The Lights Are a Little Dimmer in Hollywood

Sydney Pollock passed away on May 26th at the age of 74. Pollock and I grew up together — at least at the cinema, where I could see his body of work as a director develop to include They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Jeremiah Johnson, Tootsie, Out of Africa, The Interpreter, and my personal favorite — the 1995 remake of Sabrina. As a producer, Pollock had the vision to bring to life (among a long list of projects) the notable The Talented Mr. Ripley and Michael Clayton.

One of my favorite things to do when watching films is to identify the cameos and actors with supporting roles who back up the leading men. Pollock didn’t disappoint, appearing in his own Tootsie, Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and most recently Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton (which Pollock produced).

Sidney Pollock’s work made Holloywood a little brighter and the world a more interesting place.

Marooned In Iraq: The Simplest of Pleasures

From the opening sound of fighter jets streaking past the mountain tops in Kurdistan, you know that Marooned in Iraqby Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi is going to explore the way people acclimate to life filled with endless war, conflicts and displacement. Having seen Ghobadi’s A Time For Drunken Horses (a heartbreaking story of Kurdish children who survive by leading illegal caravans between Iran and Iraq as black market smugglers) and Turtles Can Fly(which depicts a village full of orphaned Kurdish children on the Iraq-Turkey border perched on the verge of hope right before the American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent fall of Saddam), this was my third film by the director who I consider one of the leading young filmmakers in World Cinema. His films are exquisitely crafted, with breathtaking visuals and powerful performances (often by non-professionals) who Ghobadi nurtures to bring reality to life in his films. Marooned in Iraq is no different.

The film depicts the story of two brothers (Barat and Audeh) whose father (Mirza) hears that the wife (Hanareh) who deserted him many years before, running off with his best friend, has now been stranded in Iraq. The family is one of musicians and thus, the film — and their journey — is one filled with music, and surprisingly laughter. In fact, Hanareh was also a successful singer and had fled Iran after the Revolution when authorities banned women singing in public. Early on we learn that the father never really divorced her twenty-three years earlier, as he tells his son he made up that story to preserve the family honor! One can’t help but feel the wry irony at the revelation.

The father and sons set off on the motorcycle and side-car that belongs to Barat and head for Iraq — which in this case means that Audeh has to leave his 7 wives and 11 daughters! He soon decides this will be the perfect occasion to pick up another wife on his trip (to bear him the son he is missing) so tells one of his wives to ready the “wedding room”. And the journey begins. The three men don’t actually know it but they will each find something that will change their lives in ways they could not have predicted.

Gobhadi’s films always show the struggles of everyday life in this world. In this case that means back-breaking labor making sun-dried mud bricks in the same manner originated by the ancient Sumerians and turning old metal shipping containers into habitats. But the life is also full of music and dance — even children help to mix the mud for the bricks by essentially dancing barefoot in it up to their calfs. This is contrasted with an overcrowded refugee camp encircled with razor wire, where multiple generations will survive the cold, harsh winter in tents but also enjoy the spontaneous and unexpected concert put on by Audeh and Barat. Once again, the introduction of something as simple as music brings a sparkle to the eyes of young children. These marked contrasts in Marooned In Iraq are thought provoking and keep the film flowing between the broad range of human emotions.

Marooned In Iraqis one of those films that takes people in the most pitiful circumstances and shows you there is always someone worse off, highlighting the human survival instinct. These men who themselves lead a somewhat hard-scrabble life are confronted with the even greater hardships on their journey. After all, isn’t it human instinct to remind yourself to be thankful when you see the pain and suffering of others? This is one of the things Ghobadi does best.

Women’s Prison: An Analogy In Film Of Post-Revolutiony Iran

We often hear how Islam came to “liberate” us and guarantee our rights. Surely there is a case to be made for this if we are to break down the Quran and Sunnah. However, it is just as easy to make a case against this by the selective choice and interpretation of specific ayat and ahadith. That is not what I want to get into in this post, but rather would like to cast a light on how so-called Muslim societies continue to sink near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to women’s human rights. If I had a riyal for every time I have heard or read Muslims talking about how bad Western society is for women and how wonderful or so-called Islamic societies are — well, I could be purchasing a penthouse on the Pearl.

