Osama (2003)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Siddiq Barmak

Writer:

Siddiq Barmak (writer)

Release Date:

27 June 2003 (Afghanistan)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother lose their jobs when the Taliban closes the hospital where they work...

Plot Keywords:

Taliban | Afghanistan | Hospital | Male Female Relationship | Pedophilia

Awards:

Won Golden Globe. Another 14 wins & 6 nominations

Cast

Marina Golbahari	...	Osama
Arif Herati	...	Espandi
Zubaida Sahar	...	Mother
Mohamad Nader Khadjeh
Mohamad Haref Harati
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Gol Rahman Ghorbandi
Khwaja Nader
Hamida Refah

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements.

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

Afghanistan | Netherlands | Japan | Ireland | Iran

Language:

Pashtu | English | Dari

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Malaysia:U | Finland:K-11 | South Korea:12 | USA:PG-13 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Norway:11 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Kabul, Afghanistan

Company:

Barmak Film

Trivia:

The actors in the film, all amateurs, are people of the city of Kabul. Siddiq Barmak found the main character, Marina Golbahari, on the streets of Kabul.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in 16 Days in Afghanistan (2007) (V)

realistic, deliberate, and on a grave subject (9 out of 10)

I'm not going to give an account of the plot of the movie, which according to some other reviewers on this forum--and I may add that I agree with them in words--is very simple. The simplicity of the brutality that was brought upon the Afghan people by the Taliban of course does not need many words to convey. Everyone who has heard of the words "oppression," "religious extremism," and "brutality" can give an account of the dreadful reign of the Taliban over Afghanistan. So, I'm totally amazed by the, dare I say, shallow perspective of some reviewers here that take this simplicity as a weakness of the movie. I don't think that the simplicity and/or familiarity of the plot tells *anything* about the strength or the weakness of the movie, nor does it decrease the gravity of the story.

Another alleged weakness of the movie I wish to dispel is its slow pace. I hardly see why that could be regarded as a weakness when in all its seconds the movie is conveying so much (visual) emotion and from such a close shot. You get to see the real--as far as my experience goes--behaviour of the mullahs, the real mechanisms by which they take hold of the vortex of power in such a war-ridden land.

On a slightly different note, I was quite surprised to read the feature review on the first page of the movie info, Eyal Philippsborn write "was it the setting or did the Taliban also banned the building of houses with roofs?" well, was it the setting or the catastrophes of about 30 years of civil war and social chaos, Eyal?

Another expressed criticism I read in the previous reviews was that such deep and engulfing sense of misery cannot possibly be the truth. This is an attempt to reduce the level of the movie to some sort of intellectual propaganda. I have to completely disagree. For two reasons: first of all, in the limited time-span of a movie, one cannot possible hope to see all aspects of life. The director has to choose what s/he wants to show and convey, and quite understandably this movie is about the plagues brought upon an entire nation by the Taliban. And secondly, even though the movie mainly focuses on the miserable life of its characters in such surrealistic-to-the-western-eye settings, it does show tiny glimpses of the beauty of life: the lullaby that the grandma sings to put the little girl to sleep, or the joyful, threatening Espandi (the boy with the smoking bucket of wild rue [Epand in Persian or Dari]) who turns into a supporter of the little girl when she's overwhelmed by the aggressive, intrusive boys in the Taliban's Quranic school.

I'm not an expert on the more techy parts of the movie-making business, but as an avid movie-goer, I could not pinpoint any particular weakness in terms of camera-work, plot, etc. I tend to think that the complaints the movie receives on these aspects is a more-or-less direct result of a state of being spoiled by the glamorous Hollywood-driven movie industry.

The only real drawback to the movie was its subtitles. Eyal also noted in the above-mentioned feature review that the opening quote of the movie was obviously--and I think unnecessarily--altered in the caption. The real quote is by Ali Shariati, the celebrated idealogue of the Islamic Revolution in Iran--who died before he could see it happen--which says: "[Oh, God,] Put me among those who give away their worldly desires for their religious one, not those who give away their religious desires for their worldly ones." This is turned into a concise quote by Mandela instead: "I cannot forget, but I can forgive." Not the same thing at all, and I'm not really sure I would say implying the same thing either. The quote by Shariati is in fact very suggestive, and ambiguous in the context of the movie.

Finally, yes, the movie is grim, and hard to take, but far from dull or artificial. Overall, Osama is a big step into the real examination of the misery of a people who have been deprived even of a glimpse of a normal life by the almost cosmological forces of the international politics.