Picturing Change

As I was watching the film Kandahar by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, I was confused as to what it was trying to convey, or what message was supposed to be sent to the audience. In my opinion I think what he was trying to illustrate through picture was the poverty and hardship that takes place throughout Afghanistan. I think he succeeded in this with the shots of children begging for bread, and the men with missing limbs running towards the prosthetic legs falling from the sky.

However, i think the author of the article Picturing Change, Roxanne Varzi, made an interesting assessment when she said that people do not go to Afghanistan to make motion pictures, they go to make documentaries. The reason people go to Afghanistan to create documentaries is because actors and actresses, fancy costumes, and expensive lighting are not needed to capture an audiences attention. The audience will be captured by the raw scenes of the poverty, including people starving and missing limbs due to the mines. There is no need to make a movie because the documentary of what is really happening is captivating enough.

After watching the film and reading the article, i still am a little bit confused by the movie. Since the film is not a documentary, it needed a captivating story line and plot. I agree with Varzi in that the characters are completely void of emotion or expression. The audience is not given any background, and the plot was anything but enthralling. If the film's point was to show the poverty stricken lives of people in Afghanistan then I guess it partially succeeded. However, in my opinion it should have been either a captivating film or a documentary, not the gray area somewhere in the middle that this film ended up being.