The Film Language and Character Fate of "Osama"

The Film Language and Character Fate of "Osama" / Van Damming /

Implicit and Condensed: Excellent Film Language The Afghan film "Osama" was produced ten years ago in 2003, and won an award at the Cannes Film Festival that year, and was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film the following year. It is an award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (often leading the selection of the Oscars), which is obviously different from the fact that such a film that directly exposed the dictatorship and brutality of the Taliban was born only two years after the 9/11 incident in 2001. The position is related to political factors. Of course, one should not shy away from the political content of the film, but the director, Stick Barmark (and screenwriter), expressed the film's ideological theme and used the film's means of expression, that is, the use of film language, which cannot be ignored.

At the beginning of the film, not the protagonist but the sub-protagonist appears first; and the first shot is not a character, but a close-up shot of a prop in the character's hand, which is the iron cylinder in the hand of Espandi, a boy who sells incense and prays for blessings. . Boys hawking and praying for blessings are borrowed in the name of goddesses to drive away bad luck, eliminate disasters and ward off evil spirits (maybe it is really good for heart and lung health), which is undoubtedly a very distinctive expression of local customs. However, comparing its function of expelling bad luck with the tragic fate of the film's protagonist, there is a great sense of irony here.

What we see next is this: Blessed Boy gets a reward of N dollars for his shrewdness, and then goes to sell it to a new buyer with a steel cylinder - the film's heroine Osama and her mother appear for the first time so far, They are trying to get rid of the boy's entanglement. The boy claimed that "this blessing is free, and the gentleman will pay for it", and said to the camera: "Don't shoot me, shoot the woman over there!" The "woman" refers to the women who came to the street to demonstrate ——I saw the women in the procession, all covered in blue veils, shouting the slogan "We want work, we want the right to work! No politics, we are starving, give us work"; and in this paragraph , there is obviously a photographer who is even willing to pay the photographer to shoot (at this time we also hear a "voice-over" that should also be ordered by this person, asking the boy to quickly follow the parade that has turned the corner) , but he has never appeared in the screen of this paragraph of the film.

It would also make sense to interpret this invisible photographer as the photographer of the film crew that was filming the "Osama" film; but the film later shows the Taliban holding a public verdict, with two men and a woman. Western journalists were actually sentenced to death by shooting and being buried alive for their journalistic activities (the “crime” was the “espionage” of pagan journalists), and the so-called “criminal evidence” immediately presented by the sentence was a video camera! Only then did we realize that the boy Espandi said "don't shoot me, shoot the woman over there" is exactly what he was talking about. He also filmed the cameraman of the parade. He should be the male Western journalist who finally appeared in the footage of the trial session. This was also confirmed by the dynamic images of the boy Espandi and the women's march that were reproduced when the sentencer checked the video on the camera.

We also recalled that the previous footage of the women's march was shaky, which indicated that it was the result of a journalist-style rush to film. When the Taliban arrested several women in the march and put them on the prison van, there was also a scene where Taliban armed men beat the camera with a baton until the camera turned "black". The presence of the off-screen shooter also suggests that its camera was completely shut down after it was beaten so badly that it immediately malfunctioned. The photographer, a male Western journalist, may have been captured here. Compared with the character image that was completely written or implied at the beginning, another western female reporter had a slight explanation in the film - she was arrested in the hospital, and the director has another way to deal with this. , it is expressed through the point of view of the girl Osama on the side, that is, the sighting object of the eyewitness.

If the idea of ​​the film embodied here is that he was shot and buried alive just because he did his job as a journalist, then it exposes the atrocious politics and atrocious laws of the ultra-conservative, ultra-narrow nationalist Taliban. , is indeed ruthless and profound, and here at the same time reflects the director's level of use of film language, and it is even more clever and highly artistic, because it handles the film superbly with deep connotations and very subtle methods. The potential plot clues and potential character relationships of the story.

Another example of the film’s subtlety and simplicity is that after Osama went with her mother to take care of the patient, the mother and daughter were taken home by the patient’s family using the front bar and back seat of the bicycle. They were disciplined by the Taliban on the way, accusing her mother of fighting. The hem does not cover her bare feet, which will trigger a man's excitement. In the whole process of this paragraph, the director deliberately used a close-up shot, so that the Taliban only had "voice-over" accusations, and the pictures with their faces were never revealed, and they were all excluded from the picture.

