Art house films: 'Afghan Star'
Opening this weekend on the local film-society circuit:
British director Havana Marking trails two male and two female contestants on "Afghan Star," a TV show broadcast from Kabul. Instead of building up suspense over who will win a $1000 check and a record deal as the next Afghan Star, Marking's documentary of the same name explores the splintered terrain of Afghan culture, religion and politics.
Now in its fifth season, "Afghan Star" is modeled on the British show "Pop Idol" and the "American Idol" series. Not surprisingly, the Afghan Council of Scholars decreed the popular TV series "immoral and un-Islamic." The show is emblematic of a cultural shift in Afghanistan. The Taliban's music ban recently ended. Zealots once impaled TV sets on spikes, but now TV repair shops operate in the open instead of underground.
When 21-year-old Setara adds modest dance moves to her song --and loosens her head scarf and uncovers some of her hair -- she is denounced as "a whore" who ought to be put to death.
Afghan pop lyrics may mystify foreigners: "Come my love slowly on the roof/I have a tattoo on my chin" and "May the length of my existence be as short as her faithfulness." But any text-messager can identify with Afghans voting for contestants with cellphones. Vox populi via SMS looks like pop democracy. The show's producer states: "From today the public can vote for their favorite contestant. Rich people, poor people, women and men, everyone. It is a new idea, and the Afghan people like it."
Marking, a former anthropology student who earlier directed a short on disabled Englishmen launching a striptease act, told one U.K. audience: "My film will not be shown in Afghanistan to protect the people in it." He's a keen observer. In August, he wrote two insightful pieces for the Guardian on elections and everyday life in Afghanistan. Like "The Beauty Academy of Kabul," Liz Mermin's 2004 doc about Kabul hairstylists, "Afghan Star" unveils a country from an unexpected vantage.
No MPAA rating. Running time: 82 minutes. In English, Pashtu and Dari, with English subtitles. Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
In this artful road film, Turkish director Abdullah Oguz brings the 2002 novel Bliss by Zulfu Livaneli to the screen. Two cousins on the run from unjust tradition supply the plot. The filmmaker and author share an agenda of attacking sexist customs.
Like the novel, the film "Bliss" begins as it zeroes in on an unconscious girl on the muddy shore of a serene lake. Meryem (Ozgu Namal) -- age 15 in the novel, 17 in the film -- has blood on her thigh. Livaneli immediately names her rapist, but Oguz and co-writers Kubilay Tuncer and Elif Ayan only reveal his identity at the end. Village custom, as enforced by Meryem's feared uncle (Mustafa Avkiran), sentences the victim to death. Village women show her rope and a roof beam to use if she chooses suicide to cleanse the shame.
The uncle orders his son Cemel (Murat Han), a commando just back from fighting Kurds, to escort Meryem to Istanbul to mete out punishment. He fails to toss his cousin from the train. In Istanbul, he holds a gun to her head, ordering her to leap from a bridge, but saves her from falling. Now both are outlaws. His father puts two armed villagers on their trail.
Cinematographer Mirsad Herovic frames lyrical scenery, from the crime scene at the village lake, to an idyllic fish farm where Meryem and Cemel find temporary employment. Later, Irfan (Talat Bulut), a well-off, worldly professor, hires them to work on his yacht as he sails along the Aegean coast. Ultra-wide lenses express Meryem's expanding horizons. Nightmarish flashbacks, though, undermine her new freedom. Cemel is haunted by his own trauma from military duty.
In the novel, Irfan and an ambassador (a character absent from the film) wonder if the cousins are in love. "That would be a perfect Hollywood script," Irfan says. "Even the most mediocre writer would think twice before writing such a story." Although the film omits those lines, Oguz incorporates some unfortunate Hollywood twists in the end. "Bliss," though, is more subtle in spotlighting the crime of so-called Islamic honor killings than the recent "Forbidden Lie$," a documentary set in Jordan, and "The Stoning of Soraya M.," a docudrama set in Iran.
No MPAA rating. Running time: 105 minutes. In Turkish, with English subtitles. Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
Bill Stamets is a Chicago-based free-lance writer and critic.