Tools
dir. Siddiq Barmak
Opens Fri Feb 20.
When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, it became the source of amusement for me and a close circle of African friends, who found in that ancient form of rule a kind of poetry that was Biblical and extinct in our modern world. We would read in the newspapers that under the Taliban, condemned men and women were crushed to death by heaps of bricks pushed over by bulldozers. And if a condemned person happened, by some cosmic chance, to survive this extravagant execution, if a living (instead of dead) body was found at the bottom of the brick pile, it was considered to be Allah's will, and the person was free to return to his or her life of misery. My friends and I found the logic of this ancient system of law to be marvelously funny and even majestic. But in reality, this juridical poetry was made possible by a great deal of suffering, which is precisely what the film Osama is about--the suffering the Taliban's justice system exerted on ordinary Afghan men, children, and (especially) women.
Stranger Personals
Said to be the first feature film made in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power, and the recipient of considerable financial support from the Iranian film industry, Osama is as grim as grim can be. There is very little in the way of joy in this picture, unlike Baran, a movie that has a similar premise but offers during the course of its bleak narrative several moments that are bright with light and beauty. The Taliban in Osama are relentlessly cruel to women, and this is why the film is so impressive and courageous; the director, Siddiq Barmak, so wants to get to the essence of suffering--to precisely what a moment in suffering feels like to the accursed--that it never seems to have a border, a point at which it began and will end. Suffering is, by its nature, eternal.
The movie opens with a group of women protesting for jobs and basic rights. The protest is brutally crushed by the Taliban, and a Western observer of the demonstration (a filmmaker) is arrested. In another part of the city, a widowed mother (Zubaida Sahar), who is a doctor but is not allowed to practice her art in the open because she is a woman, is, under great secrecy, treating a dying old man. But constant interruption by the Taliban (when is the Taliban not looking for women to humiliate, to bark orders at, to arrest and throw into cages?) makes it impossible for her to be effective. She gives up trying to work under these conditions and decides to make her 12-year-old daughter, Osama (Marina Golbahari-- named after the Osama), dress up like a boy so that she can get work and support the impoverished family.
Osama gets a job at a bakery (though I have read elsewhere that it is a grocery), but she is soon recruited by al Qaeda to become a soldier in the holy war. During training (which is both military and religious) it is discovered by way of her first period that Osama is not a beautiful boy but a beautiful girl. She must now face the force of the Taliban's justice system.
Like the Wild West, justice is swift in Osama's Afghanistan; unlike the Wild West, the judge makes his final decisions while lying on a sofa (or something that looks like a sofa) in an attitude that expresses great boredom. The proceedings are initially funny--the Western filmmaker is comically sentenced to death. But this comic moment (the only such moment in the entire movie) is brief and rudely dispelled by the judgment that befalls the following defendant, Osama. Her sentence is more horrible than death; she is to endure life under circumstances I wouldn't wish upon my enemy of enemies. CHARLES MUDEDE
Against the Ropes
dir. Charles S. Dutton
Opens Fri Feb 20.
Against the Ropes can be properly summed up by describing its final scene, to wit: We are in a crowded restaurant. In enters Meg Ryan, blond and bubbly as always, and the room, as we've been led to believe it would, collectively gasps upon her arrival. There is a pregnant pause as all eyes fall upon Ryan, and for an awkward moment it seems as if she will be terribly embarrassed by her own presence. But then, miraculously: pat... pat... pat... pat.... What's that sound? It is the sound of one person, one brave soul, applauding Ryan. Said applause flounders at first, echoing by its lonesome about the room, but then... blessed be! There is another applauder, then another, and another. Soon the entire restaurant is applauding Ryan, who beams and feigns embarrassment, waving off the applause at first, but soon soaking it in with all the humility a superstar can muster. And the crowd? The crowd just won't let up! They love her! They really do! All is forgiven--all her past sins, her faults, her miscues, all of it! The applause builds and builds and builds until it is absolutely and positively THUNDERING! And that lump in your chest? That is your heart swelling, the mighty muscle pressed tightly against your chest plate by your soaring spirits! Good has conquered evil! Wrong has been righted! The human spirit lives on!
In other words: Egads. And in still other words: Against the Ropes is a dull, bland, and obvious piece of tripe. Meg Ryan is shockingly miscast, the direction is lazy, and the picture as a whole is surprisingly feeble-headed. I beg of you: Stay far, far away. BRADLEY STEINBACHER
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