Kandahar

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

A haunting depressing but fascinating film. I used to believe (naively) in the melting pot theory but the melting pot does not exist. Some cultures are so far removed from what we have been brought up to believe in that is is almost impossible to connect with in any shape or form.

I have always believed that each culture should be looked at on its own merits and the Western Christian/Judeao civilisation is not necessarily the answer to it all. But how can anybody find any merit in a society run by someone like the Taliban. Everybody is opressed, the women more than any, but everybody lives a miserable life. There is no compassion, no respect for divergent views. The poverty is so all pervading that survival at the most basic level is all that matters.

The film is not really a coherent narrative, more a series of vignettes showing what life was like under the Taliban. Despite the amateur acting it is a powerful film. A number of powerful images, the most powerful, to me, is the scene depicting how female patients are dealt with by a "doctor". Horrifying. Western society has many many faults but by god I'm glad I live in it.

Nafas is an Afghan refugee in Canada, separated from what remains of her family. When she receives a letter from her sister in Kandahar saying that she intends to kill herself at the next eclipse, Nafas sets out to enter Afghanistan and find her sister in order to rescue her. Joining a family traveling across the desert she quickly remembers why she fled the country in the first place as her status as a woman is as dangerous as the unseen landmines as she tries to find her sister before time runs out.

I knew little about this film prior to watching it apart from that it was popular mostly due to its unfortunate relevance. Watching it from the start to the end I must admit that, as a film or a story it was not as good as some viewers have said. The narrative is simplistic and seems to alter the passing of time to suit itself, while major holes in plotting are rather annoying if that is what you are focusing on. The film also struggles in terms of characters, with Nafas being rather bland and hard to care for, her sister being unseen and not in any more danger than those we do see (ie minimising our passion for the quest) and even the noble Talib Sahid came across as rather an unlikely character to stumble upon.

However, I still consider this to be a film worth seeing even after all that. Why? Well, simply because of the view it gives us of Afghanistan – a view that not even the British media did a good job of giving us when the conflict started. I watched this thinking 'this is the country we have been bombing for several years now?' and, while I knew it was hardly the most technologically advanced country, it doesn't really hit home until you see it and, with US news coverage of this side of the country being limited to hyped-up soldiers then this film should be seen to help balance it all out. So Nafas' journey is little more than an excuse to show many aspects of the country within a sort of story and, as that, it is worth seeing – it is hard not to feel for the people as you see the treatment of women, the poor facilities, the horrors of landmines and so on.

True to the weakness of the plot, the ending just sort of 'happens' and those who had been holding to the hope of the vague narrative becoming stronger will also be let down. This is not a film to come to for a story or a strong plot because in these areas it is pretty weak and not very good as a film as you'd expect one to be. However it provides insight into a country that we have all heard a lot about over the past few years and, for that and that alone, it is valuable and worth seeing if you can get the chance.

When I watched this film, I did not think about the recent events of 9/11. Instead, what I saw was art, philosophy and universal human conditions being displayed extremely well on the screen. It maybe about Kandahar and the people there, but what I saw was a universal message about everyone in all countries. When it comes to the end of the road, and there is nothing else to live for, hope becomes the meaning. I don't think it is a good idea to watch this film as a source of documentary, I think it is better to watch this in the state of mind of watching something beautiful/sorrowful/artful/philosophical all at the same time. I don't think this film is a comment on 9/11, but a comment on the human conditions that is common to all of us.

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.