Film about change captures a moment in time with honest precision.
With a sympathetic filmmaker’s eye that voices the life and the undercurrents of an evolution and revolution in the process, filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf seizes the opportunity that was golden to her by exploring a moment in history as it is currently being written. One of the benefits of the American’s decision to topple over the Taliban regime was that allowed for generations of Afghan women to finally have the fundamental right to speak their mind and do simple things like read a book, it also allowed this filmmaker’s daughter to plop herself in the middle of an important movement giving her an easy subject matter to discuss with her camera lenses.
This Iranian/French production shows the painstakingly slow start that takes place when a third world country is under the sort of massive economic, social and political upheaval that brings about plenty of suffering. This picture targets the role of the woman in such a state with a film protagonist who’s caught inside this displacement and whose face explains the will to survive and her growing aspirations inside a mountain of negative events. Serving up this portrait is exactly one of those faces from a picked at random with first-time actor Agheleh Rezaie in the role of Nogreh. She plays this chick breaking out of an egg with a naivety and an outspoken sense that clashes with the rest of her colleagues as well as with her elder grandfather. Makhmalbaf uses a nice set-up of shots showing her in baby-step mode transition which often shows her inhaling freedom in small amounts. The cast of other characters offer other viewpoints and are played by people who didn’t need to go to acting school to deliver a true portrayal of the faces of Afghanistan, since they are the victims themselves.
It isn’t an accident that this poignantly raw picture picked up the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film festival this year. Not without it problems, this film still works as a mouth-piece for victims of displacement and of isolation and scenes like the one where young women discuss what they want to be in life is especially endearingly and particularly strong. At Five in the Afternoon unfolds itself within this poetically extreme slow pace, which will definitely put to test some audiences, but within the text and the scrumptious visuals of emptiness in the color of rumble which symbolize life without growth. Depicted images that clash dearly with the hope and white shoes of the lead figure are images of sufferance where people live inside junkyard pieces of airplanes or the harsh sequences that show animals and children dying.
The young filmmaker will have plenty of time to hone her craft, but for a third film this director in her young twenties has a very promising filmmaking career ahead of her and has plenty of more doors to open with her camera as her witness. Makhmalbaf’s At Five in the Afternoon is a symbol of hope that is well expressed but is sometimes loses itself in wanting to present too many symbol events.
Viewed in original language with English subtitles.