 Women’s Prison, the first feature film directed by Manijeh Hekmat (2002), presents the incarceration of women from all walks of life in post-Revolutionary Iran as a microcosm of the larger society. The film centers around the changing relationship between the dour, pious warden and a prisoner whose crime was killing an abusive stepfather. The film spans close to twenty years and is divided into three acts: the first is set around 1984, four years after the Revolution and during the Iran/Iraq war; the second act is set in 1992 when the country is slipping into severe poverty coupled with a psycho-social malaise that is raising questions about “Islamic reforms”; and the final act, set in 2001, after Khatami’s attempt to soften the repressive regime.

As the film opens, the new warden (Tahareh) arrives right after a riot over the horrendous conditions in the prison. She promises improvement but it becomes clear immediately that improvement will not come until she “breaks” the spirits of the women she sees as the ringleaders of the prison’s problems. This brings her into immediate conflict with Mitra — awaiting a murder trial that never comes due to the backlog in the court system.  Other characters – including three different ones (played by the director’s own daughter) appearing in each of the three acts of the film — enrich the plot by allowing us to see the complex relationships that develop in the prison and the increasing effects of the failure of the Revolution.

Women’s Prison functions on many symbolic levels. The setting — the prison itself — is transformed throughout the film and in some ways is barely recognizable in the final act as the chaotic prison overturned by rioting in the opening act.  In 1984 the prison is dirty and infested with lice, with broken plumbing, no heat, little food that is not spoiled and virtually no comforts. By 1991 we see the prison facility has improved but it is now overcrowded and experiencing fights, drug abuse, same-sex rape and suicide. And in the final act, the film is so overcrowded with women incarcerated for seemingly any offense and legal system that can no longer keep up with the numbers of women being moved through it. The stasis of the courts becomes a metaphor for the implosion of Iranian society that seems inevitable.

The characters add another symbolic dimension to the film. Taherah is strong but colorless in the opening act, contrasted with the defiant and passionate Mitra. Over time, Mitra is “tamed” and Taherah is beaten down by the problems created by the stagnant governmental bureaucracy. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is when Taherah picks up a red lipstick that has been confiscated in a shakedown and applies it in front of a mirror, touching her face and seemingly not recognizing her embellished appearance.

Babies are born. Older children are sent to orphanages as they grow up. As time marches on — in their lives and in the film’s three acts – so do blindfolded women go to their deaths as they are taken from the prison to the gallows. Their crimes are not clear and yet it doesn’t seem to matter. What we do see is that the executions don’t seem to be having the desired effect — which is seemingly in part to reduce crime in the society, because the prison just keeps getting more crowded, its social problems multiplying ten-fold.

Women’s Prison isn’t a happy film — in fact, it was banned by the Iranian government upon its release — but it is a thought provoking film. It is an Iranian view of the declining situation in the so-called Islamic Republic that begs to question if you can imprison a whole society and still be considered a revolutionary success.

 

In This Life: In This World

Many of us think of life as a journey. But what if you never reached home on that journey? What if you didn’t really have a home and the journey was taking you to a place you didn’t know if you would even be welcomed to?

That is the story of Michael Winterbottom’s In This World, a film about two Afghani refugees who undertake the daunting journey to what is supposed to be a better life in London. Jamal was born into a refugee camp on the Afghan border of the NWFP but when we are introduced to the adolescent he is orphaned and working as a brickmaker. His uncle agrees to send him along with his cousin Enayatullah to London since Jamal speaks English and can help his cousin face the challenges that lay ahead.

The journey that ensues is the dark world of human trafficking. It involves very little human kindness: a Kurdish family that welcomes them into their home before they travel over the snowy mountain peaks into Turkey; and a few moments of sharing hopes with a young Irani family that is escaping to a better life in Denmark. Rather, as so often is the case, it is a heart wrenching journey that involves financial exploitation, getting caught by the police, horrendous traveling and living conditions, forced labor, and even death for the most unfortunate human cargo.

