Osama (2003)
Director: Siddiq Barmak
Watched: 11/5/20
Rating: 3/5 stars
**** Spoilers ****
Their faces completely covered. Burkas. Sea of nonfaces. “We want work! We are not political. We are hungry. We are widows. Give us work!” Chanting. The Taliban. Gunshots, automatic rifles, running, chaos. The chanting has become screaming. Screaming women. Painful shreiking. Raw scenes. Close up on tears. Camera angles highlight misogyny. A prolonged wide shot on a crippled boy, hobbling. Such sharp sounds of the shears chopping off her hair, enough to cause shuddering. A rainbow she longs to run under. For her grandmother told her a story about a wise man who told a man tired of working that if he walked under a rainbow, he would become a girl. “What is a rainbow?” The man wanted to know. “A gift left to us by Rustam the great hero, to free us from pain and misery. Boys turn into girls and girls into boys”, the wise man replied.
Unflinching focus on the abuse. Wailing wind. Or is it voices? Fear made palpable. She is now he. They go to the mosque. He is afraid that he will be found out. A matter of time. A friend from younger days recognizes her. Tries to blackmail her. It is this friend that baptizes her “Osama”. She begins work. Poor girl, forced into her bravery. She with only a mother and grandmother. She who remains unnamed. After a particularly harrowing day, the grandmother tells the rainbow story again. And the next day, she is shanghaied into a religious school that doubles as a Taliban training academy. Later that night, donning head scarves with mother to work a wedding, she is a girl again. More Taliban fear. It is constant. It is insufferable. She is near-ousted by her ignorance and her “nymph” appearance. Bullying. Chasing. Hung from a rope in a well. And, finally, she is ousted without a doubt by the blood that flows when they pull her from the well. Without fair trial, she is to be sentenced. What’s that? She is forgiven? To be spared? Ah, too good to be true. She is pardoned only to be sentenced to an arranged marriage with an old Mullah already with three wives. Who apparently have no qualms about selfishly scaring the poor girl by gushing to her about how the man has utterly ruined each of their lives forever. “Choose.” The old man is holding an array of padlocks. Crying, moaning, wailing, our unwilling heroine is coerced off screen to be sexually abused. And this is the end, the end of a story that could not have ended well.
A simple premise,
it’s the horrors that endure,
both shown and unshown.
First film from post-Taliban Afghanistan. Yes, eye-opening. Yes, harrowing. Yes, relevant. But this is the point. Director Siddiq Barmak was not looking for friends when he set out to make this film. Grainy visuals make for a documentary feel. Except it’s based on, not actual reality. All actors are supposedly civilians native to the area. Even from orphanages. This engenders respect for the filmmaker; respect for the actors as individuals- but not necessarily for their unfortunately lackluster performances. Runtime drags on, while the film’s message is said and achieved ad nauseam. Ingenious or manipulative or both? Alas, no one claimed this was an easy film to watch- only that it was an affecting and important one.
Despite importance,
walking a fine line between
art and agitprop.