Osama

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.

The Director is taking through us a 80 minutes journey through the eyes of a 13 year old girl in Afghanistan under the taliban...

The landscape full of limestone .....and the people unfortunate enough to have born into the wrong time....

barren land and lives.....

where every other woman is a widow and every other mother is a living tomb.......

Please listen to the soundtrack carefully.... especially the background score.... its really important..... it starts off with an iron swing..... ends with the sound of skipping rope hitting the ground.... Masterful.

I bet that after the movie, you will go and kiss your young daughter. You sure will.

My salute to the director who mesmerised me the whole 80 minutes....

saw this movie in 8th international film festival of kerala in 2003 where It got a grand applause.

This was the first movie made in post taliban regime in afghanistan. Truly commendable.

My 9 out of 10.

In Afghanistan, during the Taliban regime, women are forbidden to work and to walk on the streets without the company of a male. The teenager girl Osama (Marina Golbahari) cuts her hair and dresses like a boy to get a job and support her widow mother and grandmother. There is no men in her family, since her father and her brother were killed in previous Afghan wars, and the family has no means of survival. When Osama, disguised as a boy, is called by the Taliban to join the school and military training, the boy Espandi (Arif Herati) tries to help her.

"Osama" is a spectacular film, based on true events, and the interpretation of the amateurish cast is so perfect that sometimes the movie looks like a documentary. It is amazing how different from Western cultures is the life, religion, streets, houses of the Afghan people, and how repressed the women are in this evil system. Although being aware of many atrocities of this fanatical power, through articles in newspapers and magazines, this movie is so real and impressive that makes the viewer feel in the skin the difficulties of the life of this poor people. This is the first film made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. In accordance with the interview of the director Siddiq Barmak in the Extras of the DVD, Marina Golbahari was accidentally discovered four days before the beginning of the shootings. The girls had never watched a movie in a theater, and did not have a TV. Two days before the beginning of the shootings, Barmak met Arif Herati, and decided to create a special character for him, not foreseen in the original screenplay. The boy requested the director to buy his dogs to accept the invitation. This movie was awarded many international prizes, among them the Golden Globe (Best Movie),Golden Camera (Cannes Festival) and Best Movie (London Festival), and certainly deserves to be among the IMDb Top 250. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Osama"

I'll spare you the tedious task of reading this slightly long review and say outright that this film is great but very hard to watch and requires one of those special moods where one wants to see a film and is reluctant to watch some standard multi personality disorder thriller or a romantic comedy that more and more lately, seem mutually exclusive (How to lose a guy in 10 days, Love actually and the list goes on and on).

Osama, a name that strikes fear in almost every person, is a bogus name of a young girl who lives with her widowed mother and grandmother. The fact that neither women can't go to work under the strict rules of the Taliban, forces the mother to cut her daughter's hair short and send her to work as a boy. Soon enough, the disguised girl is recruited to a religious, Taliban oriented, all male school where she faces the task of fitting in, a task which is partially aided by Esphandi, a beggar teen who knows Osama's secret and goes a great length to hide it, knowing full well that if revealed, both his and her life will be in jeopardy.

According to the IMDB's Biography of Marina Golbahar (who portrays Osama) the struggle for survival is hardly new to her which is probably why she plays in such a credible and moving manner despite having no acting experience. The acting is the cornerstone of the film and it is the main contributor to the film's impact. Another major factor is the scenery, I will elaborate on that later on.

Without going into detail as to the plot's progress, I will note that the film doesn't try to embellish the harsh reality of Afghan women and especially their children who, according to the film, are doomed in most cases to be robbed of their childhood.

I added the "according to the film" reference because this film doesn't try to convey it's hatred to this regime and although I'm hardly a Taliban devotee, I am skeptic enough to know that film can depict anyone they want anyway they choose (just the other day there was a story on 60 minutes that showed how North Korean kids are brainwashed to believe that George W Bush is the 21st century's Hitler ) so one must approach this film under a very critical point of view.

But even so, there is little dispute that women's rights were trampled during the Taliban reign of oppression and that Afghanistan is a nation in plight in large part due to that regime (was it the setting or did the Taliban also banned the building of houses with roofs?).

The only reservation I have of the film is the fact that under the loathing of the Talibans, the director, Siddiq bermak, added scenes that weakens the usually high sense of genuineness of the film. For example, in a wedding party the women sing almost throughout the scene about men falling in the war against Russia in the late 80's. Not your regular spice-up-the-party tunes. I assume the director wanted to give us a little background about the characters and forgot that the key to the story's conviction is the appeal of Osama and not the appall of the Taliban (I used that word eight times in this review, I think I overdid it).

But other than that, the film is very powerful and although the real magnitude if the suffering in Afghanistan will never be known to its full extent, I still managed to feel empathy for the people I used to be completely indifferent to (I admit to my eternal shame).

8.5 out of 10 on FilmOmeter.

One more thing I'd like to address to is the quote in the beginning of the film. In the Hebrew subtitled version of the film, the quote was translated as "I may forgive but won't forget" by Nelson Mandela. In the film, however, the quote (in Arabic letters) refers to Doctor Shariati who was the ideologue of the Iranian cue (I didn't get the chance to read the actual quote because my Arabic is a little rusty). I guess there wasn't much point in explaining to a viewer like myself who Shariati was but nevertheless, its an evidence of the tiny alterations film go when they are branded for foreign viewing.

The use of Afghan culture as a medium for the commentary this film delivers shouldn't be misinterpreted. While it does serve to educate the viewer about the violent impact of religious fundamentalism and the raging inequality of conditions women have faced in Afghanistan, it also teaches the lesson of what happens when an individual defies the established rules of sexuality, a lesson that can be as relevant in Ohio as in Afghanistan. Osama is not just a girl, but a girl who masquerades as a boy in order to survive; the torment she endures in return is not just a demonstration of the cruelties of of fundamentalist Islam, but the cruelties of society as we know it.

Barbarism is not confined to any people, any nation, or any religion, and it would be a grave mistake to misinterpret (whether accidentally or otherwise) the aim of such a poignant film. Osama is skillfully produced and acted, and serves as an artful and immersive vessel for its sentiments.