The Breadwinner
A very boring, western view of the Taliban and Afghanistan as a whole. Compared to Saloon's other films, there's a sense of not wanting to engage with the culture depicted. Where their usual fare is rich with embellishing specific aspects of Celtic culture and mythology, here it feels they have a superficial understanding of the region and are afraid to admit it. The fact the film opens up mentioning Cyrus and Alexander the Great but feigns to mention the leadership that actually formed modern Afghanistan such as Ahmad Abdali, Abdunallah Khan, and Hirwais Hotak just comes off as extremely dissonant. This narrative is being written from the perspective of westerners making judgements on the people of Afghanistan and it's less concerned with the reasoning of their ideology and their perspective as much as it is aiming for cheap misery porn of people they have no real investment in otherwise. It cares more for a myopic sense of social justice than it does the people who form the basis of that society, and it's such a boring way to explore this topic.
This is not to say the Taliban should not be condemned/vilified or that women do not suffer under their rule. But I feel the film just has a vapid view of that, where its view of this society is a strict dichotomy between the educated and tolerant vs ignorant villains that justify the regime. A movie that had a similar premise, 2003's Osama, had done this with far more nuance. In that film, it's not as much about the oppression of patriarchy as much as it is also the futility of women being able to live to up the expectations of masculinity within that patriarchal society, not only examining the obstacles women face but also what this patriarchy means for men too. Osama treated the people enforcing this patriarchy as having some level of wisdom but also being complacent with the status quo and telling themselves, in spite of the harm done, it's necessary for their society to function.
The Breadwinner just has no subtlety with this. If someone enforces the Taliban rule they're portrayed as the most over the top and bombastic asshole imaginable, never reaching for an understanding of these people or why this rule exists at all. It gets even more tone deaf when it starts acting like being male gives you freedom and self-autonomy without digging at what the Taliban expects its men to be. What is the purpose of this premise if it doesn't want to explore the meaning of masculinity in a patriarchal society? It just assumes that the oppression begins and ends with being a woman and this is such a dumb view of Taliban society.
The narrative itself is decently constructed in terms of plotting and hitting its chekov's gun but I feel that's to its detriment since its more concerned with justifying a cathartic climax than saying anything meaningful about the Taliban's patriarchy. It views opposition to it as some great moral grandstanding which makes it come off as more cinematic than grounded, making it hard to take it seriously. I feel it's also completely unbelievable that the only person Parvana actually associates with while pretending to be male is another girl doing the exact same thing. This is such a missed opportunity to not only explore differing experiences of trying to blend in as a male but also how boys her age understand the meaning of masculinity within society. This relationship is mainly used as a vehicle to stir a personal conflict with no resolution and just embellish its misery porn with the shitty jobs and people they're forced to meet in a way I find painfully one-dimensional. All it has to say about these people is that they're cruel assholes and when it dwells on this point for most of the movie without reflecting on any specific ideology or cultural idea, then what's the value here? For westerners to gloat about how much better their society is for women's rights? It feels as if it's attacking a strawman than any real tangible thing and that's so ineffective as criticism of the Taliban. It gets worse with how completely moronic Parvana acts in these interactions, why would anyone believe that someone who's educated about her nation's language and culture would struggle to come up with a masculine name? I guess because a western audience would be too stupid to come up with such a name themselves?
Actually I think this is the core issue I have with the character writing - the lead characters are written to come across as banal avatars of an American family. Not once do they ever invoke Islamic ideals or principles, or even show any sort of formalities you would expect from a central Asian nation. The way the hijab/burqa is portrayed is as a symbol of oppression, which is such a western view of things because Muslim women wouldn't take this the same way. This is made even worse by how the family has these sibling debacles that wouldn't be out of place in an American sitcom, which to me reads like they couldn't contextualize a family beyond anything not identifiably western. It's very disinterested in the personal politics of these people and how they feel about their culture beyond being opposed to the obvious oppression, which in my mind was intentionally designed to make the leads more palpable to a western audience and I can't help but find some disgust in that. It's as if to say the culture is inherently irredeemable and that only western styled lifestyles and values have worth. Apparently the film took out some egregious details from the novel such as how the leads wanted to use the first bit of money they gained to spread anti-government propaganda, which thank god they at least had some restraint where the original author (a Canadian white woman) didn't.