Jamal’s journey takes him from a life with little hope in the NWFP to a lonely hard life in Europe, selling trinkets on the street, stealing a purse, and stowing away under a tractor trailer in France headed for the UK. Once he arrives in London, the film shifts back to where the journey began when Jamal calls his uncle to tell him he is in London but that Enayatullah is no longer in this world. Jamal is still in this world — but what kind of world is it for him and all the displaced persons like him? Isn’t there more we can do to help people to work legally (and safely) in other countries so they can support families back home and try to make a better life for themselves?

As some of you know I used to be married to an Afghani. We are still very close and I have the most respect for his own journey, which included walking out of Afghanistan from Gardez on foot as a young adolescent; over the mined mountains into a refuge camp in the NWFP of Pakistan; becoming a street vendor at the age of 12 tryng to help support a family of 3 boys left at home, his mother and 5 sisters; teaching himself the trade of jewelry making; paying off a corrupt Pakistani to get him a visa to come and work in Doha as a jeweler, only to discover he was put to work doing construction without any shelter, proper clothes, equipment or even food; meeting a corrupt Pakistani imam who agreed to get him new sponsorship that would allow him to open his own jewelry shop and then stole all his money and even the customers jewelry before locking him out of the shop.

That is when I came into the picture. I was one of those customers and I took the imam to the police on behalf of my friend (who later became my husband) and got his tools, gemstones, jewelry and customer’s property back; as well as went to his sponsor to make sure that he would be allowed to open a new shop and work on his own. God bless his sponsor, a very nice Qatari gentleman, who has never asked for anything from my ex-husband and helped him with visas, licensing and anything else he needs.

My Afghani ex-husband has made quite a journey, too. While married we traveled to Thailand where he made important business contacts and visited London where he met up with some Afghani friends who had made Jamal’s journey in real life. He has since made friends from all over the world as people make their way through Doha, and has accepted invitations to visit them in their homes — all on his Afghani passport that was among the first to be issued to someone here in Doha after the fall of the Taliban.

Yesterday I was in his shop, admiring photos of his travels when I came across a few that were from his time in Gardez and Peshawar. He was such a handsome young boy but had such a serious expression that revealed the weight of his burdens. I thought to myself as I looked from the sorrowful eyes of that little boy to the man with the dancing eyes standing before me: “How far he has come in this world, maash’Allah!”

Who Will Educate The Children?

Last night I was screening a number of films I am considering using in my upcoming class about filmmaking in the “non-Western” world. All of them dealt with the theme of education — in either Iran or Afghanistan. And each film showed me how far behind this part of the Muslim world — and MOST of the Muslim world — in in terms of development and the educational qualities required to become a knowledge or technology based society. In fact, these countries are not even able to sustain their own people through an agriculturally based society.

 

The films I watched were Samira Makhmalbaf’s The Apple (which she directed at the age of 17!) which is based on the true story of an Irani family in which the blind mother and father locked their twin daughters in their house from the ages of 2-13, never teaching them how to bathe themselves, talk or even walk properly. Their imprisonment stunted their development to the point of retardation until the neighbors called social services in Tehran. The girls eventually were adopted and are now progressing developmentally and intellectually.

After that I watched The Beauty Academy of Kabul, which is a documentary about a group of Americans (including some who fled Afghanistan in the 70s) who went to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban to offer a training program for female entrepreneurs in the beauty industry. It’s an interesting film, documenting the first class of women to attend and graduate, giving a nice historical overview of Afghanistan since the 1970s. The film is a testimony to the strength of the female spirit.

My favorite of the films I watched last night was Afghan Alphabet by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a rather short documentary (45 minutes) about the impact of the Taliban mentality on several generations of Afghanis (in this case, illegally living in Iran close to the border). With nothing but his digital camera Makhmalbaf shows us that the basis of an engrossing film is the story. This one is fascinating and challenges the reliance on memorization in Muslim societies that subverts the ability to be able to think critically. Children don’t know how to articulate who/what God is and a little girl – probably no older than 10 – refuses to uncover her face to take part in a school lesson because she says it is a great sin. She narrates a story by Mullah Omar about how the Prophet (saw) had a large box he locked his wife in and she never went out; but when he wanted to he could open the box and smell her before locking her away again.

