Henchwomen Fight

 

In tv show Breaking Bad, Actress Laura Fraser plays as villainess Lydia Rodarte-Quayle.

Many critics of modern Hollywood claim that Breaking Bad is the pinnacle of artistic freedom, creativity and originality, hate to break it to you, but Breaking Bad is actually a censored version of an actual original story that was taken and altered to promote a moralistic message that was never supposed to promote, and many Arabs probably know the original story and what it was about, as El-Kaif is one of the most iconic movies in Egyptian cinema.

Let's rewatch the movie, one of the things that make this movie unique is that in intro credits the creator didn't mention that he created it, it was written like that, "This artwork is the product of the hallucination of Mahmoud Abu Zeid" LOL.

First character we have is Gamal Azzmi played by Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, which is very intersting character he's kind of both Jesse Pinkman and Saul Goodman at the same time, he's a lawyer, but doesn't work as a lawyer, he do drugs and always have a trouble with the police, and I think in BB they found that the character doesn't make sense and challenge the stereotype of how lawyers if being bad, they are crocked at the best and people like Jesse are uneducated and naive, while in the original story Gamal is corrupt, immoral but he's not a naive or stupid in any way, he choose to be who he is, part of him is the educated person who is totally aware of the moral code and the justification behind at, but at the same time decides to live his life the way he like.

Gamal is flawed and imperfect unlike his brother Dr. Salah Azzmi Abul-Azm who is ideal person, he's the perfect person who live his life as a model citizen would've lived it, he's basically Walter White, even the name Walter White is similar to Azzmi Abul-Azm, which also prove my point if you think about it, Salah Azzmi is a chemist.

Salah Azzmi being perfect he doesn't like the evil immoral world he's living in, with its immoral imperfect culture.

Gamal ended up in prison after he was involved in a fight, so his brother Salah went to bail him, after Gamal was released, Salah and Gamal took a taxi, the taxi driver was playing a song, the singer sounded really bad, the lyrics also were meaningless, Salah being perfect he didn't like both the lyrics and the singer, and asked the driver to lower the volume, when Gamal and the driver chatted about how great the song is, Salah got angry, the driver tried to explain to him how good the song is, how he himself at first didn't like the song, and how overtime it became like a drug that got him high, and how he found such immoral noisy song entertaining and a way of escaping the hardship of real life. Salah then replied that life is already very noisy for Gamal to respond to him saying "We have to make bigger noise in order to endure the noisy hard life".

Now, what this mean, in order to achieve escapism in art you need three thing, noise which means change and unpredictability, and the noise have to be louder than the real life noise, which means exaggeration, which is exactly what good villains are, either they are so strong, so beautiful, so smart, or even giving a great exaggerated performance in order to help people escape the hardship of life, examples for beauty is Melinda Clarke in Spawn, Tom Ellis in Lucifer, Bruno Campos in Nip/Tuck, for performance, you have Famke Janssen in GoldenEye, Adel Adham in El-Furn, Shadia and Soheir El-Bably in Raya wa Sekina, for smart we have Nour as Erina Evanovich in El-Rahinah, Sophie Marceau as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, Marion Cotillard as Miranda in The Dark Knight Rises, and Gerard Butler as Clyde Shelton in Law Abiding Citizen not saying that any of the characters don't have both beauty and great performance, just trying to give examples, it can also exaggeration of physical power that doesn't need beauty or performance and can be just computer generated like werewolves and monsters in general, which happened in Red One when our beloved evil witch turned into a huge monster towards the end of the movie. Beside the characters exaggeration can also mean the music, the color contrast, big explosions and destruction.

 This fact is something Gamal and the driver understood, for Salah, the perfect chemist, this song is nonsense and immoral, and even harmful, Salah being perfect he hates escapism as he find it immoral and the cause of everything wrong with society.

When Salah and Gamal went back to Gamal's apartment, Gamal said to Salah "I will go now burn myself", Salah replied "What do you mean?" Gamal said "It means, I have to take a shower", then Salah went to the bedroom to find that there are drugs, he asked Gamal about it, Gamal told him he was trying to sterilize the room, You see, Gamal being a villain speaks a totally different language Salah can't understand, it can mean to Salah the exact opposite of what Gamal meant.

So, Gamal forgot his drugs in Salah's apartment, and went back to get it, so Salah refused to give it back to him, and kept it, Salah felt obliged to change Gamal's behavior, being a hero, he felt that he need to fix him, to make him like what happened to Prankster in Black Scorpion "honest upstanding member of the society".

