When his older brother Mokhi refuses to take him to the great buzkashi game in Kabul, in which he will participate to represent the province of Kataghan, young Rahim decides to go there on his own. Guided by the angel of death, Azrael, Rahim reaches Kabul with difficulty. Buzkashi is one of the most popular games in Afghanistan. Two teams of horsemen compete to place the corpse of a goat in a circle drawn on the ground.
First movie by Pierre Shoendoerffer, it's his most overlooked and certainly one of his best ;in 1958, although there were part-doc part-fiction films ("le voyage en ballon ", "le cerf -volant du bout du monde "),this one is the most demanding ; the entire story is told by Jean Negroni's voice over; on hears snatches of dialog in the Afghan language and that's it .
The use of wide screen and eastmancolor is grandiose ,filming breath-taking landscapes , lands with a glorious past of which time has often left ruins ; when a car appears ,it's almost anachronistic , heralding the capital ,Kabul ; here,the little boy is at once lost and fascinated by the souks and he can't resist stealing clogs.
We were warned from the very start ;in a place full of ancient history, a tragedy will happen ; the Angel of Death had told the boy: "you'll meet your brother":but it sounded ominous and ,scared , his little companion fled. But the Angel finds him again for the game ; here , the kid brother can't stand to see his hero humiliated by another rider, Ouroz, who defeated him in a local game, so he gnaws the girth of the latter's horse. The tragedy was bound to happen.
A wonderful movie, entirely filmed on location, with the strange oriental philosophy : time does not exist and man's fate is in Allah's hands .
Written by Joseph Kessel.
