Osama is a Film That Isn't About Who You Think

Osama is a commanding piece of cinematic brilliance that divulges the true revulsion of oppression that regularly took place in Afghanistan at the height of Taliban rule. For those who weren’t paying attention until 9/11, the Taliban was fundamentalist Muslim theocracy where women we invested with pretty much no rights whatever. (Lest it be forgotten, the Taliban were formed from the very same group of rebels who were financially backed and deemed “freedom fighters” by Pres. Ronald Reagan during the war between Afghans and the Soviet Union following the ill-conceived Russian invasion of an unstable Islamic country. Funny how history always repeats yet politicians never seem to learn from it. Well, not so much funny, I guess, as tragically disturbing for all those poor people who actually suffer as a result of rich white men sleeping through history class.) During this dark period in Afghan history, women were not allowed to work or even to appear in a public place without the necessity of a male escort who also happened to be related to them. Not only was it illegal to appear in public without benefit of a male escort, but it was even forbidden merely to reveal any body part, including their face, while appearing in public. Needless to say, these laws had a rather adverse impact on widows who actually needed to work just to keep food on their plates and clothes on their backs.

While the title Osama may naturally lead one to suspect that Bin Laden is the main character, in fact, the titular character is the 12 year old girl of a woman whose husband has died and can no longer work at her job in a hospital. In order to ensure that food remains on the plate and clothes on their backs, the little girl’s mother formulates the idea to disguise her daughter as a boy so that she can go out into the world legally and work during the day. If caught, of course, the ultimate sentence will be handed down, but even the threat of death is not enough to cause Osama to just say no.

Osama is motivated by the actuality of the events that took place in Afghanistan and therefore imbues it with a feeling of verisimilitude. The facts are there: women were horrifically maltreated during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was an incredibly hazardous place and men were dropping like flies, making widows right and left. This situation resulted in an astounding number of females in Afghanistan who turned up in exactly the same circumstances that Osama’s mother finds herself in. Osama hauntingly portrays the type of reality that almost immediately makes one question it. Could it really have been this bad? Could things have been this horrendous? Is truth really more disgusting than the almost psychotic imagination of so many in Hollywood? There are scenes in Osama that many viewers may well shake their head at and dismiss as being just as relocated from reality as anything in the Saw series. Or anything that takes place on a reality TV show for that matter. When someone like Paris Hilton acts like a victim and is treated like a victim because she has to face the same consequences of violating the law that people who make in a year what she spends on cosmetics in a week have to face, it becomes almost mystically easy to dismiss as realistic a movie that claims as reality a culture where women truly had to fear for their lives merely because they were required to venture forth out into public just to keep from starving to death. Osama is very likely the most truthful and sincere representation of Afghanistan during the rule of Taliban that American viewers will likely ever see. The cast of non-professionals bestows a documentary-style sense of truth to the film. Osama could never have been produced in Afghanistan during the time in which it is set, obviously. It one of those cosmic ironies that had the miserable deaths of 9/11 not taken place and brought the attention of the world to the abuses and cruelty of the Taliban regime that this movie not only would not exist, but stories like the one it tells would still be taking place.