Rating: 
Summary: Meaningful But Flawed
Review: "Kandahar" tries to showcase Afghanistan`s current scenario, particularly woman`s condition and the tight control of that country`s system. While it suceeds at presenting some memorable and poignant scenes and realities, it ends up failing to captivate the viewer into the story of the protagonist. The central plot is about a canadian young woman who travels to Afghanistan in order to rescue her sister from Kandahar. As her journey gets along, the viewer is presented to some peculiar and remarkable situations in a documentary-style way. This semi-documentary-feel is useful at parts, yet it somehow manages to keep the viewer distant from the movie`s characters (who don`t seem all that gripping or interesting, since they never develop much). The acting is wildly uneven and the direction is competent, but relies more in the exotic natural landscapes than in director`s Mohsen Makhmalbaf camera tricks. The pacing is also inconsistent, delivering some slow and dull moments that lead to nowhere. And, yes, the ending could have been more compelling too.
Overall, "Kandahar" is a mildly interesting film, relying more on its relevant subject matter than in the plot`s disjointed execution and flow. An important effort worth watching, still average as a movie.
Rating:
Summary: Meaningful But Flawed
Review: "Kandahar" tries to showcase Afghanistan`s current scenario, particularly woman`s condition and the tight control of that country`s system. While it suceeds at presenting some memorable and poignant scenes and realities, it ends up failing to captivate the viewer into the story of the protagonist. The central plot is about a canadian young woman who travels to Afghanistan in order to rescue her sister from Kandahar. As her journey gets along, the viewer is presented to some peculiar and remarkable situations in a documentary-style way. This semi-documentary-feel is useful at parts, yet it somehow manages to keep the viewer distant from the movie`s characters (who don`t seem all that gripping or interesting, since they never develop much). The acting is wildly uneven and the direction is competent, but relies more in the exotic natural landscapes than in director`s Mohsen Makhmalbaf camera tricks. The pacing is also inconsistent, delivering some slow and dull moments that lead to nowhere. And, yes, the ending could have been more compelling too.
Overall, "Kandahar" is a mildly interesting film, relying more on its relevant subject matter than in the plot`s disjointed execution and flow. An important effort worth watching, still average as a movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Surrealist and anti-Surrealist plea against tyranny.
Review: 'kandahar' is both a journey and a diary. Nafas is a Canadian Afghan whose family left the country decades ago. She has undertaken a perilous journey to her former homeland to plead with the sister they left behind, disabled by a landmine accident and now living in suicidal despair under the dark terror of the Taliban. Disguised in a burka, Nafas' journey takes the picaresque form common in Iranian cinma, meeting different people who advance her understanding or experience of modern Afghanistan, from her young guide expelled from mullah school; to the disillusioned African-American who came to the country for spiritual truth and now acts as a doctor in a gender-apartheid tent despite no medical training; to the limbless landmine victims waiting around a Red Cross encampment for the next consignment of plastic legs; to the completely-covered celebrants travelling across the desert for a wedding. At the same time, Nafas records a diary Dale Cooper-style into a dictaphone, articulating her thoughts with a clarity at odds with the unaccountable events she witnesses. This race against time is also a jounrey into an alternative past, into the desperate life she could have lived if she hadn't escaped. She learns to see, paradoxically, by blinding herself with her mask. Much has been made of the Surrealist quality of Makhmalbaf's imagery, from the magical sight of replacement limbs parachuting from the sky, men in crutches scrambling after them; to the doctor's tent consultations, where the patient is reduced to fetishised fragments viewed through a hole; to the dressing of mannequin-like legs in a woman's gown by a husband in the mirror; to the recurring sight of anonymous refugees filing the vast, empty desert- and brush-scapes. But whereas this kind of imagery is familiar enough from European literature and film, where they operate as metaphors for the human condition - here, they are the human condition; they are a reality as ghastly unreality, where all norms and identities have been destroyed by an authority as all-seeing as the sun, whose sole aim seems to be to undermine order, to destroy people's faith in the stability of signs, structures, inevitability. What in Surrealism was supposed to be a blow against the oppressive everyday world in this context becomes the method of the oppressors. It is the most disorienting switch in cultural perspective since former Surrealist photographer Lee Miller shot the death camps in Dachau. As in all Mokhmalbaf's films, documentary and fiction, reality and fantasy, the grey desert and dazzling colours, silence and music, misery and comedy, dissolve boundaries and offer a kind of formal space or freedom against the vile content of authoritarianism.
Rating: 
Summary: An Unsatisfying Film on a Timely Topic
Review: ...I can say that this film is quite simply a clunker.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a thoroughly mature, highly competent film maker, and along with Majid Majidi, a real innovator in the world of contemporary Iranian film. With this film, however, he decided to step away from his usual style of powerful character development, beautiful photography, and an interesting way of integrating the universal qualities of human culture with the particular world view of modern Iran.
