Award-winning actor, Asser Yassin, strikes again with his second directorial project after directing Abu’s version of Ahwak last year. This time, he collaborated with Wust El Balad to produce a thought-provoking music video. Al Ikhtelaf Al Mo’talaf, with its lyrics and its peculiar setting, is one song that left fans confused.
The shared video soon attracted many fans and the comments soon came after. Even though many fans loved the song, there was a wide agreement on one particular thing, that none of them had a clue on what’s really going on. Yassin used a storytelling technique in the production that surely included a lot of metaphors. The style he used is not the mainstream/commercial style most of the Egyptian market is used to. However, Wust El Balad’s style in music is already unique and different in its own way and Yassin’s outlandish style perfectly complements that. Some people expressed their dislike of the video of course, but art is subjective after all.
The band of course had to get back to its fans about this; or else they would’ve gone mad. They only had one thing to say though. “Pay more attention to details,” they said. The band urged fans to re-watch the music video from a different perspective, to think out of the box and pointed at the fact that the video had hidden messages. They even told one of their fans that the video was made so they would watch it over and over again, and that’s what we did. We kept on watching the video until we came up with our own interpretation, so here it is.
So first things first, we believe that there are some facts that could easily be interpreted from the lyrics and the scenes. For instance, Yassin, who also stars in the music video, seems to be attached to life. However, death seems to surround him somehow. The band members are all dead, the coffins, the creepy ornaments at his place, in addition to the dim light and the cold blue temperature of the scenes. All of these are elements pointing at death. According to the lyrics, he “chose” life over death, but the scenes add to that that he somehow has some sort of control over death. Yassin carries the dead bodies, places them in coffins and grants each body a card. Could he be gravedigger? Or is there more to that?
Then there’s the girl, who plays the role of his lover, and who also happens to die during the video. Throughout the video, Yassin seems to be desperately trying figure her out. He can’t seem to figure out which card belongs to her. Until the girl reveals at the end of the video that she picked the King of Clubs, as she shows it to Yassin from behind a glass barrier; probably the barrier that separates their two worlds. This is apparently where the “difference” mentioned in the song lies; the difference between their two opposite worlds of life and after-life. At this particular moment though, Yassin dies and follows his lover to where they could finally be together. He even grows a few silver hairs like the dead girl and the band members. So did he choose to die for her?
We came to a conclusion that even though there’s a clear storyline over here, the video is still open to interpretation as there are some details people had different thoughts about. Maybe that’s why the band didn’t want to reveal the true story, maybe because there’s no true or wrong one. What if they meant to throw the story at us leaving us to our wild imagination to build up on it from there?