| "Kandahar" will soon be released in Moscow The film by the classic Iranian cinematographer Mohsen Makhmalbaf comes to our screens at an unfortunate moment. The international fashion for Iranian cinema is gradually fading, and the most famous Iranian films of past years, at best, appeared on video here, and even then in small editions, and are almost unknown to the public. But all these considerations recede when you see the boundless Afghan desert, along which a caravan of women walks in blue, yellow, red burkas - clothes that reliably cover them from head to toe from prying eyes. It is not only an emblem of oppression, but also a surrealistically beautiful visual image. The same image that the Taliban movement banned, along with painting, sculpture, and television. And with the help of which Makhmalbaf wages his war - not only for the political rights of women, but also for the right of beauty to be open to the world. The name of the main character - Nafas - translated means “breath”.
Nafas is a journalist from Afghanistan who long ago moved to prosperous Canada and has successfully mastered the English language (in which she conducts her mournful voice-over narration), and with it Western standards of living. One day she receives a letter from her younger sister who remained in her homeland. My sister lost both legs when she was blown up by a mine (in Afghanistan, several million people have suffered from mines over the past decades of wars and unrest). She writes about her intention to commit suicide on the day of the last solar eclipse of the twentieth century. There is little time left, but Nafas decides on a crazy journey to Kandahar, then still the domain of the Taliban. Arriving in border Iran (two and a half million Afghan refugees have found shelter there), she hires a guide, dresses in a burqa and sets off across the desert...
At first, it seems that the film is sinning with excessive edification. And many even accused Makhmalbaf of making a film about Afghanistan in order to divert attention from the problems of Iranian women. (I was convinced that they exist with my own eyes: in Iran you can only buy cassettes with recordings of Iranian singers under the counter - female vocals are prohibited. And this is just one, not the most significant of the restrictions on their rights.) But then you understand, that this is exactly how it is - simple, unpretentious, clear - and it is necessary to make a film about the tragedy that exists , is taking place, is happening at these moments on earth. And even though the Taliban regime was overthrown, millions of mines waiting for their victims remained in the sand. The most memorable scene of the film: a Red Cross helicopter circles over a refugee camp and drops prosthetic legs by parachute, and a bunch of cripples, trying to predict the location of the fall, hobble towards life-saving “humanitarian aid”.
Makhmalbaf once said: “There are films that take the viewer by surprise and you become completely immersed in them. Then the feeling that you are watching a movie disappears. The world stretches out before you, and you enter into it without thinking.” Kandahar is one such film. Alexey MEDVEDEV |
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