{"id":2348,"date":"2018-09-23T04:36:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T04:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taand.com\/en\/?p=2348"},"modified":"2018-09-23T04:36:31","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T04:36:31","slug":"war-movie-pillories-military-hauteur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348","title":{"rendered":"War Movie Pillories Military Hauteur"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>Benjamin Gilmour\u2019s feature film Jirga remedies maladies of guilt with bravery<\/em><\/p>\n

and redemption \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Ehsan Azari Stanizai<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is fairly cathartic when a war movie takes us far beyond the horror of bullets, bomb and blood into the other sides of the war\u2014emotional incumbrances on the individuals.\u00a0 With such a characteristic aplomb, Jirga<\/em> film unveils the depth of the heartache and guilt of an ex- solider whose conscience has been caught up by his own participation in the war.\u00a0 In this, the film moves away from the run-on-the-mill movies about Afghan war overloaded with stereotypical nationalist hubris.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the story of an Australian ex-soldier who kills an unarmed civilian in a thundery blazing raid on a far-flung village in southern Afghanistan and three years later travel to the same village, seeking forgiveness.\u00a0 \u00a0Sam Smith plays admirably the protagonist, the lone soldier who finds it difficult to deal with moral guilt that the haunting feelings of killing a villager fall on his soul.\u00a0 He demonstrates early in the film the signature of such feelings in his rueful expression when he turns back and look at his victim whose dead body is being dragged home by his wife and a child.<\/p>\n

Back in Kabul, he makes friends with a taxi driver, played by Sher Alam Meeskin Ustad, who is occasionally singing while driving him first to a resort in Bamyan in central Afghanistan.\u00a0 He then insistently begs the driver to take him to Kandahar, the Afghan historical city, which was named by Alexander the Great and was one of his favourite Alexandrias in the East.\u00a0 The cabbie vehemently resists the request, but finally Sam\u2019s begging and offering a lot of money soften his heart and agrees to drive him into the most dangerous terrain infested with the Taliban militants.<\/p>\n

Cabbies are famous for their gift of the gab.\u00a0 You can charm them by punctuating the conversation with frequent \u2018interjections on the order of \u201cit\u2019s a crazy world!\u201d\u2019, the Italian philosopher and semiotician, Umberto Eco writes in a short humorous piece, \u201cHow to Use the Taxi Driver.\u201d \u00a0This is what the hashish smoking cabbie says in his beautiful songs in Pashtu:<\/p>\n

Like streams, tears roll past my collar down my neck,<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a crazy brutal world, there is no one to have mercy on me. <\/em><\/p>\n

Along the journey, Sam is stopped in a Taliban check post but manages to flee when the Taliban barrage of bullets miss him.\u00a0 \u00a0The second time, he isn\u2019t so lucky, the Taliban\u00a0\u00a0 captures him and takes him to their mountain hideout.\u00a0 The Taliban are divided on whether to kill the solider or demand a huge ransom for his release.\u00a0 But the Taliban\u2019s commander leaves the verdict about the fate of the soldier to be decided by the villagers in their Jirga<\/em>\u2014the traditional assembly, part of the non-written age-old Afghan ethical code of honour, Pashtunwali<\/em>.\u00a0 After teaching Sam, a statement in Pashtu that he will be using once he is confronted with the villagers: \u201cI killed someone, please forgiveness.\u201d\u00a0 When the soldier reaches the village, the heavily bearded elders convene a Jirga<\/em>, which unanimously pass a resolution that the only one who is able to forgive or kill the solider is a 10-year-old orphan of the dead villager. When the soldier knocks at the door of his victim, he realizes that the person he had killed was, in fact, the village musician.\u00a0 In a highly emotional scene, while all eyes are on him, the boy pensively gazes at the soldier and then sheath his dagger.\u00a0 \u201cForgiveness is mightier and honourable than taking revenge,\u201d the jubilant villages burst into shouts.\u00a0 Then the villagers slaughter a ram on behalf of the Australian soldier\u2014a ceremonious symbol of forgiving the enemy\u2014that in a melodramatic twist, brings the film to a close.\u00a0 The orphan also refuses to accept wads of the US dollars the soldier offers as blood money.\u00a0 So finally, forgiveness and compassion win over revenge\u2014a virtue in Afghan tribal culture.<\/p>\n