 

When this precious child is sent from the classroom because she will not unveil and participate in the lesson (which is about how to spell “water” and wash one’s face), her empathetic friend leaves the classroom and tries to talk her into coming back inside and following the teacher’s instructions. She tries to ease her mind by telling her that she can repent to God for showing her face and pray 10 rakats, but her friend will not hear of it. Eventually though, after much whispering and turning their backs to the camera, the friend (smaller and probably younger) shows her how to wash her face and takes her back into the classroom. The final shot is memorable:

Each of these films raise profound questions about Islam and education in the 21st Century.

 

 

War and Peace

I went to see the film The Hunting Party over the weekend and it got me to think about the nature of war and peace. I think we will mostly agree that the nature of most conflicts between countries are universal. They are struggles over rights, power, culture clashes and borders. The solutions are usually pretty universal as well: people get tired of the killing, have to make compromises on their positions and then have to agree to try to forget — or at least accept the past.

The Hunting Party is loosely based on some real events related to the war (and peace) in Bosnia. The story follows a once revered war correspondant (Richard Gere) who dropped from the heights of success after having an on-air meltdown when reporting on one particularly brutal Serbian attack on a Bosnian village. Fast-forward 5 years after the “Peace Accord” was signed and this reporter is reunited with his cameraman (Terrence Howard) and proposes a plan to track down one of the most heinous Serbian war criminals (whose head has a $5,000,000 bounty) and bring him to justice. What unfolds is a story that highlights the question of whether any of the major players in brokering peace and policing the world’s conflict really care about justice. Just consider the fact that there is a $5,000,000 bounty on both Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic (and check out this for information about why capturing and punishing criminals like Karadzic is so complex)

And this is what got me to thinking. There are so many parallels that can be made to World War II and the massive exodus of Nazi war criminals; purveyors of genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Liberia, Israel, and Chile, to mention a few; and of course more recently, the events of 9/11, Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. I was left having to face the sad reality that “peace” usually comes about by selling out justice and my own country (the USA) is one of the worst brokers in unjust peace.

Is the price of peace worth the injustice? Can we not have both?

Am I too idealistic?

OK, I know the answer to that last question

Amid Madness, Death and Destruction, There Are Small Things Which Make You Glad To Be Alive

I hope you enjoy this deleted scene from Fantasia (1940):

A Mighty Film

Leaving the theater after a matinee screening of Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart I thought that coming out into the bustling mall would lift my mood — or at least distract me — but it didn’t. That’s how powerful and engrossing the story of Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and death is. From the opening sequences that caught the mood of a dusty, teeming Karachi to the final scene of Mariane Pearl walking down a narrow sidewalk with their son Adam, this film gripped me and it was virtually impossible to turn away from the dreaded story as it unfolded.

Winterbottom uses fast paced camera work with abrupt cuts and lightning panning, interspersed with shaky hand-held effects, to drive the story in the fashion of a “you are there” documentary. What keeps it from breaking apart in response to its own force are the scenes of Mariane (played by Angelina Jolie) keeping her wits about her in the center of the media/intelligence/political/diplomatic storm.

And she does keep her wits about her, even in her anguish once she is told about the videotape of his beheading. The scene is visceral — you know it is coming because we all know the story and followed it in the news — and yet when it does come, you cannot be prepared. How can you prepare yourself for the horror of knowing what those bastards did to Pearl? How can you prepare yourself for the wife’s anguish at losing her husband before he has the chance to see his first child?

In the end that is what A Mighty Heart is all about. It is about some horrible bastards who desecrate the name of our God when they shout “Allahu Akbar” when they are captured or worse, when they take the knife to Pearl’s neck. I visibly flinched to hear His name invoked by these filthy animals.

