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Movies watched
Aug. 20th, 2023 06:03 pmBarbie (2023)
I managed to get to the cinema after all, and I'm glad I did! More diligent viewers than me have had lots to say about the movie's messaging and cultural significance; honestly, I was just happy to switch my brain off and enjoy the spectacle. As a big childhood Barbie fan, I found the sets, props and costumes all deliciously nostalgic (Weird Barbie got off easy, though I understand why - the things I did to my Barbies when I 'played with them too hard' might make an interesting slasher spin-off, but for this movie's purposes they would have brought down the vibe). The stakes were nonexistent, in a relaxing rather than boring way. I laughed at basically every joke. Ken's whole shtick was especially hilarious! I'm looking forward to eventually watching it again on home release with my siblings who couldn't make it to the screening.
Layla M. (2016)
Dutch film about a Dutch Moroccan girl who, angry with her home country's rampant Islamophobia, falls down a rabbit hole of Islamic extremism. The story tracks Layla's radicalisation with a lot of compassion: grooming plays a part, but so does the ongoing trauma of racism, police brutality and religious oppression. Her more moderate family and friends are at a loss how to reach her, and conflict with them only increases her alienation. She ends up running away to Jordan with her newlywed jihadist husband, where her dreams of religious and moral freedom come face to face with the realities of life under strict patriarchal rule and the violent military conflicts that now loom on her doorstep.
Layla's fiery personality and deep care for the plight of Muslims around the world are impossible not to admire; I felt like the movie did a good job of getting inside a worldview that Western culture finds it all too easy to demonise. Ultimately there's a strong sense of Layla being caught between two cultures with two value systems, both of which have a powerful claim on her and each of which wants to crush the other half out of her. And there's no easy out, no safe place she can run to. In Jordan she's her husband's property; in the Netherlands she's a "jihadi bride" at the mercy of an unsympathetic legal system. It's a devastating story, and unfortunately as topical now as it was on release.
Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (2023)
This has to be the most heavy-handed movie I've seen all year, and yes, I say that having just seen Barbie. I enjoyed some things about it! But oh man, it is so heavy-handed. I mean, it's for a good cause at least. It's about the Afghan interpreters who US and allied forces abandoned to the mercy of the Taliban, fictionalised in the bodies of Ahmed and Sergeant Kinley. Rough synopsis: when a raid on a Taliban explosives manufacturing facility goes wrong, Kinley escapes into the wilderness with his interpreter Ahmed but suffers incapacitating injuries. Ahmed, a married man and father-to-be who took the job 'just for the money', dares everything to get him home by a long and painful journey through Taliban-controlled territory. A repatriated Kinley then fights to get Ahmed and his family (who are now deep in hiding) their promised visas, and track them down so they can be evacuated to America.
Ahmed was most of what made this movie enjoyable. He's a great character, instantly likeable, and I appreciated the ongoing emphasis on the value of his expertise - he's whip-smart and always ready to challenge his US employers when their ignorance of local terrain or custom threatens to derail a mission. Unfortunately, nothing else really lived up to his performance: Ritchie fumbled every other opportunity to put nuanced and interesting Afghan characters on screen (mostly they were interchangeable AK-toting extremists), most of the action scenes were nonsensical, and Kinley was so bland it almost (but only almost) circled back to being impressive. The movie tried desperately to give Kinley and Ahmed's respective struggles equal billing, which was a pitiful flop, given that Kinley's problem was "getting Ahmed out of Afghanistan is hard" while Ahmed's problem was "I'm on the run from the Taliban who want to torture me to death and also murder my wife and newborn child, while the occupying army that was supposed to guarantee my safety twiddles its thumbs and argues about paperwork".
But on the other hand it was a very pretty movie, and the nonstop dramatic string music kept tricking me into feeling emotionally invested, so. Points for that?
Three Songs for Benazir (2021)
This is a short (<30min) documentary about Shaista, a young Afghan father living in a camp for internally displaced people in Kabul. Shaista dotes on his wife Benazir but struggles with the strictures of family life when his father and brothers prevent him from enlisting in the army. Instead he is pushed to take work harvesting opium poppies, which leads to a devastating addiction; the documentary ends with him in a residential treatment centre, receiving a visit from Benazir and his kids, who in his absence are going barefoot due to lack of funds.
The cinematography is beautiful and intimate, and the storytelling is sparse, leaving most of the work up to the ordinary human charisma of Shaista and Benazir. I really enjoyed seeing a snapshot of everyday life in Afghanistan: the devastation of war is inescapable, but the focus is very much on people being people, and loving each other, and living the best lives they can.
