TWO-LEGGED HORSE 

Directed By Samira Makhmalbaf

Review By Kim Jindra

TWO-LEGGED HORSE is one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen.  It actually made me sick to my stomach.  It starts out nicely enough with an Afghani father attempting to hire a bigger, stronger boy to carry his legless son. There are hundreds of orphaned boys who vie for the job which pays $1 a day. The child is a spoiled brat and finds fault with many of the boys.  They are too skinny, have bad breath, or they are too small etc...  Finally, a large boy with a speech impediment is chosen.  He is thrilled. 

I truly wanted to feel sorry for the legless boy. He lost his legs and his mother in a land mine accident. His father leaves him and journeys to India with a daughter who is need of medical care. The boy is devastated and blames his new helper.  Nothing the older boy does is good enough. The legless child is resentful.  He becomes a difficult task master capable of enormous cruelty. He eventually treats his helper like a horse, making him run races against boys on donkeys, wear a saddle and a rope bridle, eat hay and finally don a real horse head.  He runs "his horse" to exhaustion. No adult objects to this treatment. In fact, it is encouraged.

I honestly hope this is not a genuine reflection of Afghan culture. I know children everywhere are capable of cruelty. But the toleration and encouragement of cruelty feels me with despair.  Maybe it is a cultural thing but I don't understand why anyone would want this film to represent their country or its people.  In all fairness it is an Iranian film made about an Afghani family. So maybe there is some built in bias between Afghanistan and Iran that I am unaware exists.  I sure hope so.