This is possibly the most boring film Saloon has made visually as well. Its composition is so static and movement is extremely limited. Something like Song of the Sea would use its physical storytelling to convey so much meaning within any context but here the most you'll get is maybe a bit of movement between sitting and standing. One scene in particular really gets me where a character is in the midst of a prison outbreak and is threatened at gun point. Typical Saloon visuals would make a scene like this into a dynamic fight scene but here they just have him get awkwardly shot and cutaway when he retaliates, all within a basic, static composition. From what I gathered this is Saloon's lowest budget film and it shows, and I feel this lack of visual fidelity and diversity is symptom to how the movie was most likely about the "social consciousness" of its conceit than it was about its artistry.
https://amysmartgirls.com/an-interview-with-nora-twomey-director-of-the-breadwinner-a-new-film-that-tells-the-amazing-f1356f39df2d
According to this interview it is stated that there was input from Afghan people but I question what she really got from this. I don't think being born into a culture gives you better or more inspired insight than someone who isn't but I do think this interview suggests that she had no interest in the society of Afghanistan itself. She was more interested in the suffering of women within the country than the socio-political context of it and felt it was more important to convey a depiction of this than to really dive into the culture of Afghanistan itself, aside from some superficialities. Based on the interview, her source primarily came from feminist organizations and Americanized refugees so the outcome here is perhaps telling. I don't want to toss shade at her for this as I feel she came into this with good intentions and has displayed talent working with this studio, but as I'm a student of world history and have a particular interest in west/central Asian societies the way this narrative is westernize does strike me as particularly glaring. That she was not interested in the broader society but moreso a western ideal of feminine emancipation which feels deeply misplaced in a grounded, earnest attempt at discussing life under the Taliban.
To me this is a movie that comes from a place of narrow intellectual investment and a need to neuter the topic to make it broadly digestible. I've consumed works by Afghan people that are far more provocative of their own culture and lucent of how people lived under the Taliban, but I feel Twomey doesn't respect the western audience enough to aim for this approach and is also confined by her own habits of western filmmaking conventions. The best way I'd look at this within the legacy of Cartoon Saloon is of a film that's more interested in its social importance than an expression of culture, and that's why it doesn't sit well with me. Frankly, the fact Angelina Jolie was the executive producer of this project is perhaps more telling than what most people would suggest.
This is not to say the Taliban should not be condemned/vilified or that women do not suffer under their rule. But I feel the film just has a vapid view of that, where its view of this society is a strict dichotomy between the educated and tolerant vs ignorant villains that justify the regime. A movie that had a similar premise, 2003's Osama, had done this with far more nuance. In that film, it's not as much about the oppression of patriarchy as much as it is also the futility of women being able to live to up the expectations of masculinity within that patriarchal society, not only examining the obstacles women face but also what this patriarchy means for men too. Osama treated the people enforcing this patriarchy as having some level of wisdom but also being complacent with the status quo and telling themselves, in spite of the harm done, it's necessary for their society to function.
The Breadwinner just has no subtlety with this. If someone enforces the Taliban rule they're portrayed as the most over the top and bombastic asshole imaginable, never reaching for an understanding of these people or why this rule exists at all. It gets even more tone deaf when it starts acting like being male gives you freedom and self-autonomy without digging at what the Taliban expects its men to be. What is the purpose of this premise if it doesn't want to explore the meaning of masculinity in a patriarchal society? It just assumes that the oppression begins and ends with being a woman and this is such a dumb view of Taliban society.
The narrative itself is decently constructed in terms of plotting and hitting its chekov's gun but I feel that's to its detriment since its more concerned with justifying a cathartic climax than saying anything meaningful about the Taliban's patriarchy. It views opposition to it as some great moral grandstanding which makes it come off as more cinematic than grounded, making it hard to take it seriously. I feel it's also completely unbelievable that the only person Parvana actually associates with while pretending to be male is another girl doing the exact same thing. This is such a missed opportunity to not only explore differing experiences of trying to blend in as a male but also how boys her age understand the meaning of masculinity within society. This relationship is mainly used as a vehicle to stir a personal conflict with no resolution and just embellish its misery porn with the shitty jobs and people they're forced to meet in a way I find painfully one-dimensional. All it has to say about these people is that they're cruel assholes and when it dwells on this point for most of the movie without reflecting on any specific ideology or cultural idea, then what's the value here? For westerners to gloat about how much better their society is for women's rights? It feels as if it's attacking a strawman than any real tangible thing and that's so ineffective as criticism of the Taliban. It gets worse with how completely moronic Parvana acts in these interactions, why would anyone believe that someone who's educated about her nation's language and culture would struggle to come up with a masculine name? I guess because a western audience would be too stupid to come up with such a name themselves?
