Kandahar
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Movie Reviews of Kandahar
Movie Review: A Descent into Dante-esque Night
Summary: 4 Stars
"Kandahar" is a collection of slightly fictionalized vignettes of Afghan life in the 1990s, loosely grouped together in a putative dramatic plot. The "plot," such as it is, has to do with a woman who had been born in Afghanistan, and had escaped to Canada some years previously. For reasons of her own, she seeks to make her way to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, beginning from one of the refugee camps on the Afghan border with Iran. On the way, she meets with several normal, regular, ordinary Afghan people, and learns about their normal, regular, everyday Afghan horrendous lives. The reason to see this film is to see the people she meets.
The plot is not very thoroughly developed, but that really doesn't matter, in my opinion. It seems to me that far too many reviewers here are focusing on the wrong things. In the commentary track, leading actress Nelofer Pazira talks about how she and the director chose to include various scenes, while filming, as they met various refugees in the camps. They simply couldn't say no, to the opportunity of including these people's waking nightmares in the film. The scenery is beautiful, in a stark way, and the plot is barely enough to keep a viewer dramatically involved, but the point is to learn about life in today's Afghanistan.
Disease, drought, ubiquitous old land mines, staggering poverty, and, of course, radical Islamic fundamentalism, collude to make Taliban-era Afghanistan an absolutely horrendous environment. Several scenes are likely to lodge in your memory for some time, such as the young boy stealing a ring from a skeleton; the relief airplane parachuting prosthetic legs through the sky, toward a camp; the madrasas school scenes, where young boys learn to hate and kill; and the "doctor" who is prohibited by Islamic law from closely examining his female patients.
While viewing this, I personally found it helpful to keep all the various horrors organized, by paying attention to who Nafas' guide is, at any given moment. She is guided by an old Afghan refugee, whose (fourth) wife she pretends to be; a student expelled from a militaristic, Muslim madrasa; an African-American "doctor"; and a one-handed former thief. Each guide raises various issues for Nafas. If you try to sort out what is happening in terms of which guide Nafas is with, it can really help you out quite a bit. I hope that you do this.
Some people reading this review may have noticed that I have put the word "doctor" in quotes, twice. This is because the "doctor" character in the film, based on a real person, is simply a regular, fairly well-educated man from the United States. He has no actual medical training, but even an average guy on the street in the USA knows vastly more than illiterate Afghan refugees. He is able to make a difference, and even save lives, simply by dispensing what we would consider to be common sense advise, e.g., don't drink polluted water; dress wounds with clean bandages, etc.
If you find the "doctor" character to be in any way inspiring, (as I do), then you may wish to think about emulating him, without even standing up from your computer screen. Three excellent ways that you can find ways to do this are by googling any of the following phrases: 1.) Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, 2.) Cameo Landmine Clearance, or 3.) Doctors Without Borders.
The Taliban is gone, but the socio-cultural matrix which gave rise to its existence still flourishes in Afghanistan. It will take a lot more than a few years to heal that wounded country. If you would like to continue to educate yourself about that area, I recommend that you also look for the DVDs called "Panj E Asr," "Osama," and, for a little variety, "Marooned in Iraq."
Movie Review: fascinating pseudo-documentary drama
Summary: 4 Stars
When you see "Kandahar," it's almost impossible to believe that you're watching a film set in the late 20th Century. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film takes place in Afghanistan in the latter days of the Taliban regime, when women were not merely viewed as second class citizens, but were denied any form of education or civil rights and even had to go out in public covered from head to toe to prevent men from seeing their faces. The filmmaker takes us to the heart of this alien and frightening world and makes us see, perhaps for the first time on the big screen, just how horrific life was for women in that time and place."Kandahar" is less a narrative film than a series of fascinating vignettes that drive home the realities of life in that part of the world. What plot there is involves the efforts of a female Canadian journalist to sneak back into her native country to prevent her desperate sister in Kandahar from committing suicide at the next solar eclipse. But that is really just a string on which to hang the individual pearls that make up the film. What is of primary interest to both the filmmaker and the audience are the various people the journalist encounters and the many experiences she undergoes. Hidden beneath her own burka, she witnesses firsthand the devastating poverty, the utter degradation and de-humanization of women, and the authoritarian oppression that defined life in that country during the Taliban rule. Along the way, she meets an American doctor who is trying his hardest to in some way relieve the misery of these people, but who finds himself waging a losing battle against the primitivism and theocratic oppression that have made life a living hell for the common citizenry of the country. She also encounters a seemingly endless group of people who have become dismembered by all the land mines left over from the Afghani war with the Russians. There is one remarkable scene wherein hordes of desperate, one-legged men hobble on crutches across the desert as Red Cross helicopters rain prosthetic limbs down onto the sands below. It is merely one among many images from the film that seer themselves into the viewer's memory. Another is a scene in which a male doctor has to examine his female patients through a hole cut out of a sheet, not even being allowed to talk to the woman directly about her symptoms but having to get his information through a male (or female child) "interpreter."
