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As famous and beloved as Umm Kulthum remains in the history of Egyptian and Arabian music, I would be hard pressed to know many Americans who know much if anything about her, let alone being familiar or even favoring her music whose regional distinction lies outside most Western tastes, but one could argue she is to the Mideast what Aretha Franklin has been to American soul music, or what Bob Dylan has been to lyrical phrasing. She was the undisputed master of Tarab, the Arab musical genre which roughly translates to ecstasy. Maria Callas called Umm Kulthum the “Incomparable Voice”, and Charles DeGaulle called her “the Lady”, the Egyptian definition of her nickname “Elsett” which is an ancient reference to “(She) of the throne”, an epithet for the goddess Isis. When Kulthum would hit a high note at the end of a song, her fans would cry out, “This is greatness upon greatness, Lady Aset!” That greatness was emphasized when her funeral procession became a national event where four million Egyptians swarmed to catch a glimpse of her cortège; the largest human gathering in Egypt's history, and one of the largest funerals in history.
Athough there have been decades of documentaries and television series about Uum Kulthum, El Sett is the first major cinematic production to offer a narrative account of her extraordinary life. With Mona Zaki portraying Umm Kulthum, El Sett debuted at the Marrakech International Film Festival to a 10-minute standing ovation and enjoyed warm notices on the European festival circuit. Thereafter in theatrical release the film suffered a polarized response from domestic audiences. As analyzed by Middle East Eye, critical and public reception in Egypt was heavily colored by off-screen politics. The film's co-financing by Saudi Arabia's Big Time Studio sparked widespread resentment over foreign influence in Egyptian heritage. That generated in-built cultural and political resistance to the film, causing it to lose its investment at the box office where it was subsequently classified as a flop.
It’s to be presumed that if four million people attended her funeral, there might be at least that many perspectives on how Uum Kulthum’s life should be portrayed. That’s a hard number to please. Though there was admiration that such an untouchable icon could be humanized and her “aura of sacredness” overcome, in contrast to what until then had primarily been traditional, state-produced “hagiographies”, it did seem to this reviewer that El Sett overly tracked with the now-established melodramatic trope that it doesn’t pay to be rich and famous because you’ll just be miserable and lonely at the top. Such a foreseen conclusion takes energy away from the rise, which is dutifully played out, beginning with her childhood in rural Egypt where religious stricture demanded she perform disguised as a boy.
In perhaps my favorite scene of the film, set against the backdrop of Egypt’s feminist movement linking women’s rights with national identity, Uum Kulthum is invited to perform at the Shams El Din Pasha’s mansion where she is encouraged by the Pasha’s daughter Ferial (Amina Khalil) to finally discard her Bedouin head cover and cloak to sing as a woman. Though the Shams El Din Pasha’s mansion is mentioned in historical records as an early venue where Umm Kulthum first performed her romantic songs, the film takes license in also claiming it was at this event that she surprised poet Ahmed Rami (Muhammad Farrag) by singing his poem, "The Lover's Eyes Betray Him" (Al-Sabb Tafdahuhu 'Uyunuhu), which she had already added to her repertoire. This 1924 meeting sparked one of the most famous creative partnerships in Arabic music history, with Rami eventually writing over 130 songs for her. Their first eye-to-eye encounter is movingly rendered in the film.
As is the sequence where Uum Kulthum meets and falls in love with Sherif Sabry Basha (Karim Abdel Aziz), an uncle of King Farouk of Egypt who—stricken by the beauty of her voice—awards her with the Order of Virtues, an honor ordinarily only bestowed upon royalty. In 1946, he proposed marriage (or a relationship) to Umm Kulthum, which was ultimately rejected or blocked because the royal family considered her background not elite enough, a moment that deeply affected her.
There’s no discounting that the Hollywood-like big-budget production values of lush visuals and fantastic sets captured by cinematographer Abdelsalam Moussa and the melodramatic flourishes of composer Hesham Nazih gave the film sheen, allure and a driving momentum, but—as one of those Americans who has some familiarity with Kulthum’s oeuvre—I was surprised that her musical performances in the film lacked emotional depth, often due to her most famous songs being abbreviated. Jonathan Romney at Screen Daily complains: “What’s missing above all is a sense of the voice that Callas called ‘incomparable’. We hear only fragmentary performances, sometimes slathered in orchestral accompaniment; Hamed seriously misses a trick in letting that voice soar uncumbered, in the intimacy it deserves.” Or as Joseph Fahim criticizes at Middle East Eye: “The subtle innovations she brought to traditional Arab music, her break with tradition that defied maqam conventions, her daringly ingenious vocal ornamentations, and, most of all, her technical genius that put her peers in the shade—none of this is mentioned, let alone explored. The magnificence of Umm Kulthum’s art is boorishly reduced to the strength of her voice.”
Ali Benzekri at the International Cinephile Society and Farah Samir at Egyptian Streets give affirmative nods to the non-linearity of Ahmed Mourad’s script, commending its bold, memory-driven pacing. By framing Kulthum’s life around a historic 1967 concert at L’Olympia in Paris where she was attacked on stage by an ardent fan, El Sett resists a conventional cradle-to-grave timeline, giving emotional weight to her mythic stature as a performer. That performance, incidentally, was her sole performance outside the Arab world for which she was reportedly paid twice the salary of Maria Callas.
The complex history of Mideast politics seems to always remain beyond the grasp of my comprehension and, therefore, I’m ill-equipped to factor the viability of complaints that El Sett sanitized Kulthum’s political legacy. But I remain grateful to the Arab Film Festival for the opportunity to view this flawed yet equally compelling film. I have come to my understandings of the Mideast more through films offered at the festival than through any other medium and applaud AFMI’s efforts to platform diverse voices from the region.