Actually I think this is the core issue I have with the character writing - the lead characters are written to come across as banal avatars of an American family. Not once do they ever invoke Islamic ideals or principles, or even show any sort of formalities you would expect from a central Asian nation. The way the hijab/burqa is portrayed is as a symbol of oppression, which is such a western view of things because Muslim women wouldn't take this the same way. This is made even worse by how the family has these sibling debacles that wouldn't be out of place in an American sitcom, which to me reads like they couldn't contextualize a family beyond anything not identifiably western. It's very disinterested in the personal politics of these people and how they feel about their culture beyond being opposed to the obvious oppression, which in my mind was intentionally designed to make the leads more palpable to a western audience and I can't help but find some disgust in that. It's as if to say the culture is inherently irredeemable and that only western styled lifestyles and values have worth. Apparently the film took out some egregious details from the novel such as how the leads wanted to use the first bit of money they gained to spread anti-government propaganda, which thank god they at least had some restraint where the original author (a Canadian white woman) didn't.
This is possibly the most boring film Saloon has made visually as well. Its composition is so static and movement is extremely limited. Something like Song of the Sea would use its physical storytelling to convey so much meaning within any context but here the most you'll get is maybe a bit of movement between sitting and standing. One scene in particular really gets me where a character is in the midst of a prison outbreak and is threatened at gun point. Typical Saloon visuals would make a scene like this into a dynamic fight scene but here they just have him get awkwardly shot and cutaway when he retaliates, all within a basic, static composition. From what I gathered this is Saloon's lowest budget film and it shows, and I feel this lack of visual fidelity and diversity is symptom to how the movie was most likely about the "social consciousness" of its conceit than it was about its artistry.
https://amysmartgirls.com/an-interview-with-nora-twomey-director-of-the-breadwinner-a-new-film-that-tells-the-amazing-f1356f39df2d
According to this interview it is stated that there was input from Afghan people but I question what she really got from this. I don't think being born into a culture gives you better or more inspired insight than someone who isn't but I do think this interview suggests that she had no interest in the society of Afghanistan itself. She was more interested in the suffering of women within the country than the socio-political context of it and felt it was more important to convey a depiction of this than to really dive into the culture of Afghanistan itself, aside from some superficialities. Based on the interview, her source primarily came from feminist organizations and Americanized refugees so the outcome here is perhaps telling. I don't want to toss shade at her for this as I feel she came into this with good intentions and has displayed talent working with this studio, but as I'm a student of world history and have a particular interest in west/central Asian societies the way this narrative is westernize does strike me as particularly glaring. That she was not interested in the broader society but moreso a western ideal of feminine emancipation which feels deeply misplaced in a grounded, earnest attempt at discussing life under the Taliban.
To me this is a movie that comes from a place of narrow intellectual investment and a need to neuter the topic to make it broadly digestible. I've consumed works by Afghan people that are far more provocative of their own culture and lucent of how people lived under the Taliban, but I feel Twomey doesn't respect the western audience enough to aim for this approach and is also confined by her own habits of western filmmaking conventions. The best way I'd look at this within the legacy of Cartoon Saloon is of a film that's more interested in its social importance than an expression of culture, and that's why it doesn't sit well with me. Frankly, the fact Angelina Jolie was the executive producer of this project is perhaps more telling than what most people would suggest.
Mini Review: A very boring, western view of the Taliban and Afghanistan as a whole. Compared to Saloon's other films, there's a sense of not wanting to engage with the culture depicted. Where their usual fare is rich with embellishing specific aspects of Celtic culture and mythology, here it feels they have a superficial understanding of the region and are afraid to admit it. The fact the film opens up mentioning Cyrus and Alexander the Great but feigns to...
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