52 Films by Women Vol 3. 29. THE BREADWINNER (Director: Nora Twomey)
Here’s a fun fact: women are more
likely to be nominated – and win – an American Academy Award as Best Director
of an animated feature than helming a live action film. Marjane Sartrapi,
Jennifer Yuh Nelson and, most recently Nora Twomey have been nominated. Brenda
Chapman and Jennifer Lee won in successive years for Brave and Frozen
respectively. Significantly, Sartrapi, Nelson and Chapman have subsequently made
– or are making – the transition to live action films.
The route to directing animation
can be straight forward. You start as ‘head of story’ as Brenda Chapman did and
then convince a producer that you can shepherd a film to completion. Nora
Twomey’s route was different. She co-directed (with Tomm Moore) The Secret of Kells and then spent four
years to bring her animated film version of Deborah Ellis’ novel, The
Breadwinner, to the screen. The film, from Kilkenny’s Cartoon Saloon,
is quite literally a labour of love. It is about the love that an eleven
year-old girl, Parvana (voiced by Saara Chaudry) has for her father, who is
arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.
Unable to be served in shops
under the Taliban’s strict rules, the family of women (and one toddler boy) are
destined to starve until Parvana cuts her hair, dresses in the clothes of her
deceased older brother and pretends to be a boy, hoping to raise enough money
to bribe a prison guard to see her father one last time.
Bacha posh
The novel, first published in
2000, is one of a trilogy – its sequels are Parvana’s
Journey and Mud City. It contains
such ghoulish details as Parvana raiding graves to sell the bones of the dead.
The practice of turning a girl into a boy for purposes of survival is known (in
Dari) as ‘bacha posh’ as described in Jenny Nordberg’s acclaimed 2014
non-fiction book, The Underground Girls
of Kabul.
Deviation from Source Material
Twomey’s film omits the grave
robbing and a supporting character, Mrs Weera, who in the book moves into the
household and joins Parvana’s mother in cutting Parvana’s hair. In the film,
Parvana is inspired by another ‘bacha posh’ who asks for her help selling tea.
The changes made by Twomey and
writer Anita Doron - a director in her own right, with the Canadian film, The Lesser Blessed - work extremely
well. It is less a story of survival, with others making choices for Parvana,
than about a young girl’s determination to see her father again. It is also a
film about the power of stories. In a parallel narrative, Parvana narrates to
young Ali the story of a boy who sets out to rescue his people’s seeds from a
vicious fire god.
The film’s antagonist is a former
student of Parvana’s father who has joined the Taliban and is fully
indoctrinated. He despises his former teacher and asks for Parvana’s hand in
marriage. When Father says Parvana is promised to another, the soldier has him
arrested. He appears again when Parvana and her friend undertake manual labour.
Twomey portrays him as a weak bully, eager to please, and, ultimately a coward.
Not Family Entertainment
Although animated, The
Breadwinner is not family entertainment. It features a scene of
Parvana’s mother being beaten when she first sets out to her husband. Twomey
could have eased up on the accompanying score (by Mychael and Jeff Danna) to
heighten the dramatic impact of the scene. In a live action dramatic film,
violence against women is set to music, but the counterpoint is revenge against
the attackers, accompanied by more triumphant music – it builds to a peak
before the final gunshot, explosion, or whatever. (‘So long, buttwipe’ – boom!)
Here, Twomey doesn’t engage in catharsis through punishment – it is not part of
the discourse of women’s struggle. In general, feminism requires recognition of
women’s equality (in amongst other equalities) and for women to have the same
opportunities and positions of influence in society as men. Replacing or eliminating
men isn’t part of the project. But films by women don’t always fully articulate
the destination of the feminist movement for fear of alienating the audience.
Commercial ‘feel good’ cinema – especially in America – operates as if inequality
doesn’t exist.
By framing the narrative through
Parvana’s love of her father, The Breadwinner isn’t attacking
patriarchy. Parvana gets her love of stories from him and takes his place in
the market selling reading and writing services: ‘anything written, anything
read?’ She is approached by a man who asks her (in her guise as a boy) to read
a letter. It is bad news. Parvana doesn’t charge for the service and the man later
offers a kindness in return.
Changing the frame (contains
spoilers)
Ellis’ book was published before
9/11 – the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September
2001 - and subsequent allied action against the Taliban. The film moves the
action forward so we see jet fighters, explosions and prison guards leaving
their posts in order to flee from the bombing. If there is a catharsis – and
Twomey sets it to flutes or pan pipes – it is that women will have to rebuild a
country devastated by bad men. There is a hopeful ending in which Parvana’s
sister escapes a potentially disastrous arrangement – I won’t describe it – and
Parvana has a saviour who (unseen by us) kills another man. Twomey doesn’t
concern us with the fate of Parvana’s saviour – the narrative thrust renders
this irrelevant. We are supposed to just forget about him; he will disappear
with the other deserters. There is also a sense that his tragedy, through what
we know about him prior to this moment, means he has accepted that he will die
soon, with nothing else to live for. However, I found the side-lining of this
character troubling.
Animation
Cartoon Saloon has a particular
style that accentuates the two-dimensional nature of characters. Faces are
rendered simply: huge eyes, a couple of lines for the nose, an oval mouth.
Parvana’s defining characteristic is the strand of hair that falls down below
her right eye. Under the Taliban edict, women should hide their hair under a
scarf or chador. The strand of hair that falls out of place represents
Parvana’s irrepressible spirit – she can’t help being a girl. When she
transforms herself into a boy, it is the first thing to go. The animation is
rich in shadows and outlines – you wouldn’t mistake it for a Disney film, where
aspects of every character – save for the villains – is rounded off. The
background has some telling detail – a few bricks in a wall, the sparkling
decorations on a dress for sale. It has the simplicity of a children’s picture
book, but given this film is aimed at older children, owing to the violence,
the style isn’t quite appropriate.
Worthy and well-intentioned
Ultimately, The Breadwinner conveys
worthy intentions. It doesn’t fully explore the scenario of a girl pretending
to be a boy. Nor does it attempt to explain the origin and appeal of the
Taliban, who emerged in Afghanistan in 1994 and later Pakistan as the guarantor
of peace and security, albeit at a heavy price – the imposition of strict
Sharia law. The film has modest ambitions and modest returns but doesn’t quite
leap from the screen to create a heroine that you would want to emulate. The
nearest comparable animated film is Disney’s Mulan (1998), in which a
young woman poses as a boy to save her father from military service; the film
was enlivened by the vocal contribution of Eddie Murphy as a dragon sidekick. The
Breadwinner is not conceived as ‘total entertainment’ – a bit of drama
here, a slice of comedy there. Perhaps Cartoon Saloon could rethink its model
to create a film that both takes on a challenging subject and provides more
visual pleasure for its audience.
Reviewed at Arthouse Cinema,
Crouch End, London, Monday 28 May 2018
Comments
Post a Comment