Lack of good storyline.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Blistering performances.

This is about the return to the place of childhood; a woman must return to Kandahar before the next eclipse when her sister plans to commit suicide. She is an ex-pat journalist so that we can have an intellectual view about the contrasts of life whispered into a tape recorder but all that is flat and uninteresting and the poetic soliloquies even more. Brush that aside. No, why this should be illuminating is because it swoops down in a strange corner of the world and finds intimacy and truth among the absurdity. Not for any contrasts the filmmaker can whisper to us but for those the place can whisper to his camera. This is what Chris Marker did again and again, who is the inspiration behind this; the eye reflected back. This too what Herzog did, who chases after absurdities because the landscape close to them tilts revelations.Absurdities abound along the way here; a makeshift hospital where amputees clamor to be fitted with crude artificial legs, the legs dropped from the sky. The rosy afterglow of flat desert is an evocative canvas, the veiled women chill like they always do with that sense of wasted beauty. But so little here feels stumbled on to, discovered, open; it feels stagy and contrived. A quick look at the background of the film reveals that it was shot, a little more safely perhaps, on this side of the Iranian border. The faces, the dresses, the landscape, all these are probably not much different than over there, but there's also no urgency anymore. I won't pretend to know better than the filmmaker of course but the whole film strikes me as more about culture than reflection, the kind of culture about faraway, oppressed places patrons love to consume at film festivals in Europe.Maybe it's his way of saying there are no more vital truths than the absurdity that people contrive to create that has a male doctor examining an Afghan female patient through a hole so as to not see her face. But there must be, there are.

The more I watched this, the more I thought the director was enjoying a joke at the expense of the audience. Each scene seemed more and more ridiculous and unrealistic to me and the lead character seemed to me to be as thick as two short planks. The joke was confirmed for me when, in the scene where prosthetic limbs were supposedly being airdropped to the people who had been damaged by explosives, what was actually being dropped were the lower halves of department-store dummies! Still, because I was watching it through my local film society and they tend to have very good taste, I thought I'd see it through to the very end and get the pay off. So imagine my disappointment when there was no pay off; the film finished annoyingly abruptly, but I was SO glad it was over!

I don't usually comment, but I thought this movie was getting a bad rap and decided to pipe up. I thought Kandahar was a visual feast with an interesting setting and a suspense filled plot. It has been several years since I have seen it, so I am short on details, but I LOVED it.In addition, I thought the amateurish quality was appropriate. Even though there is some need to "suspend disbelief" when, for example, we see things that she doesn't, this movie is a presenting itself as a documentary of the main character's experience traveling to Afganistan to find her sister. It is not meant to feel like a Hollywood movie. Of course, I am not in a position to verify the accuracy of the film as I have never even traveled to the middle east, but it does correspond to other things I have heard and read. I would recommend Kandahar to those who are interested in seeing what the desert around Afganistan looks like, interested in the culture, and who don't need an action driven plot.

The comment on the Indian music is off base - Indian music and DVDs are common in Afghanistan as the local entertainment industry is still recovering from the Taliban. Bollywood film DVDs are sold in Kabul. Pictures and posters of Indian actresses are popular here. It isn't unusual to hear recorded Sitar music here in Kabul.Afghan and Indian music was distributed secretly at great risk during the Taliban reign. There is just not enough Afghan material yet and Afghans love music, even if they don't understand Urdu.There is a scene in the movie where an instrument is seized by the Taliban before the wedding.So the soundtrack was completely appropriate for me.Hopefully we will see a feature film made inside Afghanistan someday. Its a beautiful and fascinating place and holds fascinating stories.