Makhmalbaf keeps the ending of the film deliberately ambiguous which might frustrate some viewers but which actually adds to the verisimilitude of the piece. In the same way, much of the acting in the film borders on the amateurish at times, but again that contributes to the pseudo-documentary aura that the film must have to be truly effective. A clear-cut narrative resolution and slick performances by obviously professional actors would likely rob the film of its much-needed sense of immediacy.
"Kandahar," by providing a voice to so many voiceless people, is a film that cries out to be seen.
Movie Review: Looking Behind the Veil
Summary: 4 Stars
KANDAHAR, or THE SUN BEHIND THE MOON, is an interesting and provocative film. Though I felt that in some ways the movie was manipulative since it was narrated in English and not actually filmed in Afghanistan, I did learn much from it. However, it felt as though it was an "outsider's" view into the world of Afghan people told from the vantage point of someone who had escaped the Taliban's stronghold and resides in Canada now. Also, the director is from Iran. So, this, too, somehow takes away from the film's "true" perspective. To the film's credit, however, it delivers powerful images and a look at how sad and utterly devastated the landscape of a once-proud nation has become. It makes the more fortunate among us perhaps stop for a moment to treasure the small freedoms we take entirely for granted and realize that the people of Afghanistan deserve a chance for freedom too. It also leaves one with haunting questions: Will the Afghan people ever write love stories, romances, poems, songs after it seems that their world was entirely capsized and their hearts broken by the Taliban? Will women ever be able to live in anything but total fear there? What is going to happen to that country when the war is over and all the world's focus shifts away from them? For all its failures, the film does deliver us a postcard from a land most of us will never otherwise know and makes us feel the desire to understand and empathize with its people. Post-9/11, that is important and essential to the world's healing.
Movie Review: Great Movie- Makes You Think
Summary: 4 Stars
I love middle eastern films. So count on me to rarely give a low rating. Most of them are worth the rating. This movie is about a woman who tries to save her sister before the next eclipse- which is coming very soon. It speaks about her travels through Iran to Afganistan. And believe me she has many trials, but someone always helped her. I am not going to share too much about this movie because I feel it will give it away, but I would recommend the DVD version and NOT the VHS. Why?
There is also autobiogrpahy of the director of this movie who is also the lead actress. It explains why she made this movie in the first place.
However the reason why I give this movie 4 stars and not 5, because I expected a little more. Although, she shows how women must be covered head to toe and there's a scene that shows of a mother who cannot work and is in much grief because of the rules- this is really all we get from what's going on inside of Afganistan. So with that, I am a little disappointed
However the film is beautiful in all respect and I would recommend anyone to see it.
Movie Review: No matter the despair and hopeless, I do it only for you my sister!
Summary: 4 Stars
Awarded as the Best Film of Cannes 2001, Kandahar is a journey into the heart of Afghanistan.
Natas is a young Afghan journalist who fled to Canada taking refuge. Now she has to return to her birthplace due her little sister was forced to stay behind after being crippled by a land mine. Depressed because this awful situation she is determined to commit suicide before the imminent eclipse of the sun.
So, Nafta will have with three days left after this decision occurs. Meanwhile we will witness the harrowing and precarious conditions that surround the lives of these people as well as the relentless religious rules all the way through.