ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE
Copyright © 2001 by Michael Segers, All rights reserved
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Kandahar
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Kandahar…
despite
its exotic sound, the name has no romantic associations anymore, just a name
rudely ripped from the headlines. What
a coincidence that Iranian filmmaker Mohsen
Makhmalbaf set about to detail life behind the burqah, not only for women, but
by extension, for the whole country of Afghanistan, before Afghanistan became so
tragically and centrally a part of US foreign policy.
Part documentary, part slender thread of fiction, often frustrating, and
always fascinating, Kandahar, the movie, tells the story of Nafas (Nelofer
Pazira), an Afghan woman trying desperately to reach the sister she left behind
in Afghanistan years ago before the sister’s announced suicide.
The film’s weaknesses—the labored, uninspired acting, the script that
so needed a good editor—become its strengths.
These people have lived the reality upon which this fiction is based.
The narrative drive of this rambling, but relatively short film is
frustrated at every turn, and so it takes many turns on the road to… Well, not
to Marrakesh, but to Kanhadar, a city that in the luminous geography of this
film transcends geography. Fortunately,
the film’s strength, its biblical imagery of wanderers in the desert, is also
very much its strength.
There are so many ironies: women pass mirrors back and forth to each
other from one burqah to another. A
man with two good legs begs for a pair of artificial legs, because one never
knows, in this mine-strewn country, when one will need (literally) a spare pair
of legs. Family portraits are taken
for purposes of identification, but the women are faceless but sometimes gaudy
blobs. A man hides inside a burqah;
a doctor must wear an artificial beard. One
suspects that in a land of so much emptiness, there are many kinds of
prosthesis.
It is impossible to summarize this film.
In a country in which women are no more than objects, a beautiful,
intelligent young woman tries to attain an almost impossible goal, relying
literally upon the kindness of strangers, as she hides in plain sight.
The film was made under terrible conditions, and the misery of all
involved is obvious. In fact, the
film’s brevity suggests that the good people involved couldn’t hold up for
more, and so, they simply abandoned the project.
Well, not before they left us with a
haunting vision that gives poignancy and meaning to the headlines, to the
fleeting videos on the evening news. In
another year, Kandahar might have vanished like the women of Afghanistan
behind a veil of insignificance, but for once, I’ll say that this is a film
thrust into greatness, at least significance, by its context.
Keep your feet dry, and be thankful you have them, and your heart full of
noble thoughts for people who have suffered such ignobility.