The idea of Gamal managing to speak two languages means multiple things, for a writer, he can speak the literal language or the figurative language, also it means that Gamal can understand his educated brother Salah, and also understand the language of the streets, also, it means the language of good, perfection, and morality, that Salah can understand, and also Gamal can understand, but also being a villain, he can also understand another language, the language of evil, imperfection and immorality, the same thing apply on Vince Gilligan and how his ignorance of the Arabic language made him get the story wrong and pushed in a different direction that was never meant.

I watched this movie dozens of times, but in order to post about it, I will have to make it on parts, as it's very important and by watching it, many things that didn't make much sense in Breaking Bad will make sense to you, like how in the show Walter White was very close to Jesse Pinkman even when he could've easily replace him, which doesn't make much sense as Walter White was kind of cold when it comes to people outside his family, and Jesse wasn't exactly his friend, but more of unreliable partner, will stop now at 20 minute mark then continue other time and update the post.

 Ok, Salah and Gamal had a really interesting conversation, about escapism, like the whole concept of escapism, Gamal argued that tobacco, coffee and tea is a proof that life is intolerable without escapism as all of these things aren't essential for your physical survival, Salah then argued that escapism is illusion and a product of people's weakness and ignorance, and people attached to it and it took control of them, like sculpting a statue then worshiping it.

Gamal then replied "If people weren't in need for it, they wouldn't have sculpting it, escapism is a blessing." Salah then replied "Blessing"

Gamal replied "It helps us escape reality and tolerate living."

Salah replied "Tolerate what?"

Gamal replied "A lot of intolerable things, Aren't you living in the same city with us?"

The idea about escapism and Idolatry is very interesting, basically it's saying that religion itself is a form of escapism which is very similar to Marx quote "Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions." So basically Salah find escapism is like creating your own god and worshiping it, and Gamal counter argument, that people originally created their false god, because they needed a false god to worship.

Just to be clear, neither Gamal nor Salah are talking about every religion, as Salah, the one criticizing worshiping false god is actually more religious than Gamal.

Salah then went to his laboratory and created a substance that not only look, smell and feel like the drugs he took from Gamal, but even whoever see it will find it better, it smell stronger, look darker, which would trick Gamal to think it's better than the original, so now we have the idea of WW in Breaking Bad making a product better than the one being sold in the streets.

So, Salah went to his brother Gamal and told him about how he can't afford to get his son into school, they had very intersting conversation Salah was talking about having the values like justice, and Gamal replied "Is it just that someone as smart as you can't get his son into school?" 😂😂😂

The movie doesn't shy away from criticizing collective morals, they don't restrict the speech the way Hollywood do.

Just to show you how religious Salah is, his wife got the money from her brother and he refused to take the money as he found the money made by illegal and religiously forbidden means.

So, in order to get the money, Gamal took the fake drugs and went to sell it to his drug dealer, and took it from Salah claiming it's for personal use, and promised Salah that he will give him the money he needs for his son school.

So, the drug dealer went to sell the product he got from Gamal and went to meet Salim el-Bahz played by Gamil Rateb, Salim el-Bahz is basically Gus Fring, Gamil Rateb was one of the greatest actors in Arabic cinema, so it makes sense for him to play the main villain of the movie, the character is very charismatic and smart, kind of elitist, he's very different from other drug dealers who work under him, you will see a lot of things in the original character that made Gus Fring the iconic character he's known for today.       

Salim was astonished by how good the product is, he knew that it wasn't actually a drug, but it look and feel so good, like whoever buy it may get deceived that it's extremely pure product.

So, he decided to mix it with chemical drugs and sell it to the streets, to trick people who would get deceived thinking it's a pure Hashish.

So, when Salah knew that Gamal is selling his formula as a drug, he got mad at him, but Gamal using his background as a lawyer to convince Salah that what they were doing wasn't a bad thing, and when Salah told him that what they were doing is scamming people, Gamal told him that their product unlike real drugs isn't harmful, and scams originally about deceiving people into buying stuff with low value claiming that they are with high value, while what they were doing is selling safe product with high value while pretending its a addictive harmful product with low value. 

Here's a funny moment, Gamal in his argument with Salah, used Salah's argument and his moral code against him, and when Salah faced him saying "You use my moral code that you don't believe in?" Gamal then replied "My personal conviction or lack thereof does not change the truth." LOL.

Now, here's interesting clip, remember the scene with Huell and Kuby lying on on the money, this scene was also in the original movie, yet it wasn't as much money and it made so much sense in the original movie as then Salah had a big financial trouble, and he lied on the bed with the money above it feeling relieved, so it made so much sense and felt so right.

Another interesting scene as I said before Gamal is basically both Jesse Pinkman and Saul Goodman, so when Salah told him that he can't put his money in the bank, Gamal suggested that he will start a company and Salah invest in it in order to launder the money, basically like what Saul suggested to Walter White.