"Kandahar" disappoints on many different levels. The character development is so poor that it is hard to empathize with much of what is going on on screen. A lot of this has to do with the screenwriting, which is simply awful. A good example of how bad this script is can be heard in the speech that the black American doctor gives into the reporter's recorder. Depth is attempted, but only pseudo-gravitas is achieved. Also, the acting is inexplicably, inexcusably, and often hilariously atrocious. Amateur casts can be excellent and convincing, as they have been in films by Makhmalbaf and Majidi before, but in Kandahar, it is so bad as to be a distraction, and only serves to point up the defincies in character development and the inanity of the dialogue.
This film is also much praised for the beauty of its scenery, but it is not a National Geographic Special, it is a feature film that introduces a plot, introduces characters, and ostensibly seeks to develop them. The scenery certainly is nice, but it doesn't make up for the dramatic failure of the film, and honestly, the production values in this film are average if not a little below average. And when you finally get right down to it, it is not much of an achievement to point a camera at a mountain or a desert in Eastern Iran or Western Afghanistan. It is just unfamiliar to most viewers (or at least it was before the fall of the Taliban), and that seems to make the scenery more special than it really is. I suppose a case could be made for the harsh terrain reflecting the harsh life under the Taliban, but that is hardly a new idea in film making, and the amount of time that this film spends lingering over the mountains and deserts of Central Asia really does absolutely nothing for a film that is just begging to be developed. Also, fanciful images in the film such as the oft-mentioned prosthetic legs flying out of the airplane, or a young Afghani pulling the ring off of a skeleton seem pretentious in the context of such a thin plot and lack of fundamental dramatic development.
In this film Makhmalbaf tried something new, and he simply failed. Luckily for him, the film became instantly relevant due to the 9/11 attacks, and it received far more praise than it should have. I liken the critical response to this film to that of "A Time for Drunken Horses", a better film than "Kandahar", but one that also gets more recognition for WHAT it is, than what it achieves as a work of cinematic art.
Rating:
Summary: An Unsatisfying Film on a Timely Topic
Review: ...I can say that this film is quite simply a clunker.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a thoroughly mature, highly competent film maker, and along with Majid Majidi, a real innovator in the world of contemporary Iranian film. With this film, however, he decided to step away from his usual style of powerful character development, beautiful photography, and an interesting way of integrating the universal qualities of human culture with the particular world view of modern Iran.
"Kandahar" disappoints on many different levels. The character development is so poor that it is hard to empathize with much of what is going on on screen. A lot of this has to do with the screenwriting, which is simply awful. A good example of how bad this script is can be heard in the speech that the black American doctor gives into the reporter's recorder. Depth is attempted, but only pseudo-gravitas is achieved. Also, the acting is inexplicably, inexcusably, and often hilariously atrocious. Amateur casts can be excellent and convincing, as they have been in films by Makhmalbaf and Majidi before, but in Kandahar, it is so bad as to be a distraction, and only serves to point up the defincies in character development and the inanity of the dialogue.
This film is also much praised for the beauty of its scenery, but it is not a National Geographic Special, it is a feature film that introduces a plot, introduces characters, and ostensibly seeks to develop them. The scenery certainly is nice, but it doesn't make up for the dramatic failure of the film, and honestly, the production values in this film are average if not a little below average. And when you finally get right down to it, it is not much of an achievement to point a camera at a mountain or a desert in Eastern Iran or Western Afghanistan. It is just unfamiliar to most viewers (or at least it was before the fall of the Taliban), and that seems to make the scenery more special than it really is. I suppose a case could be made for the harsh terrain reflecting the harsh life under the Taliban, but that is hardly a new idea in film making, and the amount of time that this film spends lingering over the mountains and deserts of Central Asia really does absolutely nothing for a film that is just begging to be developed. Also, fanciful images in the film such as the oft-mentioned prosthetic legs flying out of the airplane, or a young Afghani pulling the ring off of a skeleton seem pretentious in the context of such a thin plot and lack of fundamental dramatic development.
In this film Makhmalbaf tried something new, and he simply failed. Luckily for him, the film became instantly relevant due to the 9/11 attacks, and it received far more praise than it should have. I liken the critical response to this film to that of "A Time for Drunken Horses", a better film than "Kandahar", but one that also gets more recognition for WHAT it is, than what it achieves as a work of cinematic art.
Rating: 
Summary: inside look at afghanistan-a true storyline, wonderful
Review: a great story based on a real tale of one canadian/afghan womens journey back to afghanistan to search for her frined, who is depressed and contemplating suicide due to the opression and devastation all around. in the movie the friend is actually her sister. the main character relives her actual travels and shows you many things in afghanistan that contribute to the situation her friend is facing, such as hunger, death, robbery, oppression of women and their basic rights, religious fanaticism, etc...
although she is not able to reach her destination of kandahar, either in real life or in the movie, the movie will show you the devastation the afghan people face day to day, and the lengths people go to survive. there are some comical moments, and some real heartfelt moments throughout. one of the best films made about afghanistan, and a true story to boot. directed by the great mohsen makhmalfbaf, if you buy this please view the commentary by the women in the film, it contains great info as to what the situation was like making the film, and her own personal story. also, the dvd contains a special news braodcast about her life, in canada and afghanistan.
