This movie is not for those brought up on a diet of Hollywood entertaining blockbusters with amazing special effects, thrilling and twisting plots, character development and a satisfying denouement.
Kandahar by an acclaimed Iranian director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, carries different layers of meaning, conveyed creatively through an artistic process. The image as a language is more powerful than words can ever convey. He uses "real" people rather than actors to enhance authenticity.
Afghani-Canadian, Nafas, has three days to save her despairing sister from suicide in Kandahar, in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, but can't enter it normally because of her journalist credentials. Her only choice is to trek from the Iranian border. Mohsen uses this narrative to capture the horrendous ravages and severe plights of a war-torn country steeped in an oppressive culture for women and shackled by the terrifying ideology of the Taliban. He employs no special effects, no physical violence, no explosions, not a single gunshot, not a single drop of blood - just images of everyday life.
Nafas can't travel as an unaccompanied woman and she must wear the head to toe burqa covering. For us the burqa is a symbol of the woman's oppression, to the Afghani male it's his honor. Women are meant to be largely invisible, so poignantly captured in family photo portraits. A doctor can only examine his female patient through a small hole in a curtain separating the two and communicate indirectly via a third party such as an accompanying child. Girls are removed from schools en masse. "For a woman living under full cover hope is for a day she'll be seen."
The austere landscape reinforces the grinding poverty and the meager means of existence, inevitably giving rise to lawlessness and a survival instinct that grabs every opportunity for financial gain. And there is little chance of escaping this hopelessness as the only aspiration for a boy is to be a mullah, a religious figure, through meaningless rote memorization of the Koran evidenced by repetitions of a mantra venerating the only technology allowed – the AK47 rifle.
The most chilling indictment of the war is the hordes of people with missing limbs blown up by land mines which litter the entire country. The most important currency for these people is the prosthetic limb for which they are entitled only one per year. Everyone, including the able-bodied, needs a pair, just in case. The surrealism of a horde of guys racing on crutches to receive crude prosthetic limbs parachuting down from the sky sears the mind.
The large bridal party adorned in their fluttering multi-colored burqas (supposedly covering only women) trudging across the barren landscape in rhythm to a numbing chant and tribal drumbeat heading towards a wedding in Kandahar conveys a notion of traditional bliss and innocence. That vanishes like a mirage when the party is intercepted at a Taliban checkpoint.
The curious presence of an African American looking for God, but ends up as a "doctor" administering whatever relief he can to basic health issues, is a statement that the core problem in Afghanistan is not religion per se but a dysfunctional country in a state of crippling deprivation of everything.
This movie was released in 2001, a decade after Taliban forces, aided and abetted by the United Sates, defeated the might of the then Soviet Union in their misguided and disastrous attempt to invade Afghanistan. This left the shattered country at the mercy of the extremist ideologically driven Taliban. The United States' response to 9/11 was to invoke a war against terror targeting the same Taliban forces. More bombs and military destruction followed. The country has once again been plunged into unimaginably crippling devastation.
The overarching message of this movie is the carnage and utter futility of war in bringing about desired social outcomes. It would appear Americans have neither learned the lessons of the Vietnam War nor from the Soviet's recent experience. Bombs and other military hardware are useless against an enemy with neither significant infrastructure nor targets to be destroyed. Deploying highly equipped alien boots on the ground is not going to win the hearts and minds of a population devoid of the means of livelihood, scarred by decades of war and lacking the education to escape this quagmire. The entire country becomes an even more fertile ground for breeding and recruiting terrorists – the antithesis of the war's objective. The American effort in Afghanistan is reputed to cost $1 billion each day. Imagine this amount redirected into developing and educating the country instead.
Makhmalbaf makes a pointed reference to the total uselessness of the UN. Its flag, being a symbol of neutrality that was meant to protect the traveling party, ended up planted next to a human skeleton in the desert. The only thing of tokenistic "value" recovered from the skeleton was a bejeweled ring, which ended up being worthless.
Kandahar by an acclaimed Iranian director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, carries different layers of meaning, conveyed creatively through an artistic process. The image as a language is more powerful than words can ever convey. He uses "real" people rather than actors to enhance authenticity.
Afghani-Canadian, Nafas, has three days to save her despairing sister from suicide in Kandahar, in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, but can't enter it normally because of her journalist credentials. Her only choice is to trek from the Iranian border. Mohsen uses this narrative to capture the horrendous ravages and severe plights of a war-torn country steeped in an oppressive culture for women and shackled by the terrifying ideology of the Taliban. He employs no special effects, no physical violence, no explosions, not a single gunshot, not a single drop of blood - just images of everyday life.
Nafas can't travel as an unaccompanied woman and she must wear the head to toe burqa covering. For us the burqa is a symbol of the woman's oppression, to the Afghani male it's his honor. Women are meant to be largely invisible, so poignantly captured in family photo portraits. A doctor can only examine his female patient through a small hole in a curtain separating the two and communicate indirectly via a third party such as an accompanying child. Girls are removed from schools en masse. "For a woman living under full cover hope is for a day she'll be seen."
The austere landscape reinforces the grinding poverty and the meager means of existence, inevitably giving rise to lawlessness and a survival instinct that grabs every opportunity for financial gain. And there is little chance of escaping this hopelessness as the only aspiration for a boy is to be a mullah, a religious figure, through meaningless rote memorization of the Koran evidenced by repetitions of a mantra venerating the only technology allowed – the AK47 rifle.
The most chilling indictment of the war is the hordes of people with missing limbs blown up by land mines which litter the entire country. The most important currency for these people is the prosthetic limb for which they are entitled only one per year. Everyone, including the able-bodied, needs a pair, just in case. The surrealism of a horde of guys racing on crutches to receive crude prosthetic limbs parachuting down from the sky sears the mind.
The large bridal party adorned in their fluttering multi-colored burqas (supposedly covering only women) trudging across the barren landscape in rhythm to a numbing chant and tribal drumbeat heading towards a wedding in Kandahar conveys a notion of traditional bliss and innocence. That vanishes like a mirage when the party is intercepted at a Taliban checkpoint.
The curious presence of an African American looking for God, but ends up as a "doctor" administering whatever relief he can to basic health issues, is a statement that the core problem in Afghanistan is not religion per se but a dysfunctional country in a state of crippling deprivation of everything.
This movie was released in 2001, a decade after Taliban forces, aided and abetted by the United Sates, defeated the might of the then Soviet Union in their misguided and disastrous attempt to invade Afghanistan. This left the shattered country at the mercy of the extremist ideologically driven Taliban. The United States' response to 9/11 was to invoke a war against terror targeting the same Taliban forces. More bombs and military destruction followed. The country has once again been plunged into unimaginably crippling devastation.
The overarching message of this movie is the carnage and utter futility of war in bringing about desired social outcomes. It would appear Americans have neither learned the lessons of the Vietnam War nor from the Soviet's recent experience. Bombs and other military hardware are useless against an enemy with neither significant infrastructure nor targets to be destroyed. Deploying highly equipped alien boots on the ground is not going to win the hearts and minds of a population devoid of the means of livelihood, scarred by decades of war and lacking the education to escape this quagmire. The entire country becomes an even more fertile ground for breeding and recruiting terrorists – the antithesis of the war's objective. The American effort in Afghanistan is reputed to cost $1 billion each day. Imagine this amount redirected into developing and educating the country instead.
Makhmalbaf makes a pointed reference to the total uselessness of the UN. Its flag, being a symbol of neutrality that was meant to protect the traveling party, ended up planted next to a human skeleton in the desert. The only thing of tokenistic "value" recovered from the skeleton was a bejeweled ring, which ended up being worthless.