A girl fights for her family's survival

The Breadwinner takes an animated look at life in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

The Breadwinner isn't the first film to deal with the plight of Afghan women living under the Taliban (2003's Osama was devastating), but it may be the first animated feature to tackle such a difficult subject.

Irish director Nora Twomey, who co-directed the much-admired The Secret of Kells, takes us to Kabul for a story about Parvana (voice by Saara Chaudry), a girl whose father (Ali Badshah) is arrested for possession of a book the Taliban disdains. The young thug who betrays this peaceful older man has personal motives for his actions. Besides, we get the impression that any book, other than the Koran, would have offended Taliban sensibilities.

Parvana's mother Fattema (Laara Sadiq) and her older sister Soraya (Shaista Latif) don't know how they are going to survive because, as women, they can't even venture into the street unaccompanied by a male relative. This prohibition makes a dangerous ordeal out of such simple tasks as buying groceries or fetching water from the local well.

Early on Fattema, who's also caring for her toddler son, attempts to visit her husband in the forbidding prison where he's being held. She's badly beaten for her efforts.

It falls to Parvana to devise a solution to keep the family afloat. She cuts her hair, pretends to be a boy and begins to move about Kabul with new-found freedom. She also receives help with her ruse from Shauzia (Soma Chhaya), another girl who has adopted the same strategy as a means of coping with Taliban tyrannies.

The Breadwinner focuses on children but should not be considered a children's movie, even though older kids would do well to see it. It's a harsh story about what happens when fanatics terrorize a culture.

The story also puts special emphasis on the importance of storytelling as a means of helping people to survive terrible conditions. The movie opens with Parvana's father telling her stories about Afghanistan's past and includes a running fable that Parvana tells her baby brother. Parvana's story involves a boy who must try to save his village from the ravages of the evil Elephant King, a tale that roughly parallels Parvana's efforts to help keep her family afloat.

The animation is simple, sometimes involving cut-outs: Twomey's team creates a dusty picture of Kabul as a place where the life of the marketplace hasn't entirely been squelched.

The Breadwinner, which derives from a young-adult novel by Deborah Ellis, affirms Parvana's strength and determination and serves as a moving introduction to what it means for women to live under constraints that serve to subjugate and dehumanize them. Small but powerful, The Breadwinner qualifies as an adept telling of an important story.

The story behind Pat Tillman's death

Like most red-blooded American men, I enjoy professional football – the games at least. But I could do without the kind of hype that tries to beef up the sport's propagandistic playbook with references to God, patriotism and military service.

A page from that particular book received a mighty turn in 2004 when Pat Tillman, a star strong safety for the Arizona Cardinals, was killed in action in Afghanistan. Tillman, who gave up professional football to volunteer for the Army after 9/11, already had served in Iraq, and the initial reaction of the Army was to turn its fallen hero into a poster boy for patriotic myth-making.

But the truth about Tillman’s death tended to undermine its legend-building potential. Not long after Tillman died, it was revealed that he was killed by friendly fire. And the more details Tillman's family turned up, the less it seemed as if Tillman’s demise resulted from some unavoidable fog-of-war chaos.

An uglier and far less comprehensible picture began to emerge: Tillman’s death may have been the tragic consequence of actions taken by overzealous Rangers who ignored Tillman’s repeated attempts to identify himself as a U.S. soldier. Tillman’s mom pushed – and then pushed harder – to obtain the real story behind her son's death..

All of this emerges in the documentary The Tillman Story, and you can draw your own conclusions about whether the case for extreme negligence has been made. Inescapable, though, is the reality of Tillman’s life: He didn’t believe in God and had come to think of the Iraq war as a waste. He also was a man of honor, who insisted on fulfilling his military commitment.

By the end of director Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary, Tillman stands out as a unique individual, an athlete who could level opposing players, but who hardly fit the dumb-jock mold.

Bar-Lev’s documentary isn’t without weaknesses, nor does it paint everyone in the Tillman camp in a flattering light. (Tillman’s youngest brother’s outburst at a memorial service may have been honest, but seemed lacking in both good timing and taste).

Whatever you conclude about Tillman's death, you'll find a documentary that shows how a man who responded to the call of duty became a victim of the very machine he honored with his service. Bar-Lev’s documentary helps ensure that Pat Tillman will be remembered as a complicated man – not as anyone’s symbol of anything, and that alone makes it a real success. Anyone who bothered to take an honest look should have know that Tillman never could have been pigeonholed.

The Afghan war up close and personal

Some called the Korangal Valley "the valley of death."

If you want an idea of what daily life is like for U.S. soldiers serving in a heavy combat zone in Afghanistan, you can’t do any better than the riveting and often harrowing Restrepo. Named for a soldier who was killed early in his deployment, this documentary follows the exploits of a company that served 14 months in Afghanistan, much of it in the Korangal Valley, billed as one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Directors Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington risked life and limb to make their movie, and it’s impossible to watch Restrepo without wondering what was going on in the minds of the filmmakers, who did a ton of filming in combat zones before conducting interviews in Italy, the country where the company was sent immediately after its Korangal tour.

Junger and Hetherington don’t tilt the movie in any particular political direction, but it’s very difficult to watch Restrepo without wondering what the hell is being accomplished in Afghanistan. (It’s also important to know that the U.S. military left the Korangal in the spring of this year, part of a declared shift toward counterinsurgency in population-heavy areas.)

The men we meet in Restrepo are determined and brave; their leader – Captain Dan Kearney – seems capable. But it sure doesn’t look as if the U.S. is winning many hearts and minds in a country where residents are fearful of Taliban reprisals for cooperation with the U.S.

We meet a variety of soldiers, and their testimony lends perspective to the combat footage, which tends to be understandably chaotic. During their stay in the Korangal, the company built an outpost, which they named for their fallen comrade. Outpost Restrepo becomes their home for most of the their deployment, and they’re constantly fighting off attacks. We never see an enemy combatant, but the wounded and dead testify to their very real presence.

At one point, the men embark on Operation Rock Avalanche, an attempt to take the fight to Taliban warriors. A Taliban ambush unhinges at least one soldier; the death of another – billed as the best fighter in the company – leaves everyone shaken. As one GI asks, if the best soldier gets killed what chance do the rest have?

Heavy fighting mixes with fraternity-style horseplay, which serves to remind us that these men are young. Pfc. Juan S. Restrepo never saw his 21st birthday.

As is the case with most GIs, the men don’t have time to contemplate the larger reasons for the fighting. In combat, geo-political considerations become a preposterous luxury, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t think about what these – and other young men – are going through, and, beyond that, whether their sacrifices have wrought any tangible results.

I found it difficult to watch Restrepo without concluding that "victory" in Afghanistan -- whatever that means -- may be impossible. Much of the terrain is isolated and impassible, and the promise that the U.S. will enable rural Afghanis to lead better lives seems a hard sell. (The company’s initial mission involved providing security for a road that was to be constructed through the Korangal.)

From the outset, it’s clear that Restrepo is no ordinary documentary. Junger and Hetheringon capture the shock of war, and they deserve credit for their bravery. The same goes for the soldiers, who were brave on two fronts. Not only did they fight a wily and often unseen enemy, but they also allowed themselves to be filmed doing it.

After the film concluded, I found myself shaking my head. Whatever we’re doing in Afghanistan, it had better be worth it. The men who built Outpost Restrepo deserve nothing less than a clearly defined reason for scars – both physical and emotional – they may well carry for the rest of their lives.