     So, Gamal decided to start his own company and make albums, the funny thing is, the actor playing Gamal not just isn't a singer, he also sound so bad, which kind of making it funny.

 Gamal then started to meeting the writers who will write his songs, first he met Mahrus, a famous song writer, so he started to read the lyrics to Gamal, and it was fucking boring, and Gamal was like "I want some interesting and fun lyrics" and Mahrus replied "Just think about how meaningful it is" then Gamal replied, "Fuck the meaning, I want fast and fun lyrics, I want absurdity, lyrics would make you high as if it's a drug" LMFAO!

Gamal then went to a song writer who would give him what he wanted, Now, remember The Heisenberg Song? 

In the original movie The Heisenberg Song was sang by Gamal to celebrate Salah and the money he earned due to his formula, so, it's obvious how the song make so much sense in the movie, while seem out of context in the show.

Salim AKA Gus in the movie is just great, the writing of his character is amazing, I love how he was taunting Gamal, knowing that Gamal was lying to him, yet instead of facing him he was having fun with him and his lies.

Salim exactly like Gus want them to manufacture one ton for 1 million pound, now, I get you may ask "But what about the blue crystal, this movie doesn't mention it", well, now is the time for one more proof that Breaking Bad is based on this movie..

So, Salah found out that Salim doesn't sell his product as he made it, but actually mix it with blue crystal and sell it LOL. Like even that is taken from from the movie, it's like if I take the exact script of the movie, give it to AI and ask it to change the movie just enough so It doesn't same exactly that I took the script!!

      When Salah knew about what Salim did, he refused to work for him, so Salim met Gamal, asked him to tell him who his supplier is, Gamal refused, so Salim tortured him till he snitched on his brother Salah.

TBH, I get why when Vince Gilligan adapted the movie, he thought that Salim was gay, he wasn't married, and was always addressing Salah saying things like "My love" "Baby" and such, so, I think he assumed he's gay or found that making him gay would suit his character. 

Salim tried to convince Salah to make him a ton, and when he insisted that he wouldn't do it, he asked him to teach his guys how to make the product. Unfortunately Salah made the grave mistake of not respecting Salim, something he will pay a heavy price for, basically Salim made him addict in order to break him. Since then Salim treated Salah with utmost disgust, this was translated in the show, but since the show had different ending for "Morality reasons", they made Gus look down to everyone that use his product which wasn't necessarily the case with Salim, as his treatment to Salah was a reaction of how disrespectful Salah was.

One of the things that probably was mistranslated and became part of Gus character and made the character gay is this quote by Salim "Now we are even, I'm psychopathic and you are an addict, and we get have new start as lovers." Which is a literal translation, the word lovers in such context means friends.

The movie ends with Salim/Gus getting the ton he wanted plus the formula, Salah, the perfect moral hero got the punishment he deserved and the world was saved from his perfectionism, and here what I really like, at the start the movie was talking about how Gamal was talking to Salah telling him "You don't understand the language", and I said before that villains are your teachers which is exactly what happened here, Salah finally manged to learn "The language" the language of absurdity, the language of villains, and he even celebrate it towards the end of the movie shouting "Finally, I learned the language"

And the movie ending with the absurd meaningless lyrics of Gamal, being heard everywhere, declaring the triumph of immorality over morality, of imperfection over perfection, of evil over good..

What of the things that Breaking Bad really missed due to the Language barrier is what the story is about, the story isn't actually about drugs, as with villain things often have double meaning, in this case, drugs represent art, Salah said it multiple times that art that aim for escapism is like drugs and even more dangerous, being a perfect, Salah wanted to replace Art that aim for escapism with meaningful art, which is kind of funny because that's what Hollywood morality police is doing now!!

So basically Gus/Salim represent artistic freedom, while Salah represent censorship, thankfully Gus won and Salah got what he deserved and the free world of villains was saved .   

One of the interesting things about the ending is how the loop ended where it began, completing the ring like in The Myth of Sisyphus which make it a perfect villain movie.

Hollywood killing Gus and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle in the show represent killing creative freedom in both its feminine and masculine form, basically Hollywood killed masculine creative freedom and poisoned feminine creative freedom, a self fulfilling prophecy, I guess!!   

Favorite quotes

 "Salah: The way I see it, words that make people escape reality is exactly like drugs, and could be even worst"

 "Salah: Then you are psychopathic!

Salim: What the fuck did you say?

Salah: You are soulless, inhuman, selfish!!

Salim: And what else, your words are so kind, keep talking.. You see how important education is, You idiots? The man knew me in just one meeting!!"