written by Afifa Hassainate Elkerri
Multiple critics and scholars consider that the movie Ouachma called in English "tattoo" by Hamid Bennani, is the complete start of Moroccan cinema. The movie "tattoo" was produced in 1970, and it was filmed in the city of Meknes, the village of "Sidi Ali Maghsini" and the small city "Moulay Idriss Zerhoun", both of which are located near The ancient royal city.
The first mentioned Hamid Bennani film is a film with distinction. This designation is mainly due to its socio-anthropological content, which carries the look of the intellectual who was neither the audience nor the box office. A paradox is the conditions for the birth of a "tattoo", as there was no support for production and there were, at the same time, more than 230 movie theaters spread throughout the territory of the Kingdom of less than 9 million people.
Tattoos and stigma
A tattoo or stain .. burned - and tattooed - with fire the meek child who yearned for knowledge "Masoud" (diagnosing a child then actor Muhammad Al-Kaggat), because he reflected, spontaneously and innocently, the cruel parental authority, so the "tattoo" of fire on his hand remained a sign that reminded him of authority, He will live on her fringe for the rest of his tragic life.
Is it not the job of tattoos to keep the memory of something we like to stay with us, in us, and on our body etched forever?It is clear that the technical conditions were not appropriate at all, as the sound and the image are disorganized and weak, filling all possible impurities due to weak technology and weaker qualification, but the determination made the situation and the issue present.
Hamid Bennani,the author
The technology is not the quality and clarity of the sound and the image as well, but, on the other hand, is the technique of linking skill and coordinating the narration through what is available from a technique in packaging: from this side we say that the transition from one scene to another and from design to another was, sometimes, not smooth and not subtly cinematic, has It was incomprehensible as it was sometimes poetical.
Masoud, the adopted son of charity, is cleaned and memorized by the Qur’an in a traditional way that is neither interpreted nor persuaded nor loved. It is a patriarchal method and method based on dropping and reproducing the past with its suffering and cruelty: violence in preservation and recalling the authority of the older and tattooing of the body - the stick that disobeyed the disobedient.
Multiple anecdote
The child's “Masoud” heard the church bells and his vision of the images of Adam and Eve, the Prophet Joseph and Zulekha, and the images of our master Ali and Ra’s al-Ghoul, flew with him to a world other than the world of his adoptive father’s violence (Al-Makki personified the actor Abdel Qader Mutaa)… So the “sin”: the innocent child tried to eat The forbidden fruit, the forbidden pomegranate with "hakouzah" traditions or conquering social organization and its strict traditions despite the mother's tenderness (complete diagnosis of actress Khadija Mujahid).
The child “Masoud” searches for the same person in question, in a difficult environment, which prevents him from wondering, and from the pleasure of experimentation and research. He asks the mirror about himself and who he is .. He collects elements that are important symbols: an egg fertility symbol, a pomegranate that represents the prohibited, and a Pinocchio doll a symbol of deformation due to disobedience, a lantern of the symbol oil of light that he longs for, and a red lipstick that compensates the tenderness and warmth of the forbidden mother's chest forbidden in The critical period of adolescence, during which a child turns into a young person who exits his parents towards the opposite sex. This is what "Masoud" did not succeed in achieving due to the strangulation of the middle .
Search for freedom and meaning
The scene of the child’s arrangement “Masoud” of his elements in front of him - after questioning the woman at home - and he is performing rituals with his elements, but it is a scene of his self-accountability in search of an answer that was attributed to his father, and the community represented by his friends later on, who gave it to him. It is a scene of his search for himself as if he was trying to discover it and extract the meaning of life or the meaning of the pain within it from it.
"Wesma" is more mature than dozens of Moroccan films today, where the sociological, semiotic, and symbolic lessons are absent.
When Masoud grows up, his elements also grow in his worn out bag, some things and some nothing, and an important element is the woman, or the "image of the woman, the inspirational model," who used to travel with him everywhere, as if it gives him love and warmth and all that a teenager might need to be suppressed and repressed to suffocate. The photo will be torn off by his friends as things will begin to collaps
Loss margin
Masoud and his friends were ultimately like the lost boys, friends of Peter Pan ... those who don't want to grow old. They create a fictitious world to which they fly and stay in so that they can deny reality and life. They want to remain unnecessary children responsible for their actions, theft, violence, and gruesome assault: the scene of killing a snake, burning an owl, and dancing on its ashes.
The name of the "perfect" wife, the complete woman, the full woman or in other words ... voiceless woman with a pretty face, she is not perfect in the sense of aesthetic philosophical perfection but she is complete as her image built social and cultural controls: the woman obedient and marginalized of the woman’s voice . A woman believes, , and behaves on the basis that she is nothing without a man who leans back and protects her presence as she walks in the shade to live.
The tragic end
Masoud got tired and walked on the long and historical "Sarak" road / street surrounded by a walled visor directed at one direction, he walked with tiredness and unsteady steps ... He tried to go into strange worlds to get out of his reality and tightened the chains and chains in his hands and on his shoulders, so the gun was the solutiona gainst all that stands in the way of Masoud, the unclear.
Masoud tried to counting the sheep - patience, wisdom, and waiting - as if trying to enter the field of the prophecy of the shepherd and the sheeps. But he was impatient, nor did he tolerate an end to the official margin entry by killing the rich and miserly exploiter.
Masoud's death may be the end of his sorrows and his suffering in a world that was not interested in his existence, but he formed an aphorism of a symbol in which many people are represented, living what "Masoud" lived every day of his life, and perhaps this was one of the original cinematic roles to be a mirror - imaginative and creative - that reflects reality ; as it is stated by William Shakespeare .
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