2. The breadwinner: a review

Good afternoon, I'm here today once again, hoping to give out my thoughts on animated movies I find under-appreciated. I've decided to start this series because I find animated movie to be looked over and considered as "child-ish", when many of them are capable of carrying much deeper stories than one could imagine. Today's guest is a movie called "The breadwinner".

Directed by Nora Twomey and based on Deborah Ellis's novel, the film follows Parvana, an 11 years old girl living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Shortly after her father is arrested, Parvana cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy so that she can work, buy food, and keep her family alive in a third world country with rampant misogyny.

!!!! Warning: this review containd major spoilers of the movie's content, if you wish for my general thoughts, head over to the last paragraph after the attached photos !!!!

What struck me most about The Breadwinner is how it uses a child's perspective to portray something as serious as the living conditions in Afghanistan. Parvana is a little girl who doesn't completely understand the political world surrounding her, but she understands very well its consequences. She sees women being denied basic freedoms, something as simple as autonomy. Her father being taken away and her family becoming increasingly desperate, pushes her to mature early on and act like adults when she is only a child. The film doesn't need to constantly explain how oppressive the Taliban's rule is because we experience it through the small things Parvana can no longer do simply because she is a girl, because she is a victim.

The central idea of identity and freedom came especially close to my heart. Parvana changes her identity to a boy's not because she doesn't find comfort in her body, but she is forced to temporarily change how the world sees her because her real identity prevents her from doing things as basic as walking through the streets or buying food. Her hair drives strong symbolism, cutting it gives her physical freedom, but it also demonstrates how unfairly society has restricted her in the first place, for as long as she doesn't look feminine, people around her will recognise her as "somone" and not "something".

I also really enjoyed the film's use of storytelling within the story. Parvana tells her younger brother a fantasy about a boy fighting the evil Elephant King. At first, it seems like a separate adventure, but it gradually becomes a reflection of Parvana's own situation ! The fantasy gives her a way to process fear and imagine herself as someone capable of fighting against forces much larger than herself. It's essentially a metaphor for resilience, when reality becomes unbearable, imagination becomes a way of surviving it :)

The film's treatment of death and loss has once again surprised me, as it is on the mature side. Death is portrayed as the uncertainty of living under violence. People disappear, families are separated, and there is often no satisfying resolution. That made the film feel much more grounded in my opinion. Parvana is living inside a system that constantly threatens her and everyone she loves with cold hands that crawl up their bodies wishing to push them into their graves.

Visually, The Breadwinner is beautiful. The animation is somewhat rough, with a storybooky quality that contrasts with the darkness of the subject matter. The fantasy sequences are particularly colorful and stylized compared with the muted reality of Parvana's life. It made the fantasy seem like an escape from the reality she lives under an oppressive system.

The film doesn't make Parvana into a fearless hero either. Sure, She's brave, but she's also frightened, exhausted, and sometimes overwhelmed and paralysed with fear. Her courage isn't the typical trope that creates an unsatisfying absence of fear, it is one about continuing to act despite being afraid, knowing that she might very well fail trying.

But The Breadwinner isn't just about Afghanistan or the Taliban. It's about what happens when human freedoms are taken away, especially from people who have very little power to begin with. Parvana doesn't want to become a hero, all she wants is to feed her family and find her father. And that is unfortunately a reality we live to see everyday in different places around the world.

The Breadwinner is heartbreaking. It managed to balance the tragedy of living as a woman under a misogynistic society with little to no rights with hope, determination, and friendship. I personally appreciated that the film trusts the audience to understand its themes rather than constantly spelling them out, but I also understand a point where some people may find it a little discouraging to watch due to the lack of obvious context here and there.

I feel as though the producers of this film were desperate to send a message across moving figures, and that being that we humans are nothing without our hope and instinct to survive, no matter how miserable we are, we must take pride in the fight we brought in a world all about eating the weak, and to me the movie successfully got the message through.

• Animation: 7/10
• Story: 9/10
• Characters: 9/10
• Themes: 10/10
• Emotional impact: 9.5/10

~ Overall: ★★★★☆