I managed to get to the cinema after all, and I'm glad I did! More diligent viewers than me have had lots to say about the movie's messaging and cultural significance; honestly, I was just happy to switch my brain off and enjoy the spectacle. As a big childhood Barbie fan, I found the sets, props and costumes all deliciously nostalgic (Weird Barbie got off easy, though I understand why - the things I did to my Barbies when I 'played with them too hard' might make an interesting slasher spin-off, but for this movie's purposes they would have brought down the vibe). The stakes were nonexistent, in a relaxing rather than boring way. I laughed at basically every joke. Ken's whole shtick was especially hilarious! I'm looking forward to eventually watching it again on home release with my siblings who couldn't make it to the screening.
Layla M. (2016)
Dutch film about a Dutch Moroccan girl who, angry with her home country's rampant Islamophobia, falls down a rabbit hole of Islamic extremism. The story tracks Layla's radicalisation with a lot of compassion: grooming plays a part, but so does the ongoing trauma of racism, police brutality and religious oppression. Her more moderate family and friends are at a loss how to reach her, and conflict with them only increases her alienation. She ends up running away to Jordan with her newlywed jihadist husband, where her dreams of religious and moral freedom come face to face with the realities of life under strict patriarchal rule and the violent military conflicts that now loom on her doorstep.
Layla's fiery personality and deep care for the plight of Muslims around the world are impossible not to admire; I felt like the movie did a good job of getting inside a worldview that Western culture finds it all too easy to demonise. Ultimately there's a strong sense of Layla being caught between two cultures with two value systems, both of which have a powerful claim on her and each of which wants to crush the other half out of her. And there's no easy out, no safe place she can run to. In Jordan she's her husband's property; in the Netherlands she's a "jihadi bride" at the mercy of an unsympathetic legal system. It's a devastating story, and unfortunately as topical now as it was on release.
Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (2023)
This has to be the most heavy-handed movie I've seen all year, and yes, I say that having just seen Barbie. I enjoyed some things about it! But oh man, it is so heavy-handed. I mean, it's for a good cause at least. It's about the Afghan interpreters who US and allied forces abandoned to the mercy of the Taliban, fictionalised in the bodies of Ahmed and Sergeant Kinley. Rough synopsis: when a raid on a Taliban explosives manufacturing facility goes wrong, Kinley escapes into the wilderness with his interpreter Ahmed but suffers incapacitating injuries. Ahmed, a married man and father-to-be who took the job 'just for the money', dares everything to get him home by a long and painful journey through Taliban-controlled territory. A repatriated Kinley then fights to get Ahmed and his family (who are now deep in hiding) their promised visas, and track them down so they can be evacuated to America.
Ahmed was most of what made this movie enjoyable. He's a great character, instantly likeable, and I appreciated the ongoing emphasis on the value of his expertise - he's whip-smart and always ready to challenge his US employers when their ignorance of local terrain or custom threatens to derail a mission. Unfortunately, nothing else really lived up to his performance: Ritchie fumbled every other opportunity to put nuanced and interesting Afghan characters on screen (mostly they were interchangeable AK-toting extremists), most of the action scenes were nonsensical, and Kinley was so bland it almost (but only almost) circled back to being impressive. The movie tried desperately to give Kinley and Ahmed's respective struggles equal billing, which was a pitiful flop, given that Kinley's problem was "getting Ahmed out of Afghanistan is hard" while Ahmed's problem was "I'm on the run from the Taliban who want to torture me to death and also murder my wife and newborn child, while the occupying army that was supposed to guarantee my safety twiddles its thumbs and argues about paperwork".
But on the other hand it was a very pretty movie, and the nonstop dramatic string music kept tricking me into feeling emotionally invested, so. Points for that?
Three Songs for Benazir (2021)
This is a short (<30min) documentary about Shaista, a young Afghan father living in a camp for internally displaced people in Kabul. Shaista dotes on his wife Benazir but struggles with the strictures of family life when his father and brothers prevent him from enlisting in the army. Instead he is pushed to take work harvesting opium poppies, which leads to a devastating addiction; the documentary ends with him in a residential treatment centre, receiving a visit from Benazir and his kids, who in his absence are going barefoot due to lack of funds.
The cinematography is beautiful and intimate, and the storytelling is sparse, leaving most of the work up to the ordinary human charisma of Shaista and Benazir. I really enjoyed seeing a snapshot of everyday life in Afghanistan: the devastation of war is inescapable, but the focus is very much on people being people, and loving each other, and living the best lives they can.
