Posted: 01/02/2002

Kandahar

(2001)

by Parama Chaudhury

…in a land where war and misery are the only certainty; a treatise which is neither patronizing nor political, but somehow manages to be stylish and heartfelt at the same time…

It is unfortunate that the name Kandahar became common currency before this extraordinary film’s commercial release. That makes the movie topical and well-timed, and this timeliness discounts Kandahar’s aesthetic worth, its value as pure art. The Iranian filmmaking tradition and director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s vision are in full flow here, making the movie a visually stunning portrait of a people whose anguish the west has only recently discovered. With its vast desert vistas, its vibrantly colored burkhas, its halting dialogue and its deft way of reading the history of a land off of the alternately innocent, hardened, handsome and depraved faces of its people, this is one of the most poignant films of this year.

Inspired by a true story, this film tracks an Afghan-born Canadian journalist, Nafas, on her journey into the depths of Taliban territory, in search of a sister left behind in Kandahar. She tags along with various traveling parties, since it is dangerous for a woman to travel alone in Afghanistan. Her successive companions give us a vivid, if idiosyncratic, look into a hidden society. First, a family in which the little girls are taught how to avoid the landmines strewn across their path; then, a young boy who was been expelled from a madrasa for not learning to recite the Koran in the correct way; and eventually, and most bizarrely, an African American doctor on a spiritual quest. Her final companion is a one-handed thief who is trying to sell a pair of artificial legs he has cajoled the Red Cross into giving him. Nafas reacts to each of these diverse escorts with an insistent mix of Western optimism and pragmatism, and Eastern suspicion. Real-life journalist Nelofer Pazira makes a hauntingly beautiful Nafas, who dictates poetic letters to her sister, into her tape recorder. We never get to know whether Nafas reaches her destination, but the journey itself is sufficient excuse for a show of Makhmalbaf’s expertise in storytelling through a set of everyday and surreal images.

The Cyclist, and to a greater extent, Once Upon a Time, Cinema are excellent examples of how Makhmalbaf uses absurd images to expound on a simple idea. In Kandahar, the story is more straightforward, and so are the self-contained sequences that make up the movie. Nevertheless, we get our expected share of the bizarre: the doctor treating his female patients through a hole in a sheet and directing his questions to a child accompanying the patient, a man testing whether his wife’s artificial legs are the right size by sticking them under a burkha and walking them around, and the most emancipating of them all, a crowd of one-legged men on crutches running towards an airdrop of prosthetic legs. All this happens against the backdrop of an original score by Mohammad Reza Darvishi, which blends the discipline and gravity of Hindusthani classical music with the lively inevitability of tribal chants, and the evocative photography of Ebraham Ghafouri.

What makes this movie unique is Makhmalbaf’s unerring sense of what is ridiculous. For example, the scene in the madrasa is a chilling one, as we have seen much footage like this on CNN as evidence of how the Taliban were made. The encounter between Khak—who later becomes Nafas’ guide—and the mullah is what makes it seem within touching distance, and not some propaganda vehicle. The child is admonished for not having learnt his lessons, but continues to recite it in exactly the same clueless way. Sadou Teymouri, who plays Khak, is reminiscent of some of the great child characters of Francois Truffaut and Satyajit Ray. The adult characters seem much more awkward and self-conscious and their dialogue is often clipped and hesitant, but this only creates the illusion that this is a documentary and no-one was really prepared to be on film. In fact, no professional actors were used in this film, and tribal loyalties dictated that certain sets of extras refused to appear in scenes together. Maybe Makhmalbaf will go the Kiarostami way, and make a movie within a movie about the everyday drama surrounding the making of Kandahar!

As Iranian films go, and holding it up to Makhmalbaf’s usual level, this film is probably quite good, but not excellent. Recent events and the appearance of the documentary, Jung: War in the Land of the Mujaheddin, also reduce the film’s artistic relevance somewhat. Nevertheless, Makhmalbaf succeeds in presenting us with a interesting treatise on life under the Taliban, and in a land where war and misery are the only certainty; a treatise which is neither patronizing nor political, but somehow manages to be stylish and heartfelt at the same time.

Parama Chaudhury is a graduate student, an ex-writing instructor and a budding freelance writer, based in New York City.

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