The Square

Review

The Square

“The Square” is a 2013 documentary directed by Jehane Noujaim that shows the toil and truggle of a group of activists in Egypt during the Egyptian revolution in 2011. The name “The Square” is taken from a place in Egypt called Tahrir Square. Tahrir Square was the hotspot of the revolution and the center for all the political and social uproars.

In the movie, millions of people protested for days and weeks and months and on and on and others got shot and some got run over by tanks. Sometimes horrifying to watch, but surely needs commentary. Multiple changes of regimes only mitigated the problem as much as people would leave the streets and go home.

Since it’s a documentary maybe there shouldn’t be star and non-star characters but there seem to be in this movie. Ahmed who was shown in the very beginning of the movie appeared in almost 90% of the scenes and also the European born Egyption actor seems to have been paramount in the documentary, organizing people, giving reports to international news stations and more. I thought those two characters were supposed to give the documentary a bit more structure, and maybe be different from the type of documentaries where a few experts give commentary over different scenes of the documentary. That little difference was good I thought

The most beautiful thing about the revolution was that all their differences will get reconciled during the time of revolt. Ahmed and some of the other characters made a similar statement. It’s common, two enemies can become best friends if they have a bigger and stronger common enemy.

They showed different artistic forms, music - not just tools but clapping and singing/chanting and a lot of painting. I thought a lot about how art comes about and how it can get transformed in the midst of conflict. Emotions that people can’t express in words I guessed were getting exhibited in some form of art.

It seemed quite realistic the way Ahmed was struggling to get people to join them back at the square two months after the first semi-successful revolt. Because depending on the desires of the director, the documentary can just be like everything was so terrible and people were tired that it will be the easiest job to get them out and showing their discontent towards the government. You (Ms. Sweetser) added more context to it in the discussion - making it clear that the first week wasn’t as successful till the Muslim Brotherhood came in the following Friday. The documentary completely hid away the part and turned against the Muslim Brotherhood as the new enemy.

“Some went to Tahrir to look like heroes, some to steal and other things “ that’s not exactly what Khalid Abdalla said but very close. I thought that was so true of any social movement and in hindsight I have done some things for my own benefits while pretending to be there for the organization or society. Very good point.

From my review of the movie 5 Broken Cameras you might have gotten a glimpse of something like, non-violent peaceful protest doesn’t work. The square shifted my thinking a bit on that. The very first reviewer I saw on IMDb made mention of the fact that change doesn’t happen easily as quickly as we might like. I think that is different from situation to situation. For example, America could have made the biggest protest the world would have ever seen, if they didn’t make a military strategy to conquer the world, Germany and Japan and the others surely wouldn’t have given up, at least it didn’t look like they wanted to. This review even gave the movie an 8 out of 10. I thought he could have done better. He didn't have any negatives about the movie, I will give it a 3 Star out of 5. Mainly because it was from the lens of almost one person only, I bet multitudes of others would have been crying for attention to show their resentment towards the enemy too.

Some of the weapons the military used supposedly had american trademark on it and somebody said “American”. All of a sudden I was like oh my, the Americans were part of it also,

Goodbye!