User Reviews

Saw this today at TIFF. The documentary is actually somewhat emotional, in that you can feel the ideals, the respect, the openness, and the doubts from that of the director or it's protagonists, through the structure of the movie. But then again the guy beside me nodded off.

The doc combines more or less 5 different journeys/stories, if you will - and some surprises. One is of the re-telling from an Al-Jazzera's journalist; another from the perspective of an French archaeologist; a Canadian/Afghani actress; a local Afghani that lived in the Bamiyan valley; and the director's POV.

*** possible spoilers**** The style mixes personal accounts, videos, pictures, and memories, of and on anything related to the 2 Giant Buddhas that was destroyed by the Talibans. These methods are like any conventional docs. These methods, through the 5 journeys give the documentary many personal levels/angles of emotional points of entry. And the camera, the music, the silences together regards the valley with warmth and respect. There are back stories, legends, comparisons, future plans that encompasses and paints a multi-dimensional sphere of sentiment on the subject. And there is even a brief use of FX to convey a dream sequence (the director pointed out).

In the Q&A, the director indicated he will go back to the region to show the film, with an Arabic track (credit shows a German and English narrator versions), and as well as interpretors for the illiterates.

I agree with the comment that the film had insufficient structure and no identifiable point of view. Lack of structure isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this topic would have benefited from a more straightforward approach.

You don't know who is behind the camera half the time--that person seems to change. Who is in the UN airplane--is that Frei? Is that him in those meetings? In the segment in China when looking for the re-creation, who was speaking? Does Frei speak Chinese? Who was writing the letters to Nelofer Pazira and what was their point? I enjoyed the long lingering closeups of Pazira's beautiful face and especially those amazing green eyes, but they were completely gratuitous. If she were unattractive I'm sure she wouldn't have appeared in the film at all. Seemed like Frei was as interested in filming her as in filming his erstwhile topic. Don't blame him, but seems like that should be a different movie. Also as mentioned Frei did not succeed in connecting Buddhism in general to these statues. I saw this film with five others and none felt any particular historical or artistic loss at the destruction of the Buddhas. Did any modern Buddhists care about what was happening in Afghanistan? Seemed not. Maybe few even knew about the existence of these statues, or didn't care because they were only large and old, not beautiful. They were ugly in fact.

The walking-around scenes were confusing. There is a scene in which Pazira climbs up inside then seems to be looking down on the Buddha's face--but it had already been blown up by then. I lost my bearings.

This film needed a good disciplined editor I think, to give this raw material some shape and to clarify its point. Time spent lingering on Pazira's eyes could have been better spent on providing context. It should have been possible to present the Taliban's rationale directly from a Taliban. Maps showing where the Bamiyan Valley is exactly, where it stood on the trade route, and how Buddhism might have reached the area in the first place would also have helped. Also to identify what languages people were speaking and how the local Hazaris got to be there. Perhaps these details were missing in favor of a more subjective or "artistic" approach, but that seems to me more simply a lack of discipline than an expression of art.

Still, in its favor, the music was very good though maybe local music might have been more fitting, and I give credit for simply exposing viewers to footage of a part of the world westerners rarely get to see.