The Breadwinner | Little White Lies

The Bread­win­ner

24 May 2018 / Released: 25 May 2018

Animated illustration depicting a group of people gathered around a table, sharing a meal. Warm tones of brown and orange dominate the colour palette, with a focus on the central figure wearing traditional Middle Eastern attire.
Animated illustration depicting a group of people gathered around a table, sharing a meal. Warm tones of brown and orange dominate the colour palette, with a focus on the central figure wearing traditional Middle Eastern attire.
4

Anticipation.

Very keen to see what Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon comes up with next.

4

Enjoyment.

A moving tale of a young woman taking desperate measures to sock it to the Taliban.

4

In Retrospect.

A fiery takedown of fundamentalism, bigotry and oppression of all stripes.

The ani­ma­tion house behind Song of the Sea return with a time­ly take­down of reli­gious fundamentalism.

With films like The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea on their pro­duc­tion ros­ter, it was clear that Ireland’s Car­toon Saloon were an ani­ma­tion house on the make. Nora Twomey’s heart­break­ing The Bread­win­ner seals their sta­tus as a word class play­er in the eld of thought­ful, poet­ic and idio­syn­crat­ic fea­ture animation.

Their mode is social real­ism tinged with folk­loric fan­ta­sy, though this lm dials back the faeries and mag­ic and drops us in the polit­i­cal­ly unsta­ble hell­hole of Kab­ul, Afghanistan cir­ca 2001. It fol­lows a fam­i­ly scrap­ing togeth­er a mea­gre liv­ing in which every grain of rice and every raisin are essen­tial for sur­vival. Doltish Tal­iban enforcers swag­ger around the streets and impose their tyran­ni­cal rule, which is bad news for every­one, but espe­cial­ly the women.

The film’s title refers to Par­vana, the family’s tena­cious mid­dle daugh­ter who con­cocts a crafty scheme of resis­tance when their father is jailed on a trumped up charge. With the man of the house out of the frame, and women banned from wan­der­ing the streets with­out a male chap­er­one, even to pur­chase food, it appears as if a death sen­tence has been passed by proxy. But Par­vana has a plan that is so sedi­tious it verges on the unthink­able – just what she needs to get around the arro­gant men in charge.

Armoured military tank in the desert, with yellow and brown tones.

More than a pitched bat­tle of enlight­en­ment ver­sus igno­rance, Twomey’s film chips away at the absur­di­ty of reli­gious extrem­ism while mak­ing a plea for a soci­ety which updates its laws in line with nat­ur­al cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion. It also sug­gests that the tighter the stran­gle­hold of pow­er, the more prone the peo­ple are to embrace sub­ver­sion to ensure their freedom.

The atroc­i­ties of 911 aren’t men­tioned, even though the ear­ly rum­blings of con­flict are teased through­out. These char­ac­ters have lit­tle inter­est in the world beyond their local bor­der – and for good rea­son. The Bread­win­ner doesn’t depict the Afghan peo­ple as vic­tims of west­ern aggres­sion, even though that’s where its sto­ry inevitably leads. The micro-scale civic vic­to­ries take on an even more bit­ter­sweet hue when it becomes clear that every­one will be pun­ished for the Taliban’s crimes. Par­vana duti­ful­ly reads a sto­ry to her tod­dler sis­ter in which a boy faces his man­i­fold fears to bring pros­per­i­ty back to his vil­lage. Even though this tall tale offers a handy con­tin­u­ous com­men­tary on the bru­tal real­i­ties, it also oper­ates as a cel­e­bra­tion of art as cosy refuge from life’s torments.

The ani­ma­tion style is bold, crisp and unshowy, and serves the mod­est desert-vil­lage set­ting nice­ly. The lm avoids wacky humour and demo­graph­ic- tar­get­ing stereo­types, but nev­er feels too po-faced or down­beat as a result of that. It also offers a care­ful and unro­man­tic depic­tion of Cen­tral Asia, work­ing as a nec­es­sary cor­rec­tive against works which exoti­cise the region and cul­ture. The con­stant loop­ing back to the sto­ry-with­in-the-sto­ry becomes a lit­tle tire­some after a while, espe­cial­ly in the lm’s dra­mat­ic final stretch where the real­i­ty is now more absurd than the fiction.

Yet the blunt-force pow­er of the film is unde­ni­able, even as it cli­max­es on a note of hope­ful res­ig­na­tion. And while its mes­sage of female empow­er­ment is wrought from a high­ly spe­cif­ic time and con­text, it goes with­out say­ing that it has much to say about the treat­ment of women from all walks of life.

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