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| Not That Osama: The Afghan film Osama was a surprise winner at the Golden Globes. |
Osama, directed by Siddiq Barmak, is the first film shot entirely in Afghanistan since the rise and fall of the Taliban, and it’s a heartbreaking look back at life under that regime. It’s about a 12-year-old girl, played by a marvelous nonactor, Marina Golbahari, who is disguised as a boy by her mother, a widowed nurse, so she can work to support the family. (The Taliban has ordered all women indoors.) For a while, she pulls off the ruse, working in the grocery store of a family friend. But when she is herded into the local Taliban school, her terror becomes palpable. A cocky local street kid knows her secret—it’s he who calls her Osama—and, between taunts, defends her; but it is only a matter of time before she is found out.
Osama could be a stand-in for an entire generation of suffering Afghan women, and yet she is fiercely individual. Her secret revealed, she shivers in fear; only her eyes show through her burka, but they tell us all we need to know. Married in public to a goaty old man with three other wives, she is dolled up for her wedding night, and rarely has there been so obscenely precise a depiction of ravaged innocence. This young girl has nothing to live for—and an entire life ahead of her in which to live it.
(1
hr. 22 mins.; PG-13)
— PETER RAINER
Opens February 6
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
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