Viaggio a Kandahar

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.

The comment on the Indian music is off base - Indian music and DVDs are common in Afghanistan as the local entertainment industry is still recovering from the Taliban.

Bollywood film DVDs are sold in Kabul. Pictures and posters of Indian actresses are popular here. It isn't unusual to hear recorded Sitar music here in Kabul.

Afghan and Indian music was distributed secretly at great risk during the Taliban reign.

There is just not enough Afghan material yet and Afghans love music, even if they don't understand Urdu.

There is a scene in the movie where an instrument is seized by the Taliban before the wedding.

So the soundtrack was completely appropriate for me.

Hopefully we will see a feature film made inside Afghanistan someday. Its a beautiful and fascinating place and holds fascinating stories.

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.

Filmed on the Iran/Afghanistan border, KANDAHAR is a semi-documentary style movie that chronicles the perilous journey undertaken by an expatriate female journalist, Nafas, to reach the city of Kandahar, where she hopes to rescue her sister from committing suicide during an impending eclipse. However, Nafas's odyssey is really little more than a device to lift the veil on the poverty and hardship of life in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Through a series of vignettes, the movie succeeds beautifully in revealing insights that are both fascinating and harrowing. It is almost impossible to imagine a culture so far removed from the relatively comfortable life enjoyed by more ‘civilised' nations. Young boys rock back and forth, reciting the Koran while learning to become Mullahs, pausing only to recite the meaning and purpose of the sabre and semi-automatic machine gun when prompted by their teacher; young girls have lessons in how to resist the temptation to pick up possibly booby-trapped dolls; a doctor treats his female patient by speaking to them via children as they sit either side of a makeshift screen, and conducts his examinations through a small hole in the screen; the threat and consequences of land-mines pervade everybody's life, and year-long waits for prosthetic legs are commonplace, so that prosthetics become a black-market currency.

True, the acting is poor – most of the cast are non-professionals, many never even having seen a moving picture before appearing in this film – but, the purpose of this movie was not to dazzle us with superior acting; it was to open an eye to the hardship endured by both men and women in an oppressive regime, and, at this, it succeeds beautifully.

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.