The Breadwinner
Composite Score: 81.6
Starring: Saara Chaudry, Soma Chhaya, Noorin Gulamgaus, Laara Sadiq, Ali Badshah, and Shaista Latif
Director: Nora Twomey
Writers: Anita Doron and Deborah Ellis
Genres: Animation, Drama, Family, War
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material including some violent images
Box Office: $2.79 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
The Breadwinner is an animated film about a family living in Afghanistan during 2001 and their struggle to survive under the oppressive Taliban regime when their father is taken prisoner as a “enemy of Islam”. It tells the story of Parvana as she must disguise herself as a boy to provide for her family and also learn to cope with the increasingly violent world that she lives in. Its story about standing firm in the face of oppression and the importance of family and tradition and story help it speak to an audience beyond what its subject matter might indicate.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
While the story is based on interviews with actual Afghan refugees, its treatment of Islamic extremists as the villains without highlighting the Muslim heritage of its heroine has the potential to perpetuate certain negative stereotypes about people of Middle Easter heritage and Muslims around the world. Yes, the film does portray the Muslim practices of Parvana and her family, but to a casual viewer, the Islamic rules being mandated by the Taliban might seem more familiar and reminiscent of other popular portrayals of Muslims in recent media. This is certainly not the filmmakers’ apparent intent, rather the film seems to be trying to condemn extremism in all forms, but its failure to highlight the ”good” Muslims – making them more generically good people who tell stories and practice religion – feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. To a more practiced viewer, this problem does not present itself, as Parvana’s and her family’s portrayals are intentionally much more familiar to help people see the truly “normal” nature of most Muslims.
The film’s conclusion also leaves only a slight sense of hope, as the family is again reunited, but still living in Kabul with an impending American invasion on the horizon. Condemning the Taliban in a story about Afghanistan is incredibly justified, as they are a wildly conservative extremist group whose impact is almost entirely negative; however, leaving the protagonists as their hometown is about to be invaded by the Americans and thrown into a seemingly constant state of disarray for the next two decades (not even mentioning it in a text crawl after the film ends) also leaves the audience feeling a little bit of tragedy mixed with the hope that comes at the end.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
The film’s story of hope in the face of oppression and condemnation of religious extremist practices remains relevant, even outside of Afghanistan and the Middle East. Extremism is present across the world, be it religious extremism or white supremacy or other forms of discrimination and oppression and must be combated by individuals that believe differently. For Parvana, this resistance did not look like violent attacks but simply choosing to live life in defiance of extremism – disguising herself as a boy and going around in public in a society where women were not allowed out of the house on their own, not allowed to get an education, and expected to be fully covered when they did go out with a male relative. In this way, the film acts as an encouragement to those living under and around oppressive extremism to act against it in any way that you can. It also reminds us that survival can be one of the best ways to resist oppression. Surviving in the face of extremism allows you to tell your story and raise awareness and helps others also fight against such oppression and keep it from coming to power in the first place.
This ties into the film’s other strong point – its emphasis on the importance of story and storytelling. At the start, Parvana learns about the history of Afghanistan and its people through a story told to her by her father in the market – a story that is also informative to most audiences who most likely know little of the history of Afghanistan beyond the Taliban and 9/11. After her father is taken away, Parvana becomes her family’s storyteller, telling a story to her siblings and mother in the evenings about a boy whose village was attacked by monsters and who seeks to reclaim his village’s seeds from the dreaded elephant king. As the film progresses, the soothing nature of stories is highlighted with Parvana continuing the story not just to calm her infant brother but also to comfort her friend Shauzia when they are almost discovered for disguising themselves as boys. In these moments, the collaborative nature of storytelling is also embraced and heavily featured, as Parvana’s mother and sister and Shauzia also add bits and pieces to the story, making its narrative a part of all of them. Ultimately, the story within the story concludes with its hero sharing his own story – the story of Parvana’s dead older brother – as a way to soothe the elephant king even as Parvana seeks to soothe herself in the chaos leading up to America’s invasion of Afghanistan. In that moment, story is shown to be important for communicating honestly and for helping bring peace even in times of crisis, an encouraging message to a world that seems to be almost constantly in crisis.
The Breadwinner serves as a reminder of the importance of story to a world in crisis and an encouragement to those living under extremism and oppression that resistance is possible and a good thing to do. Its struggle to separate the majority of “good”/“normal” Muslims from its extremist Taliban villains and its lack of fully satisfying conclusion are forgivable against the overall message of positivity and hope that make it one of the Great Films and one that is particularly relevant to the current state of affairs in the world.
