Act of Dishonour

Nelofer Pazira's work takes the makers of the film, some of the cast, and the viewers to a village in northern Afghanistan, near the Afghan-Tajik border, where the people who live there, by definition amateur actors, join them - in realising this movie as an experience for everyone involved.

The story is more than the interplay of the fictive and part-fictive characters, or the plot in a narrow sense. When you shoot something on film, you are always a part of the story, be your interest fiction or non-fiction, and in fact the two categories can never be so clearly separated. This somewhat trivial statement holds very true in Afghanistan and also for director Nelofer Pazira's past work which has always been in acknowledgement of this (for an example, her earlier documentary "Audition" is very much recommended at this point, also given how it is related to this movie in several ways).

That said, maybe you should just forget what I wrote up to this point, because this film is first of all a movie. It can be enjoyed and reflected on as such. You will get to know a good deal about life in a village in northern Afghanistan. It is just that the people in the story, including the Afghan villagers, are not merely "people-unto-themselves" here, as you encounter them reading shallow news reports on the country, but "people-for-themselves," if I may put it that way. Real human beings whose motivations the movie challenges you to understand. And perhaps this challenge works so well exactly because of the blending of fiction and non-fiction that is constantly there underneath the surface of its plot.

First a word about the movie's low rating here on IMDb. Click on Ratings to see who gave the low ratings and who gave the high. Young boys rated it as low as 1. Young women rated it as high as 9.5. And in between the wide separation of scores is entirely based on age and sex. In every age group females gave it much higher ratings than males. And in the case of men, the older they are, the higher their ratings.

So this is not a movie for immature males. It is thoughtful, provocative, layered. Is Afghan culture repressive and ugly? Yes. Is the burga a symbol of women's repression? Probably--but what do we make of the fact that this Afghan girl, so innocent, so excited about becoming married to a boy she loves, wants more than anything else a burqa to wear on her wedding night in order to appear mysterious, alluring, and sexy? In the bedroom on her wedding night, is the burqa still a symbol of oppression?

The Westerners in the movie voice the typical attitudes about how primitive Afghan culture is. They have come to make a movie, and while making it they try to "uplift" the locals in little ways. Yet when they drive away, their attempts leave a trail of destruction.

But mostly the film is about the terrible effects of Afghan culture, its proneness to violence, its hatred of foreigners, and especially its horrific treatment of women. The ending leaves you on the verge of tears and shaking your fist at Afghan men.

It's a movie well worth seeing, unless you think X-Men and Pirates of the Caribbean are examples of film-making at its best.

another typical afghan film .

nicely made and showed the mind set of afghan men even after so much sufferings still their honor is more important than the life of their loved ones . we living in a more open modern society don't digest these things easily

but keeping yourself in their place their deeds can be justified and i always feels after watching such films when these men are going reform themselves . the movie is good to watch and like most of the other afghan movies has no proper ending . but one can guess what could have happened .