Rating: 
Summary: Burkha
Review: An Iranian film produced before the American invasion of Afghanistan, KANDAHAR isn't so much a feature film with a contiguous story as a series of 1-act plays that portray the harshness of life for women, and life in general, under Taliban rule. Nafas (Nelofer Pazira) is a young woman of Afghani birth who emigrated as a child with her family to Canada. Her sister, who had lost both legs to a land mine, was left behind. Nafas has learned that her sister is planning to commit suicide coincident with the final solar eclipse of the twentieth century. As the film begins, Nafas is being ferried by helicopter to an Afghani refugee camp in Iran. From there, she hopes to smuggle herself across the border to KANDAHAR, where her sister lives, and persuade her to go on living. Both the beginning and end of the film are minimalist. Instead, the viewer is witness to a series of vignettes, some almost surreal, that reflect the dismal state of the country. Of course, during her journey, Nafas wears a burkha, that head to foot drape that women must wear in public and which relegates them to the status of non-entities. Two sequences are particularly evocative of the film's message. When Nafas becomes ill and seeks help, the male caregiver is limited by law to examining his patient's mouth and eyes through a small hole cut in a sheet barrier while asking questions via a child intermediary. And later, as a Red Cross helicopter drops prosthetic legs by parachute into a desert aid station set up to help civilians maimed by landmines, we watch a dozen or so amputees desperately scrambling on their crutches to reach the drop zone. Indeed, the prosthetics are so much in demand that a scam artist, seeking to acquire them as a goods for future enrichment, is shown bedeviling foreign medical workers. Pazira's Nafas is attractive, and the dehumanizing effect of the burkha is striking on those occasions when she must unveil. KANDAHAR is presented in a pseudo-documentary style. Unfortunately, while the individual sequences are hard-hitting and revealing, the lack of a unifying story, and especially the absence of substantive ending, doesn't make for a completely satisfying film. The viewers' sympathies may perhaps remain detached.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful & Surreal, No drama
Review: Beautifully shot, surreal landscapes, strange and moving situations and people...but as a movie, there is little dramatic tension. Would have made a great photo exhibit at the ICP.
Rating:
Summary: Images of Afghanistan
Review: Born an Afghani, now a Canadian, Nafas (Niloufar Pazira) receives a letter from her sister who is still living in Afghanistan. Her sister tells Nafas that she can no longer live in the oppressive conditions of their homeland, and she intends to commit suicide on the last eclipse of the 20th century. Nafas journeys to Afghanistan and tries desperately to reach her sister in Kandahar before the day of the eclipse. She carries with her a tape recorder on which she records the details of her journey in hopes that the stories and voices on that tape will give her sister some reason to live. Nafas enters the country through the Iranian border and must rely on the aid of others to lead her to Kandahar. She takes any opportunity she can to get closer to Kandahar and enlists the aid of an itinerant family, a young boy (Sadou Teymouri), an American-born doctor (Hassan Tantai), and a con artist in her struggle to reach her sister before the eclipse. "Kandahar" is a thoughtful and beautiful film directed by acclaimed Iranian director Mohsen Makmalbaf, but it doesn't have much of a narrative. What we see is a journey more than a story. The film isn't long, but it has a languid pace, which is appropriate for traveling across a desert. Nafas is in a big hurry to reach her sister, so the film's pace also helps us empathize with her frustration. But "Kandahar" doesn't seem to be about Nafas or her sister. Nafas' quest is a vehicle for the images that "Kandahar" presents us with, images that are both strikingly beautiful and sadly absurd: a group of one-legged men racing to catch prosthetic limbs that have been dropped by parachute from a plane, a group of people clad in astonishingly bright burquas walking across the dessert, a boy who has been expelled from mullah school trading clothes with the boy who will take his place, another boy taking a lovely ring from the finger of a half-buried skeleton. We have read about the appalling conditions in Afghanistan, and you can see them up close in this film. But "Kandahar"'s images are the film's real strength and the reason to see it. They will stick with you the way that still photographs do because they are so eye-catching and so odd.
Rating:
Summary: This Film Really Takes You There
Review: Directed by the Iranian Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Kandahar tells the story of the women's plight under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The actors are so real that at times I wasn't even for sure if they were really acting or just being filmed. The plot follows the Afghani-Canadian Nafas as she treks through the desert in search of her sister, who in just a few days is going to commit suicide due to her unhappiness at the oppression. When they were younger, Nafas' sister had her legs blown off by a land mine, and Nafas and her father escaped to Canada, leaving behind her sister.
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