Review: Safar e Ghandehar (2001)
Jeremiah Kipp
A film review by Jeremiah Kipp
Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com
Paved with humanistic intentions, Kandahar can't quite see beyond its
literal depiction of Afghan horrors. Prolific Iranian filmmaker Mohsen
Makhmalbaf documents an annihilated nation blown into the stone age by
war, more interested in social reform, cultural education, or presenting
a bleak travelogue than attaining the pure cinema his contemporary Abbas
Kiarostami has been honing for over a decade. (Kiarostami is best known
for his haunting suicide parable Taste of Cherry; his sublime
semi-documentary Close-Up features Makhmalbaf himself as a heroic
figure/motorcycle driving screen icon.)
As Kiarostami entrenches in esoteric philosophical questions, wrapped in
poetic imagery and near-mystical iconography, Makhmalbaf aims for
realism (poorly filmed, but on the front lines) and political
point-by-point dogma. Kandahar is the culmination of those interests,
for better or for worse. As a former Islamic fundamentalist, he's
slowly been rebelling against formalistic film technique and even Iran's
popular art-house auteurism. In breaking down those conventions,
Kandahar seems to be about what's happening in front of the camera more
than the operation of the camera itself. A book of photographs may have
been just as effective, but Makhmalbaf sticks to what he knows.
Filmed on the dangerous borderlands between Afghanistan and Iran,
Makhmalbaf charts the progress of expatriate journalist Nafas (Nelofer
Pazira) returning to her home country in search of her Kandahar-located
sister, who has threatened to commit suicide in three days. Along the
way, she discovers schoolchildren being taught the dangers of landmines;
multicolored burka-laden (thickly veiled) women en route to a wedding
(singing a melancholy dirge during their stark desert jaunt); armless
and legless travelers at an under-equipped Red Cross shelter waiting in
line for prosthetic limbs.
Kandahar follows Nafas on the barren roads and hills, seen as beautiful
and bleak under the sun. Each of her encounters is meant as a
mini-polemic statement, some more jarring than others. Working with
non-actors, Makhmalbaf gets varied results. Nelofer Pazira doesn't make
a particularly strong impression as the heroine, but when the camera
selects a remote Taliban-operated Koran group of kids shrieking their
way through prayers (heralding their newfound weapons: knives and
automatic rifles) and their unrelenting adult taskmaster, Makhmalbaf's
strength of crossing the lines between movie and reality are bracing.
Most of his cast had never seen a movie before, which perhaps accounts
for their astonishing lack of self-consciousness.
Nafas employs a poverty-stricken child as her guide, though he's more
interested in sneaking into the wasteland stealing rings 'n' things from
minefield corpses. She finds a potential ally in a small village doctor
whose female patients communicate with him through a hole in the sheet
that cordons off his flimsy and under-equipped room. The dealings feel
shady, as they cobble together hastily planned stories to fool border
guards or thieves. Worst of all is Nafas' inability to get people to
provide much-needed assistance. As film critic Godfrey Cheshire pointed
out during one of his trips to Iran, nothing happens in just ten minutes
there. Nothing you'd want to happen, anyway.
Kandahar's timing will surely be a factor in its acclaim from the
die-hard film critics who have lauded the (mostly astonishing) breadth
of cinema emerging from Iran, and it's certainly affecting and
immediate. But it's a mistake to think that the way to the truth is
necessarily through harsh realism. Cinema bears a close association to
our dreams, and an oblique framing can cut closer than a moralistic
statement -- America found its own wannabe-topical lessons in Traffic,
worthwhile but far less emotionally fulfilling than Kandahar. But
that's the question open-minded viewers should probably ask themselves:
Why do I go to the movies? Kandahar is an alternative.
Aka Safar e Ghandehar.
RATING: ***1/2
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Producer: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Writer: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Starring: Nelofer Pazira, Hassan Tantai, Sadou Teymouri
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X-RT-RatingText: 3.5/4