Whale Rider

Whale Rider
Made in New Zealand 


by Niki Caro (writer, director)
2002

Together (Film from China)

TOGETHER
He ni zai yi qi (original title)
Made in China

by Kaige Chen (Director, Writer and Actor)
2003





This is a story about love, commitment, and sacrifice. I must see this film again and again. The story is so attractive to me because the father loves his son so much. The sacrifice that the father makes to help his son learn the violin to his greatest potential is astounding. His father leaves his village with the boy in order for him to enter a music competition. The winner will be able to take lessons from a famous violin teacher. This will establish their future and help them to live a good life.

The boy should win this competition by a landslide and doesn't because the father is not from the city, nor has the correct family heritage, neither has paid a bribe to any judges. So, then, he finds another teacher who is brilliant, but is really down and out on his luck. This man loves to hear the boy play the violin, but is so wrapped up in his own problems, he doesn't help him enough to succeed. But in the end, the boys endless lessons lifts the teacher up from his downward state of mind. But this is too late because the father has already obtained new lessons from the master teacher who will bring success to the boy.

When the final competition draws near, the father decides to return to his village without the boy. The boy is so devastated that he cannot play in the competition, and goes to find his father. He realizes all the love and sacrifice that the father has given him and cannot perform without him by his side. The father had not realized how much the boy needed him. He thought that just giving him a good life would sustain him and fulfill him. But, the boy, like many of us, want the relationship with his father, not the success of life. Yes, the boy loves to play the violin, but he loves his father more and needs him in his life.

Of course, there is so much more to this story, but I don't want to give it all away. If you love music, you will love this story. If you are looking for a story about love, commitment and sacrifice, this is the movie for you.

Daughters of Afghanistan

DAUGHTERS OF AFGHANISTAN
Made in Afghanistan

by Robin Benger (From Canada)
2003







This true story is a report of 5 different women living in Afghanistan. Journalist Sally Armstrong takes us to their homes and shows us the life that they live.
When I see the cruelty of the Taliban toward women, I want to help in any way I can. Ms. Armstrong helps us see that the isolation of women does not promote growth, education, nor vigor of life. How can these women ever reach their God-given potential, if they do not have the freedom to be who they should be? What a tragedy and rape of the family this country is in. Women cannot even show their faces in public while we in America have so much. Even the leadership of this country, according to the film, bends it's ear to the tole of the Islamic Sharia Law. Anyone can see that this isolation and oppression of women has gone too far for far too long.

Leila

Leila
Made in Iran

by Dariush Mehrjui (Director, Writer, Producer)
1998




This film is set in Iran. Leila is a young woman who gets married and finds out that she cannot have children. Her husband Reza loves her and trys to convince her that it doesn't matter to him if they do not have children. But her mother-in-law pleads and begs her to help her husband to have children. Leila trys every course to have children even visiting an orphanage to see if they could adopt. Her husband again says that he loves her and that they do not need children.

Leila is very distrought and listens too much to the mother-in-law who convinces her that Reza needs another wife. In Iran and under Muslim law this is permitted and accepted to take a second wife. So the search begins for the second wife. Many times Reza says he will not marry another, but he goes to these encounters to meet other potential wifes. He meets many, but turns down many. Until one day, Reza accepts one woman to be his second wife. She is a widow herself and very quiet.

When the wedding day comes, Leila is still in the house when the new couple comes back to their house. Leila cannot bare this pain to see her husband with another wife. So, she decides to flee back to her own home. Her parents take her in and protect her. After some months, Reza takes his second wife to another home so that Leila will come home to him. In the end, Reza's second has a child, but leaves him to marry another man. But the child is his. Reza's mother cares and raises the child. Leila seems content that now this is done. Reza has a child, but no second wife.
She seems to have done her "duty" as to be sure her husband has a child.

Even as painful as this was for Leila, she seems to think that this was what she had to do because she loved him. Yet she could not endure the pain of having another woman in her own house. She thought at the beginning that it would be possible to live with her in the home.

She says to the child that if not for her, this child would not have life. Maybe this makes her think that all of this is acceptable. The end result makes her more like a hero than a villian. The man was also in pain to leave Leila behind, yet he continued to marry another and have a child with a second wife. He truely seemed to be horrified of the possibility, yet able to go through with the marriage and child baring.

So, what is the message?

Foreign Films

Thanks to my friend Janat, from Kazakhstan, I have just seen some great films worth watching.

1. Osama (PG-13)-the first film done in Afghanastan since the Taliban ruled. Osama was a girl who posed as a boy to feed her family. That is the only way she could have worked to put bread on the table. What a sad story about only one widow and her family during the terrible Taliban time in Afghanistan. This shows the horrors of how the Taliban treat women.








2. The Syrian Bride (2004)-shows how difficult life is when governments fight over land. This bride could never return to her home land once she has crossed into Syria.







3. Children of Heaven (PG)-This is a beautiful story in Iran of a brother caring for his sister by sharing his shoes with her.









4. To Live (1994)-This story is set in China during 4 decades of one man who survives a tragic life. He wants to live, but he loses so many loved ones during this time. It is a tragedy that I loved because of the survival that one faces in a lifetime in China. Fugui begins rich, then gambles it all away, but to be happy that he was not rich when the communists came to take over.








I am amazed at the depth that these films show us. How we can live and survive through much turmoil. How we need to be grateful for what we have. And, how we need to help in any way that we can throughout the world.