Ray Pride

A leg floats in a pale blue sky, dangling from a parachute. Now a shot across a desert, and there are dozens of these legs dropped from on high. And in the slightest of slow motion, across the desert sands, one-legged amputees rush, hobble, bound toward these offerings. A typical image from Mohsen Makhmalbaf's gorgeous, surreal but all-too-real "Kandahar," the story of an Afghan woman's return to her homeland with the Taliban still in power. Nafas (which means "respiration" in Afghani) is a female journalist who was born in Afghanistan, but fled the country as a teenager to make a career in Canada. She receives a letter from her sister, who has been maimed by a land mine. Depressed over her fate and the systemic oppression of women in Afghanistan, she vows to commit suicide at the time of the next solar eclipse. The clock is ticking: that's three days away, and Nafas must assume the head-to-toe covering of the traditional burka for her journey to the city that is the headquarters of the Taliban government. She records her thoughts on a tape recorder, offering explanation for the goings-on we see unfold around her, the thoughts that stir beneath the brightly colored fabric of her garment. She must also forfeit the independence she knows as a woman in the Western world. It's illegal for women to travel alone, so she must seek the help of Afghanis along the way, including a young boy who is already an accomplished con and an African-American doctor who reveals that his beard is in fact a disguise, a covering, like Nafas' burka. The burkas are like peacock plumage, remarkably ornate and richly colored, and when we are given glimpses beneath the coverings, we discover that women are hiding forearms festooned with bracelets, crimsoned lips, carmeline nails. Makhmalbaf works with non-actors, like many Iranian directors, and the power of his imagery overcomes the uncertainty of some of the performances in English. 85m.

"Kandahar" shows Wednesday at the Cultural Center at 7pm.

(2003-07-02)

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