American director, Peter Berg previously brought to the screen, Pawhtunwali <\/em>in his war movie, Lone Survivor<\/em> (2013), and combined it with a hyped-up American nationalism. However, Benjamin Gilmour, depicts a bare-bones of the Afghan tradition with its popular jurisdiction.\u00a0 The rich and dense imagery of the rugged beauties of the Afghan mountains, eerie gorges, and the penetrating sound of the Afghan Rubab mingled with Western chillout music at the background shine as the innovative cinematography.\u00a0 The 19th<\/sup> century narrow lane of the bird market in Kabul is shown as untacked by the endless war.\u00a0 The stunning graphic close-ups on the \u2018eagle eye\u2019 and \u2018beaky\u2019 noses of the Afghan characters were well selected to portray the traditional image of the Afghan other in Western discourse.\u00a0 The Taliban are portrayed with their heavily kohl-lined eyes and shoulder-length hair spilling from their black turbans.\u00a0 This is the lasting thing one may love about the realism of the film.\u00a0 But, such a realism habitually relapses into a raw documentary genre. \u00a0<\/em>The Jirga<\/em> film isn\u2019t an exception.<\/p>\n

A good film as French philosopher, Alan Badiou, says brings to view a human experience and a film is essentially an art and \u2018imaginary voyage\u2019 for thinking and interpretation.\u00a0 The Jirga<\/em>, indeed, reveals an individual experience of the war, which gives the audience the key to the interpretation of its subject matter.\u00a0 The Jirga <\/em>has a clear message to everyone, to the Taliban, the Westerners, and the Afghans: lo and behold, even in the horror of warfare you can\u2019t escape moral accountability<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In his trials and tribulations, the protagonist of the film isn\u2019t alone.\u00a0 The film maker gives his own account, as a story-within-the-story of a profound furtive immorality of the Pakistani authorities.\u00a0 Gilmour and his crew first travel to Pakistan to shoot the film in the tribal area along the Durand Line the imaginary border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and avoid immanent risks to their lives for shooting the film in Afghanistan.\u00a0 He had the help of a sympathetic person in Pakistan who was ready to pay $100,000 for the production of the film.\u00a0 After reading the script of the screenplay, the feared Pakistani military spy agency, the ISI turns down Gilmour\u2019s pleas and forced the financier to pull out of the deal.\u00a0 Gilmour wasn\u2019t lucky like the director of the Kite Runner, <\/em>another film on Afghanistan, which was allowed to be shot in Kashgar, China. Then the film maker and his crew decide to shoot the film in the most dangerous place on earth, Kandahar at all costs.<\/p>\n

Dr Ehsan Azari Stanizai is a lecturer in literary studies at Graduate School, National Institute for Dramatic Arts (NIDA)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Benjamin Gilmour\u2019s feature film Jirga remedies maladies of guilt with bravery and redemption \u00a0 Ehsan Azari Stanizai It<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,318],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-news-2"],"yoast_head":"\nWar Movie Pillories Military Hauteur - Taand English<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"War Movie Pillories Military Hauteur - Taand English\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0Benjamin Gilmour\u2019s feature film Jirga remedies maladies of guilt with bravery and redemption \u00a0 Ehsan Azari Stanizai It\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Taand English\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-09-23T04:36:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azari.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"345\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"taandcom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"taandcom\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"taandcom\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/3681fac18d733fc714b6134f14e0d46a\"},\"headline\":\"War Movie Pillories Military Hauteur\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-09-23T04:36:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348\"},\"wordCount\":1118,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azari.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"articles\",\"news\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/taand.net\/en\/?p=2348\",\"name\":\"War Movie Pillories Military Hauteur - 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