Kandahar
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Movie Reviews of Kandahar
Movie Review: + 1/2 - Quietly Disturbing
Summary: 3 Stars
This film was a quietly disturbing take on one woman's experience while on a determined trek across the stark deserts of Afghanistan to come to the aid of her suffering sister in Kandahar. Nafas shows a melancholy courage in her quest; she is determined to find her sister and must subject herself to the dangers of bandits and checkpoints where women are body searched and otherwise humiliated. Along the way we are shown boys being trained to be mullahs; this scene is very effective in portraying the brainwashing techniques used on boys who must learn and recite prayers as well as hold up a Russian machine gun and explain it's purpose. When one boy is expelled for improper recital, he must do what he can to make money, thus he agrees to escort Nafas to Kandahar after she is abandoned by her first escorts. He is aggressive and desperate; the boy who played this part was one of the better actors in the movie. And so it goes on - Nafas is passed from escort to escort due to the dangers and suspicions of others.
The actress portraying Nafas is beautiful; she need not have said a word to convey the pain and sorrow of her plight, because her eyes are so expressive. Her speaking parts in English sounded a bit stiff and I missed some of what she said because her voice was so low.
All said, this is a haunting film which I've added to my repertoire of books and movies about Afghanistan. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to further his/her exploration of the devastating results of Taliban rule.
Movie Review: Like many films from Muslim countries, "Kandahar" is vitally concerned with female emancipation...
Summary: 3 Stars
The film's great success with audiences was in part due to the timing of its release, at a moment when Afghanistan had been catapulted into the headlines by the activities of the Taliban and the attacks of September 11, 2001...
But the motion picture, directed by one of Iran's most prominent film artists, is much more than a story pulled out from the headlines... It stars Nelofer Pazira, a female journalist, based in Canada, playing Nafas, who is trying to get into Afghanistan to reach her sister who lives in Kandahar... Nafas's sister is threatening suicide because of the intolerable oppression of women by the Taliban...
In the course of her long and dangerous journey, Nafas encounters a mixed array of Afghan people, many of them refugees... An old man agrees to take her into the country disguised as his fourth wife... Later she acquires a young boy, Khak (Sadou Teymouri), as her guide after he has been expelled from a religious school... On the way she meets Tabib Sahid, an African-American who had come to fight the Soviets but who is now practicing medicine...
"Kandahar" mixes documentary authenticity with extraordinary moments of visual strangeness ad beauty... The Burka is an ever-present symbol of women's subjugation, yet underneath women wear varnished nails and lipstick, and their brightly-colored robes affirm their individuality... The film placed the suffering of the Afghan people, particularly the women, on an international stage...
Movie Review: ill-conceived and overhyped
Summary: 2 Stars
Kandahar is a film that I've been wanting to see for years. It became a "de rigueur" staple of the art-house cinema circuit following 9/11. I remember the long lines at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston, when the film was screened.
Obviously, this film has its fans, as evidenced by the glowing reviews on Amazon. I personally found it to be a sham. For starters, it is filmed documentary-style, but the plot is heavily scripted. I'm not saying this concept is flawed; it works in The Story of the Weeping Camel. But, in a film that deals with such serious topics as famine and land mines, it feels wholly out of place. Also, the English-language dialogue suffers from flat delivery. The protagonist seems phony; every potentially poignant moment is ruined by her deadpan method of speaking.
Visually, the film is stunning at times, especially when you see the wedding party march in the desert. The sea of burqas in contrasting colors (such as emerald, black, ochre yellow, peach, white, purple, etc.) is absolutely stunning. But the quality of the cinematography is not enough to rescue the flawed direction.
I imagine that the throngs of curious people who clamored to see the film left the cinema somewhat disappointed. I know I did, watching it on DVD.
Movie Review: An Unsatisfying Film on a Timely Topic
Summary: 1 Stars
...I can say that this film is quite simply a clunker. Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a thoroughly mature, highly competent film maker, and along with Majid Majidi, a real innovator in the world of contemporary Iranian film. With this film, however, he decided to step away from his usual style of powerful character development, beautiful photography, and an interesting way of integrating the universal qualities of human culture with the particular world view of modern Iran.