In the development of the main line of the storyline, the key point of the exposure of Osama's female identity is also handled very neatly in the film - that is when she climbed a tree but couldn't get down, and was punished by the school for hanging into a well. After the "period" and unable to control himself, the "red" on the calf exposed at the bottom of the trousers finally revealed his gender - in this paragraph, the director gave a few shots with very surprising shooting angles (as shown below in the hanging well). shooting angle, etc.), no other more ramifications or language.

As for the fact that Osama was finally gifted as a female slave to an old local landlord as a concubine (the sex slave wives and concubines locked in the courtyard of his house, even in groups!) and ended his virginity, It was suggested to the audience by the scene of the old landlord returning at night entering the iron bucket for bathing with hot water. As the end of the film, it is also the intensive and final echo of the entire film's subtle and concise techniques, which makes people feel endless emotions and sighs in the aesthetic association. As a result, the film also made its length less than 90 minutes to end in 83 minutes, which provided the opportunity for the cinema screening to add other short films, and also won the niche screening sufficient time for discussion and discussion after the viewing. . The subtlety and condensed language of the film "Osama" is integrated into the overall documentary style, but this does not prevent it from interspersed with some stream of consciousness shots, such as the one showing the girl Osama jumping rope several times. lens. It first appears in the film, precisely in her sleep dream, at the moment when her mother, at the advice of her grandmother, cut off her girlish braid - the reverse of her fate. start. The action of skipping rope should be said to properly show the innocence of the protagonist who is still a virgin girl, and has a high degree of generalization or symbolic meaning. The soundtrack of the film is very ethnic and symbolic, such as the soundtrack that resembles some kind of weird sound effect at the beginning, as well as the mournful and weeping soundtrack melody of the whole film. In addition, the film's photography and lighting are also very particular, full of artistic charm. The whole film can be said to be quite harmonious and perfect in art, which reflects the director's artistic quality and skill. The fate of Osama: The relatively minor factor , on the premise of affirming the basic anti-Taliban tyranny theme of the film, and the plot of the film itself, led to the final result of the personal encounter or fate of the girl protagonist Osama in the film. There are other relatively minor factors that I think are also worth noting and analyzing. There are obviously three main characters involved here: the mother, the grandmother, and the boy Espandi.

(1) The mother took her daughter Osama (before menswear) out, which was dangerous in the situation at that time, which was criticized by the grandmother. (2) Grandma was confused by legends and stories, and easily believed in the possibility of a boy becoming a girl or a girl becoming a boy under the rainbow, and unrealistically believed that there was no difference between men and women, which was contrary to the tyranny of the Taliban in power; in the end, the mother obeyed the will of the grandmother, While Osama cuts off her braids in her sleep and makes her disguise herself as a man to get a job (the mother herself is about to lose her job because the hospital she works for is about to close down) - here, two senior women try to save the family's economy It is obviously unwise to rely on the practice of such a fledgling little girl, and it is also a shallow opinion of local women that is almost taken for granted.

(3) The boy Espandi, he had an encounter with Osama from the beginning (when the mother took her daughter to the street to meet the women's demonstration), of course he had a good impression of her. However, it was he, knowing that she was a girl, when they were involved in the Islamic school training together, he actually led her to do a boy's game - climbing a tree. The reason for the exposure of Osama's female identity was during the second tree-climbing activity that Espandi arranged for her (in order to prove "she" to other schoolchildren who had doubts about Osama's gender) not female). But Osama is not a capable boy like him after all, and this "proof" just became a "counter-proof" in the end. Smart is mistaken by smart. Clever Espandi did a foolish thing here - he loved Osama but killed Osama (mother and grandmother did the same thing). After the film showed the extremely distressing scene of Espandi being chased by everyone because of Osama's gender "exposed", his image was never shown again. I believe that he will be saddened and regretted for the rest of his life. Finally, (4) the secondary factor in addition to the above three people is Osama himself. Although Osama has not lost her virginity, she is still sensible. She knows the power of the Taliban. The film also depicts her apprehension about what could happen if she disguised herself as a man. However, she did not make any objection or refusal to the arrangements and actions of her family and the people around her, whether it was "good intentions" or helpless actions. Osama's youth and weak character also decided She could not have any resistance to it, so her tragic fate became inevitable in the context of the tyranny of the Taliban. Although she is still "alive" if you compare her to the death of two Western journalists under the tyranny of the Taliban, we can't help but worry: when will she be born? March 21-22, 2013 in Meiyuan Pavilion, Hangzhou, with supplements on the 23rd