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100Presented without preachiness or affectation, Kandahar is a short, matter-of-fact visit to hell.
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100Makhmalbaf's astounding and haunting imagery tells a story of devastation, desperation and poverty.
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The director manages to maintain a steady streak of grim humor. Extreme repression can be bleakly funny in its idiocy, when viewed from a distance.
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90You won't forget this film -- it's devastating.
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90This remarkably revealing and timely film, in which the depiction of pain and sorrow is suffused with a sense of beauty and a graceful, flowing style, more than lives up to glowing advance notices.
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90Though it might lack in Hollywood production values, it overflows with moral impact.
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89The story is simple and true-to-life, and the technique is naturalistic, using nonprofessional actors, photography that emphasizes the characters' environment, and deliberate narrative pacing that mimics real-time events.
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88Kandahar does not provide deeply drawn characters, memorable dialogue or an exciting climax. Its traffic is in images.
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88Watching this film wakes you up; it is a window on an Iran and an Afghanistan we should have taken account of long ago -- seen though a master's eye, felt through a poet's touch.
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88A bleak road movie that often ambles. But its many moments of poetic grace make this haunting and harrowing journey a rewarding one.
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88Kandahar found itself in real-life controversy last December, when one of its actors was accused of murder.
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80The result is stunning -- both as a narrative film and as a document of the place and time.
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80A visually exalting, emotionally horrifying view of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
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80That's the movie: It's taking us inside the burqa to the woman.
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80Abrupt and fragmentary, but powerful. [Dec 10 2001, p. 111]
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75While it's often harsh in style and melancholy in subject, Kandahar taps into veins of humor and compassion as well.
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75The world's newfound familiarity with the region's troubles only make Kandahar more compelling.
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75Pazira, whose sapphire eyes blaze through the lattice of her slate-gray burqa, isn't much of an actress, as her singsong narration attests. But when not speaking, she has a commanding presence and is an effective witness to the ravages of war.
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75What proves the validity of Kandahar is that, by the end, all these scenes are human ruins of the same nightmare world.
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70Makhmalbaf shot this film under extremely difficult circumstances, and it sometimes shows; but it's still an important achievement.
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70A stark and beautiful film traces a Afghan woman's journey across a landscape we may never understand.
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70The movie feels truncated, but it communicates a certain urgency and at times a powerful sense of the absurd.
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67With its lyrical vision of oppression, looks, if anything, milder now than it might have before the war.
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63Among the unforgettable images is that of artificial limbs floating to earth on parachutes, while below, one-legged men on crutches race each other to the prizes.
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63Unfortunately, you are often distractingly aware that you are watching re-enactments of real events.
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60A film worth your time, and if you know going into it that there's no closure, it'll give you all the more freedom to enjoy what IS there.
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The acting is mainly horrendous, the English dialogue frequently awkward, but they're overcome by the beautiful colors and settings and a grim sense of the uncanny spilling over into twisted humor.
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50Kandahar feels like a Magritte painting rendered in sand tones, and your eyes are drawn to the screen. There aren't enough of these moments, though, and Mr. Makhmalbaf lessens their power by repeating them.
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masoudb.9Good.
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RubyQ6