"Kandahar" disappoints on many different levels. The character development is so poor that it is hard to empathize with much of what is going on on screen. A lot of this has to do with the screenwriting, which is simply awful. A good example of how bad this script is can be heard in the speech that the black American doctor gives into the reporter's recorder. Depth is attempted, but only pseudo-gravitas is achieved. Also, the acting is inexplicably, inexcusably, and often hilariously atrocious. Amateur casts can be excellent and convincing, as they have been in films by Makhmalbaf and Majidi before, but in Kandahar, it is so bad as to be a distraction, and only serves to point up the defincies in character development and the inanity of the dialogue.
This film is also much praised for the beauty of its scenery, but it is not a National Geographic Special, it is a feature film that introduces a plot, introduces characters, and ostensibly seeks to develop them. The scenery certainly is nice, but it doesn't make up for the dramatic failure of the film, and honestly, the production values in this film are average if not a little below average. And when you finally get right down to it, it is not much of an achievement to point a camera at a mountain or a desert in Eastern Iran or Western Afghanistan. It is just unfamiliar to most viewers (or at least it was before the fall of the Taliban), and that seems to make the scenery more special than it really is. I suppose a case could be made for the harsh terrain reflecting the harsh life under the Taliban, but that is hardly a new idea in film making, and the amount of time that this film spends lingering over the mountains and deserts of Central Asia really does absolutely nothing for a film that is just begging to be developed. Also, fanciful images in the film such as the oft-mentioned prosthetic legs flying out of the airplane, or a young Afghani pulling the ring off of a skeleton seem pretentious in the context of such a thin plot and lack of fundamental dramatic development.
In this film Makhmalbaf tried something new, and he simply failed. Luckily for him, the film became instantly relevant due to the 9/11 attacks, and it received far more praise than it should have. I liken the critical response to this film to that of "A Time for Drunken Horses", a better film than "Kandahar", but one that also gets more recognition for WHAT it is, than what it achieves as a work of cinematic art.
Movie Review: Orientalism on demand
Summary: 1 Stars
the movie directors in the ME, particularly Iranians, are responding to demands by the West for certain type of movies. They produce what is demanded from them; in turn, they receive awards. cultural industry empowers these demands; they are the ones who will ensure that such movies will be received the Western audiences and they are the ones who decide who is awarded. There is no single ME movie which depict the story of Western imperialism in the ME and then awarded for doing so. ME movies must show that ME women are in need of emancipation; ME cultures are presented as in need of getting civilized. civilization itself is presented in vertical sense; there is a civilization somewhere out there all MEasterners are expected to reach; yet, it was that same civilization that threw doll bombs on them. (no reference to who threw them doll bombs or who mined their country; who deprived them of education and knowledge. the West is represented by beautiful, blonde nurses, a nice American guy who just pretend to be a doctor and help them with his "everyday Western knowledge of medicine" in the midst of total ignorance, and the helicopters that threw on them fake legs. such a nice way to civilize!)
the story of Afghanistan is real. however, the movie does not render a fair job in reflecting the background of it. rather, it does an excellent job in meeting the cultural demand; in producing a product that can sell well.
the situation is miserable; but what caused such misery in Afghanistan? your answer after seeing the movie will be that it is Islam; it is that Islamic culture; that backward culture of those people with wonderful eyes. such a conclusion is strongly demanded in the absence of other factors. there is no single implying in the movie, a smallest reference, that Afghanistan has suffered centuries old imperialism at the hands of the British and then the Russian and now Americans who played their Great Game on the chessboard of Eurasia. There is a passage in the movie to the effect that somebody will come to liberate them. those imperialists came in the name of civilization; French did to Algeria, the British did to India; all in the name of bringing them civilization. It was White Man's Burden to do so. Yet Makhmalbaf needs more awards. he has to compete in the cultural circus and perform well for the pleasure of Western audiences, in order to continue to be in demand. you did a nice job, applauses; go on.
(anyone who is interested in cultural imperialism should read Foucault's works and Edward Said's Orientalism.)