Starring Marina Golbahari, Arif Herati and Zubaida Sahar.
Written and Directed by Siddiq Barmak.
***1/2 (out of 4)
In a presentation in C-SPAN the other day, a War College professor
talking about the global political situation was dealing with the
question of why does the muslim world hate the West so much. He said
that there was a lot of polling and scientific data that suggests that
the Muslims in the middle east do not resent globalization or the
culture as much as the status of women in the society. The major wedge
issue is the status accorded to women in a society; that is where the
two worlds radically differ.
'Osama' is a film that exactly deals with the way the women were
treated under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The film is directed
by a young filmmaker making his debut with a powerful statement. It
was the first film to be filmed in Kabul after the Taliban was
defeated in war. The actors are all amateurs picked up from Kabul;
performances and cinematic perfection are not objectives in this film
as much as pushing a powerful message across.
The film starts off with a documentary film maker filming a protest by
women clad in blue burqas in Kabul demanding right to work. The
protest is quickly stamped out with firing and water jets; women and
children scream and run in fear. This sets the tone for the movie. The
film follows the struggle Zubaida Sahar and her daughter Marina
Golbahari (who gives an outstanding performance). The Taliban has
decreed that no woman can go out alone without a man accompanying her.
There is also no work for women. Being a widower and having an old
mother to support, Zubaida Sahar (who is shown as a doctor in an
initial scene) is not able to go out and earn. The fear of the Taliban
is palpable, there are eyes that follow anyone in the street with
suspicion.
To make ends meet, the mother decides to cut the hair of her pre-teen
daughter and dress her up like a boy. Pleading with a local
shop-owner, she gets her daughter (now named Osama) a job. Trouble
soon follows; the boy is taken out of work and is sent to a Taliban
training school "to prepare for war". The charade doesn't work for
long and soon, Osama is found to be a girl and not a boy. The girl is
sent to a sham of a trial where she is sentenced in a barbaric manner.
There is no silver lining in the film, for there was none in real
life.
The film is filled with telling scenes that detail the totalitarian
and oppressive Taliban regime. A wedding ceremony is halted in the
middle when a Taliban shows up; the party is quickly hidden and the
women act as if they are mourning the dead. A man is rebuked by a
Taliban for riding his wife on a bicycle and showing her naked feet
("the men will be aroused"). A woman who is arrested is buried to the
neck and stoned to death. Kids play around with military howitzers and
are brainwashed. A seventy year old man marries a teenaged girl and
brings her home to live along with his numerous other wives and he
locks them all up when he leaves the house. The images go on and on,
but you get the general picture.
The film is crude, in your face but is honest and compelling. The
story told is simple; the film would have worked equally well as a
documentary. Nevertheless, one cannot help but be angry and surprised
at the anachronistic culture that the Taliban forced during its rule.
These don't seem to fit in modern times; the Taliban was trying to
change the clock back to a thousand years before in time. Osama drives
that point home.
- Balaji Srinivasan (bb).
http://balaji.yi.org/blog/
========== X-RAMR-ID: 38771 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1326862 X-RT-TitleID: 1127856 X-RT-AuthorID: 3879 X-RT-RatingText: 3.5/4
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