Beyond Casablanca: M. A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema

Interlude: Telling a Story—Narrative and Symbols

Interlude Telling a Story—Narrative and Symbols One of the qualities that critics and viewers singled out when discussing Badis was that it told a good story very well.1 Tazi has already spoken here of how closely the story was connected to his own situation and how organically related it was to its symbolic elements. He invoked both these dimensions—narrative and symbolic —when he insisted on adhering to his ending, demonstrating how strongly he felt about narrative power vis-à-vis other aspects, such as a film’s “ethnographic truth” and its “social” and/or “ideological ” implications. I wanted to focus more specifically on how Tazi conceived of narrative , how he filmically shaped and expressed the story, and how attached he was to symbolic expression. We will explore each of these in turn. I opened the discussion by referring to a visitor he had received a few days previously. Narrative PROXIMITY, SIMPLICITY “AVOID TOO MUCH EXPLANATION” K. That fellow who came here the other day asking, “Are there some books for writing screenplays, are there some recipes for this?” reminded me of books on screenwriting I’ve seen that are indeed Interlude: Telling a Story—Narrative and Symbols 199 full of recipes, along the lines of, “the first small, strong moment should come after ten or fifteen minutes.” From your point of view, what gives something a good narrative structure? Do you have a mental guide for what constitutes a good screenplay—for example, when the strong points should appear , how much time should be spent on exposition, and so on? M. My strong belief is that in order to end up with a good film you have to start with a good screenplay [laughs at how obvious this is]. I don’t think you can talk about recipes but I think there are certain elements that are indispensable. First of all, there’s the need for proximate images; that’s very important. Nowadays, spectators are stuffed full of images coming from outside and they’d very much like to see their own images on the screen. As far as narration is concerned, I don’t think it’s appropriate for Moroccan films to narrate in the style of Bergman or Antonioni . I think simplicity is primary—we don’t need to create a complicated scheme in order to construct a narrative. We need a linearity in narration, in telling the story. Obviously, though, you can’t follow this form of writing in a stagnant manner, because today’s spectators view images from all over the world and have become familiar with certain forms of writing, transitions, and rapidity . I also think that we shouldn’t make our images too symbolic, or use litote too often, or strive for explanations between the lines. When the discourse is simple rather than sophisticated, I think it is much more powerful and gets to its destination much more effectively. And this is true not only in Morocco but everywhere. And you have to avoid too much explanation. In the case of Badis, I dropped some scenes that had long discussions of Franco. In fact, that’s why I introduced the TV into the café—there was no TV in the real village—to help launch the political discussion without having long explanations. There was other dialogue I didn’t shoot at all, for similar reasons—too much talk, and it didn’t correspond to the rhythm of the film. PLOT AND RHYTHM, “WESTERN” AND “ORIENTAL” “I DON’T HAVE A METHODICAL ANALYSIS” K. When I asked about narration, I was also thinking of the fact that, in Badis, we’re already some forty-five minutes into the film when 200 Beyond Casablanca the plot is launched, when the postman leads the teacher to discover Moira’s affair with the soldier. A similar example: in Looking, the third repudiation comes some twenty-five minutes into the film, but what really launches the story, for me at least, is when Hajj Ben Moussa visits the religious judge [Ar. qadi] and hears what he must do in order to get Houda back. That takes place after fifty minutes. Taking these two films together, with their action gaining momentum only after a long period of preparation and contextualization , makes me wonder whether you think you have a certain amount of time to establish the situation, a certain amount of time to capture...