on the Egyptian satellite TV screens, in the series, which is based on one of the novels of the Nobel writer Naguib Mahfouz, which he wrote late, and records tales of birth and death, reviewing the popular story of Egypt in the last two centuries.
The celebration of the series has been surprising every time since its presentation, especially in November, when it was shown for the first time in the middle of the same month in 2001.
There are many explanations for discovering the secret of gravity. Is it the structure of the original text?
Or the treatment of the scriptwriter Mohsen Zayed?
Or the performance of the novice actors at the time, most of whom became stars later?
Or the amazing soundtrack of the late composer Ammar Al-Sharei and the creative lyrics of the songs by singer Angham?
Or that it has nothing to do with all the elements of the work, but is related to the idea of the viewer's attachment to the very ordinary heroes who resemble his fathers and grandfathers with their small victories, and their big defeats?
It is easy to answer these questions by saying that these elements combined formed that state about the series, but diving into the details and returning to the original novel and then to the statements of the makers of the work about it at the time destroys this easy answer, in the opinion of viewers and critics.
The novel written by Naguib Mahfouz in the late eighties, and it was a good omen for him by receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature shortly after its publication, he chose for it an innovative form of writing, but it is very cumbersome, and not interesting enough, unlike Mahfouz's other works, as he did not make it a major event The characters interact around him, but he divides them into independent characters arranged alphabetically over the course of the relatively short novel.
This form made the events unordered chronologically, because the arrangement of the story of each hero is linked to the first letter of his name, as if the novel was a documentation of a family tree from Egypt, embodying the transformations of society over 200 years, and revealing the history of Egypt written in the people’s record, not the famous official records;
The heroes of history here are very ordinary people, any one of them could be very much to any of the present 100 million Egyptians.
Each of the 67 characters has their own story, although what unites them is their affiliation with 3 families that intermarried and reproduced over 4 generations, from the French campaign against Egypt in 1798 until the end of the era of the late President Anwar Sadat 1981.
The events begin with 3 main characters: Yazid Al-Masry, who was embodied by the actor Ahmed Maher, Atta Al-Marakibi and his body by the actor Ahmed Khalil, and Muawiya Al-Qalyubi and his body by the actor Mahmoud Al-Jundi.
Novel problems
The non-arrangement of events chronologically, but alphabetically, exhausted the reader, in the opinion of literary critic Ahmed Karim Bilal, in an effort to link the events that the characters lived - despite their many - in the details they share in terms of their diversity.
Bilal continued in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net by saying that the late writer did not repeat this experience later, perhaps because he felt the fatigue that the reader had met.
The speaker suggested that perhaps Naguib Mahfouz was tempted to write her the tremendous success and great ovation that his masterpiece “Al Harafish” received, and he wrote it before the morning and evening talk about a decade and a half, and relied on the same method in dividing the novel into characters, each of which has its separate story, but it is chronologically sequential, and artistically connected. .
The critic, who won the Katara Prize for Literary Criticism, confirmed that the scriptwriter made a great and clear effort in "weaving" the events, adding to them a character that did not exist.
Like the wise and immortal phrases that were received on the tongues of the heroes of Mahfouz’s novels, Mahfouz’s phrases in the novel lived through times, revived by current events, and were summoned by tweeters without many of them realizing that they were mentioned in the novel, which became the morning and evening talk on the communication sites whenever the time for the renewed presentation came.
So, “What is the trick? Before us is a man claiming leadership with a gun in his hand,” one of the phrases in the novel, and the events breathed her soul into it and revived it again, just as the phrase “interest-bearers do not like revolutions” that resonated on the communication sites as evidence of the time of the Arab Spring revolutions.
Behind the scenes of the series
And the series, which is divided into 28 episodes, its creators chose a form similar to the atmosphere of dreams, as if the spectator saw the eyes of Naqshbandi - the last grandson and embodied by the international actor Amr Waked - while he was in a coma in the hospital;
The stories of the departed are seen in a dream, as was expressed by viewers in several tweets.
Scriptwriter Mohsen Zayed, despite the praise that the series received at the time of its presentation and still is;
He expressed his pain at the distortion and distortion of his written text for the series at the hands of director Ahmed Saqr.
The scriptwriter, who wrote several film scenarios for Naguib Mahfouz's works, said that many pivotal scenes were deleted, adding in press statements after the series was shown for the first time one month that dropping part of the events by not filming it in the first place must cause confusion.
He pointed out that some events were intended to express the class struggle and their convergence, such as the scene of Hoda Hanim's admiration for Atta Al-Marakibi's huge, rough hand, and that "there is no such hand in her class, because she admired the value of the work." As for the director, he showed the scene with sexual gestures, according to his opinion.
The scriptwriter attributed these errors to the fact that its other makers “did not read the novel,” expressing his pain that some of the heroes of the work, in their press statements, attributed the writing of the series to Medhat Al-Adl, a member of the family of the production company executing the series, while he was very tired in transforming the literary text into a dramatic work. It begins with a natural chronology from the beginning of the generations to their end, as opposed to the order of the novel.
nostalgic state
On the level of other elements of the series, the introduction to the series, with the voice of the singer Angham, with the melodies of the composer Ammar Al-Sharei, sends a deep sadness in the soul, as viewers expressed, to prepare the viewers for a state of nostalgia for this time that has passed with its lost values and traditions.
In the soundtrack that permeates the series and emits in the backgrounds of its events, the rhythm seems appropriate for the events in which births, deaths, marriages and conflicts follow, which the series' followers considered one of the most creative presented by the late musician Ammar Al-Sharei.
The director also used in the background of the events - not the departure of the heroes - the voice of the late vocalist Al-Naqshbandi and his comments that suggest another world full of prayers and supplications.
Just as the events of the series were the birth and disappearance of its characters, the shows of recent years witnessed the disappearance of two of its most important stars from the dramas produced recently, and for all its reasons;
Abla Kamel - as much as her great talent - chose to hide from the artistic scene, while Tawfiq Abdel Hamid complained in press statements about the producers' ignoring him, but death was the reason behind the disappearance of Dalal Abdel Aziz (Nama'a Al-Marakibi), as viewers were greatly affected by the scene of her death. The series is shown these days on television channels, more than they were affected when it was shown last year, due to the death of the actress months ago.
The curse of interest in politics caused the deletion of the role of one of the main heroes of the series two years ago, the artist Amr Waked, but his deleted scenes were replayed recently to be shown in full.