The Prince of Nothingwood movie review (2017) | Little White Lies

The Prince of Nothingwood

23 Nov 2017 / Released: 24 Nov 2017

Words by Anton Bitel

Directed by Sonia Kronlund

Starring Qurban Ali, Salim Shaheen, and Sonia Kronlund

A man wearing sunglasses and a grey suit jacket standing in a ceremonial setting with ornate decorations.
A man wearing sunglasses and a grey suit jacket standing in a ceremonial setting with ornate decorations.
3

Anticipation.

Sounds like 2010’s The Peddler.

4

Enjoyment.

A hilariously self-aware take on a frontline cottage industry.

4

In Retrospect.

The myth behind the man who is Afghanistan’s biggest film auteur.

Sal­im Sha­heen, Afghanistan’s sin­gu­lar, strut­ting auteur, is the sub­ject of this won­der­ful­ly enter­tain­ing doc.

Towards the end of a long excur­sion to Bayram, a Bagh­lan Province vil­lage in north east­ern Afghanistan, direc­tor Sal­im Sha­heen takes his guest/​documenter Sonia Kro­n­lund on a detour to vis­it Ali’s Drag­on, a rock for­ma­tion said to be the body of a giant ser­pent slain by the sword of Imam Ali. When Kro­n­lund asks him, Do you think it’s a true sto­ry,” Sha­heen responds hes­i­tant­ly, I couldn’t say,” insist­ing upon the pow­er of sto­ry­telling and tradition.

As the mak­er of more than 100 ama­teur fea­ture films, this sin­gu­lar, strut­ting auteur is him­self a cen­tral fig­ure in Afghanistan’s cre­ation myths, recruit­ing its land­scapes and peo­ple to stage inspi­ra­tional sto­ries where the down­trod­den rise and the pow­er­ful fall. His films are full of Bol­ly­wood-style singing and danc­ing, fight­ing, gore and absur­dist hero­ics (typ­i­cal­ly with Sha­heen him­self in the lead). He and his team have also been will­ing to take great risks for their art, shoot­ing scenes amid rock­et attacks and shoot­ing of an alto­geth­er more per­ni­cious kind, as one war after anoth­er has raged through the nation for decades.

A pop­u­lar, larg­er than life char­ac­ter, Sha­heen is also a great mythol­o­gis­er of him­self, diplo­mat­i­cal­ly claim­ing that his moth­er was born in whichev­er part of the coun­try he hap­pens to be film­ing, and – as Kro­n­lund makes her doc­u­men­tary on him – shoot­ing two new films simul­ta­ne­ous­ly that chron­i­cle his own ear­ly years. In these, he is played by one of his sons – although it is clear­ly always a strug­gle for Sha­heen to resist steal­ing the lime­light or hog­ging the camera.

Accord­ing­ly, The Prince of Noth­ing­wood comes with a pecu­liar­ly invo­lut­ed dynam­ic – Kro­n­lund film­ing Sha­heen film­ing his own sto­ry – from which we get a pic­ture of the man and his myth, two inex­tri­ca­bly bound aspects of a film­mak­er who has always built his fic­tions upon the foun­da­tions – and ruins – of his nation’s real­i­ties. In the cin­e­mat­ic spaces that he has cre­at­ed, con­tra­dic­tions and cri­tiques emerge – like Qur­ban Ali, the actor whose camp flam­boy­ance and pen­chant for cross-dress­ing find an accept­able out­let in the name of just pro­vid­ing some entertainment.”

The scene in Shaheen’s film where Ali, in skirt and burqa, plays Shaheen’s moth­er and laments her son’s voca­tion as a dancer and an artist, comes with an obvi­ous res­o­nance for Qur­ban him­self, giv­ing him a plat­form to explore the taboo of an iden­ti­ty frowned upon by a dis­tinct­ly homo­pho­bic soci­ety. Qur­ban, inci­den­tal­ly, is mar­ried with chil­dren, though when asked by Kro­n­lund how many wives he has, laughs a lit­tle too hard as he answers: I have one, and I don’t want any more.” Through the play of Shaheen’s films, Qur­ban is able to be him­self, with pub­lic approval.

It is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter for women who are not allowed to watch Shaheen’s films in cin­e­mas – though they are able to see them on DVD or broad­cast on one of Afghanistan’s 175 TV sta­tions. To jus­ti­fy the pro­pri­ety of work­ing along­side Kro­n­lund her­self, Sha­heeh insists that she is actu­al­ly a man, Mr Sonia. Myths like this can – slow­ly – change the world.

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