Reel Life in
the Middle East
by Robert S. Jersak

As the misinformation campaign continues, stockpiling justifications for this new war, we taxpaying members of this particular democratic Empire owe it to ourselves and others to examine perspectives not readily presented on FoxNews. Here are three films worth seeking out.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar begins with a dangerous helicopter flight into Afghanistan. Nafas, an Afghani-born Canadian journalist, is in a desperate struggle to locate her sister who was left behind when her family fled the country. Weeks before, she received a letter from her sister explaining her intent to commit suicide before the final eclipse of the coming 21st century if she cannot find a way out of the country. Nafas makes unsteady alliances with several refugees who are making their way back into the war-torn city of Kandahar. Throughout her journey, she gleans a greater, first-hand understanding of the oppression imposed by the Taliban and its militant regime.

There are images in Kandahar that refuse to be censored by time. One-legged Afghani peasants hobble frantically toward pairs of parachuting prosthetics, dropped by a Red-Cross chopper. Women in vibrant colored burkhas march fearfully across the dunes in search of liberation, yet in hope of remaining inconspicuous. These sights are perhaps our first representational taste of a horror all too real for the people of Afghanistan. Though told in narrative form, the film breaks into these documentary-like scenes, using theatricality to re-assemble stark realities. And yet, the film pushes no specific political bias into our face either - it's the humanity of these characters and their shared plight that is consistently called into focus, right up to the arresting conclusion.

In the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness, the real devastation left by both American and Iraqi forces after the first Gulf War is in full view: the Iraqi torture chambers, scarred citizens, drill-blasted bunkers and raging oil field fires. Herzog experiments with an overlaid voiced commentary. He presents the conflict and aftermath as though it has occurred on an alien world, to a civilization that only mimics our own. The effect offers a heightened aesthetic response to the imagery, as we begin to detach our pre-constructed connotations of each scene of desolation. And this distance somehow brings us closer to the truth of it - war mars a landscape, and a nation, and a nation's people, making all seem alien and unnatural to themselves and one another.

In an unforgettable sequence, he shows us how a lack of war and fire for these "otherworldly" creatures actually incites a subconscious need within them: two firefighters joyfully ignite a burst oil main, sending yet another well into a crazed and towering inferno. This documentary deserves to be publicly screened again.

Over in Iran, director Abbas Kiarostami works within the constraints imposed upon him by the Iranian government to craft films that are deceptively defiant of oppression. Taste of Cherry is a languorous masterpiece - a slow-moving and soft-footed tale of an Iranian man, Mr. Badii, who decides he has nothing more to live for in this world (wisely, we're never told why - allowing a foothold for our own sadnesses, shortcomings and regrets to become part of the film). He seeks to enlist the help of a stranger to end his miserable life; however, no one, it seems, is as willing or eager to let him die as he is himself.

Homayon Ershadi plays Badii with quiet, impatient (but not resigned) desperation. It's precisely the approach that's called for, because a viewer will begin to wonder why Badii needs help when he can seemingly commit suicide by himself. Badii does need help, but not with dying - with living. Enter Mr. Bagheri, an elderly Turkish gentleman who tells Badii of a time when he himself thought of nothing but his own death. He had even once climbed a tree, noose in hand, but when he was among the branches his fingers brushed over ripe cherries. He stuffed one into his mouth, and the taste was sweeter and richer than anything he had ever known. After eating a few more, he climbed down, and began his life again. I will tell you that this new perspective shifts Mr. Badii's countenance and makes him visibly agitated; I won't tell you if it ultimately changes his mind. Regardless, Bagheri's story alters the viewer, and reminds us how simple, natural pleasures can make our little lives delicious and worth enjoying despite all else.

None of these three films, Kandahar, Lessons of Darkness, or Taste of Cherry, are a specific shout for the cessation of international aggression, and none of them are targeted directly at dismantling oppressive regimes within the Middle East, either. They are presentations of the Middle East's humanity - representations of its people who search and strive and suffer and despair and dream just as we do. It is the underlining of humanity in these films that will re-sensitize us as viewers and voters and force us to think thrice before labeling a region with false claims of corrupt morality - labels that only serve to make civilian casualties easier to stomach. Let us see these faces and these landscapes on our movie screens before we consent to further the forces of war.

©2003 Robert S. Jersak
CineScene