Howard Schumann
05-18-2004, 10:42 AM
OSAMA
Directed by Siddiq Barmak (2003)
During their hold on power in Afghanistan, the Taliban demanded that women remain at home, forbidding them from attending school, holding a job or even walking in the street unattended or without their faces and feet fully covered under their burqas. In the first film produced since the Taliban were removed military by the U.S., Osama, by first-time director Siddiq Barmaq focuses on the inhumane conditions that women had to face under the Taliban regime. Recruited from a refugee camp, Marina Golbahari plays a 12-year old girl who is forced to pretend to be a boy to keep her family afloat after her father was killed in battle and her mother lost her job as a nurse. Though not a professional actress, Ms. Golbahari powerfully communicates the fear of a child facing oppression she can barely understand.
The film opens with dozens of women covered with blue burqas marching through the streets protesting for their right to hold a job. It is not long before the Taliban show up to scatter the women with a spray of water hoses and machine gun bullets. The young girl asks her mother not to force her to pretend to be a boy since she knows that if she was found out, she would be killed, but the family is on the brink of starvation and has little choice. She cuts her hair and dresses in man's clothes, then finds work stirring milk for a shopkeeper but does not stay on her job very long as the Taliban removes all the village boys to undergo religious and military training. At the camp, she is subject to harassment by the boys because of her feminine appearance. Her only friend is a rambunctious street boy named Espandi (Anif Herati) who tells everyone that she is a boy and names her Osama.
Osama is not a larger than life movie character who can rise to the occasion and show everyone how tough she is. She is a frightened child and acts the part, cowering in fear during a bizarre scene when an old mullah demonstrates to boys how to wash their genitals in a water tank. Prodded by the boys who call her a "nymph", she climbs a tree in the school courtyard tree but when she is too frightened to come down, a crowd of jeering boys gathers below. Although a Taliban leader saves her, she is arrested and thrown into prison to face unforeseen consequences.
Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film, Osama may not be a great work of art but it is an honest and powerful film that makes the repressive nature of the Taliban more real than any news account possibly could. The images are heartbreaking: a crippled boy hobbling down the corridor of a hospital, Taliban informers keeping watch on Osama's home, a women being stoned to death after conviction for a minor offense, pre-teen girls being married off to old men. How much better are the conditions of women in Afghanistan now that the Taliban are no longer in power? Though women like Ms. Golbahari can now attend school, sadly Amnesty International has revealed that human rights abuses have not ended and that women still receive harsh judgments in a male-dominated judicial system.
GRADE: B+
Directed by Siddiq Barmak (2003)
During their hold on power in Afghanistan, the Taliban demanded that women remain at home, forbidding them from attending school, holding a job or even walking in the street unattended or without their faces and feet fully covered under their burqas. In the first film produced since the Taliban were removed military by the U.S., Osama, by first-time director Siddiq Barmaq focuses on the inhumane conditions that women had to face under the Taliban regime. Recruited from a refugee camp, Marina Golbahari plays a 12-year old girl who is forced to pretend to be a boy to keep her family afloat after her father was killed in battle and her mother lost her job as a nurse. Though not a professional actress, Ms. Golbahari powerfully communicates the fear of a child facing oppression she can barely understand.
The film opens with dozens of women covered with blue burqas marching through the streets protesting for their right to hold a job. It is not long before the Taliban show up to scatter the women with a spray of water hoses and machine gun bullets. The young girl asks her mother not to force her to pretend to be a boy since she knows that if she was found out, she would be killed, but the family is on the brink of starvation and has little choice. She cuts her hair and dresses in man's clothes, then finds work stirring milk for a shopkeeper but does not stay on her job very long as the Taliban removes all the village boys to undergo religious and military training. At the camp, she is subject to harassment by the boys because of her feminine appearance. Her only friend is a rambunctious street boy named Espandi (Anif Herati) who tells everyone that she is a boy and names her Osama.
Osama is not a larger than life movie character who can rise to the occasion and show everyone how tough she is. She is a frightened child and acts the part, cowering in fear during a bizarre scene when an old mullah demonstrates to boys how to wash their genitals in a water tank. Prodded by the boys who call her a "nymph", she climbs a tree in the school courtyard tree but when she is too frightened to come down, a crowd of jeering boys gathers below. Although a Taliban leader saves her, she is arrested and thrown into prison to face unforeseen consequences.
Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film, Osama may not be a great work of art but it is an honest and powerful film that makes the repressive nature of the Taliban more real than any news account possibly could. The images are heartbreaking: a crippled boy hobbling down the corridor of a hospital, Taliban informers keeping watch on Osama's home, a women being stoned to death after conviction for a minor offense, pre-teen girls being married off to old men. How much better are the conditions of women in Afghanistan now that the Taliban are no longer in power? Though women like Ms. Golbahari can now attend school, sadly Amnesty International has revealed that human rights abuses have not ended and that women still receive harsh judgments in a male-dominated judicial system.
GRADE: B+