Nabil Ayouch’s exuberant musical declares that the genre hasn’t faded; it has just been hiding in a Moroccan slum.
When the rapper Nas proclaimed 16 years ago that hip-hop was dead — namely, by titling an album “Hip-Hop Is Dead” — it was a statement laced with self-aware irony: This was a hip-hop record, after all.
As he always made clear, his title wasn’t the predictable gripe of an intellectual vanguard (“Painting is dead,” “God is dead,” etc.) but a call to action — a response to hip-hop’s co-option by corporate interests. It’s hard to imagine his assessment has improved. But if the French Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch’s exuberant new film, “Casablanca Beats,” is any indication, perhaps one need only look outside the United States for a reminder of the genre’s original power to create political change.
Filmed in a hand-held, naturalistic style, “Casablanca” feels often like a documentary — until it spontaneously bursts into lyrics or dance, like “Fame” without the leotards, “Dancer in the Dark” without the contempt. The story is familiar, set in a tough neighborhood where Anas (Anas Basbousi), a former rapper, arrives to teach hip-hop at a community arts center.
It is also, as his troubled teenage students are all too aware, a place that has historically produced suicide bombers. Hemmed in by joblessness, religious conservatism and captious expectations, the students are seduced by the devil’s music.
Anas teaches class by day, sleeps in his car at night. Of his past, we know little. But when he tells his students that hip-hop is about speaking truth to power, not bling and petty beefs, it’s clear that he walks his own talk. We’ll forgive him and his students, flush with the joys and indignations of youth, for the occasional maudlin speech — and Ayouch for the attendant schmaltz. Hip-hop isn’t dead, the film energetically insists; it’s just been hiding in a Moroccan slum.
Casablanca Beats
Not rated. In Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