More simply, it is about a man, who was a reporter, a husband and a father-to-be, and his pregnant wife, also a reporter, and how their lives got in the way of somebody’s idea of jihad. Danny Pearl was just a pawn in their desire to build up an inevitable clash between Muslims and the West. Winterbottom’s film leaves no doubt that on both sides of the issue we are all being taken for a horrifying ride in the West vs. Islam Demolition Derby.

Protected: Do I Dare Exhale?

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Something Is Wrong Here: A Social Observation Of Life In Qatar

Okay. I know I am a glutton for punishment because today I went with a friend to see another movie at the City Center. I haven’t posted about this before but let me preface it that attending the cinema in Doha is frustrating exercise in the limits of rude behavior. People talk (LOUDLY), mobiles go off every few minutes and people actually answer them and carry on conversations! To be honest, it is primarily Qataris and a few ex-pat Arabs that are the worst culprits and after countless discussions on the subject the best explanation that some Qatari friends and students could come up with was that it’s a strange part of their idea of being “social”.

Anyway, I decided to give the movie theater experience another shot because there was a film I really wanted to see.
This time it was “1408″ which I had really been looking forward to because it is somewhat reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”. So needless to say, I was psyched.

When it came time to pick the seats the theater was quite crowded already and I hesitated, telling the young woman at the box office that I wanted to make sure I wasn’t disturbed by a lot of talkers and had access to an usher in case peop. le got loud. Finally, I settled for row J, seats 13 and 14. That is the row on the level that you walk in on, and right on the end next to where the usher perches on his stool. Bad idea — I found out within 5 minutes into the film.

First of all, I notice this trend here in Doha to walk into and out of a movie at any point during the 90-120 minutes the film runs. Obviously, your average Doha cinema-goer is not in the leats bit actually interested in the film itself because they can’t possibly understand a plot if they pick it up 20-30 minutes after the film starts. So imagine, if you will, sitting in the fully sold-out cinema #2 in the City Center with one third of tne audience strolling in — loudly and using their mobiles as flashlights — during the first 40 minutes of the film. I’m talking a steady stream of theater-goers strolling right in front of you (because you are sitting right there on the entry level), talking, laughing, etc., FOR THE FIRST 40 minutes of the film!!!! Actually there were still people coming in a full hour into the film– at least half of them blocking my view of the screen!!!

Now here’s the other somewhat puzzling and thoroughly irritating thing that happens at the theater here. You know when you are watching a film that has a really disturbing subject. I’m not referring to things like scary subjects, but the kind of subject that is highly dramatic and contains scenes that should in theory make people cry, empathize or even just THINK seriously about what they are watching? For example, in “Blood Diamond” there is a scene where Djimon Honsu’s son who has been taken by force by the rebels is being molded into a child soldier and he has to kill jis first victim. A row of little boys are blindfolded and lined up facing a wall where a man who has his hands tied is awaiting his execution at the hands of one of these blindfolded boys. Honsu’s son is the one that is forced to pull the trigger. His captor pulls off his blindfold and he looks upon the dead body of his first victim. This is a riveting scene where most people gasp, cry out or even just go deadly quiet. But here in Doha, the theater is filled with laughter!?! WTH???

HERE BE SPOILERS: ;-)))

Well that happened in “1408″. There is a a scene where John Cusack’s character is holding his dying daughter in his arms. She is asking him not to leave her (in her death) and he is hugging her promising not to when he realizes he is cradling her dead body. The father bends low over the lifeless body of his child and then is wracked by heart-wrenching sobs……….. And all over the theater there is laughter?!?!!!! I’m not just saying some small giggles — I mean cackling and derisive laughter at the father crying over his dead child!!! It’s not just kids laughing, or even guys — it’s male, female, young, old……. And it’s not like it was a cheesy scene with a bad actor. This is John Cusack and the scene had the grip of reality in the interaction of father and dying daughter.

I don’t get it. It’s almost like there is a kind of social retardation; as if you find yourelf living among people who have no human empathy. I just don’t get it.

Do you?