HOLLYWOODGATE (Ibrahim Nash'at 2023)

http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20TALI.jpg
FROM A CLIP FROM HOLLYWOODGATE

IBRAHIM NASH'AT: HOLLYWOODGATE (2023)

FILM CLIP

Afghan weirdness, American folly

If you can, first watch Matthew Heineman's film about the US's rapid, disastrous withdrawal from Afgnanistan, Retrograde.(2022). Then watch Hollywoodgate, a remarkable collection of film footage shot in Kabul by Berlin-based Egyptian filmmakerIbrahim Nash'at in the year following that departure.

Two different worlds, before and after, and two different kinds of documentary to go with it. Heinemann ranged free. Nash'at was under tight, threatening reins. He was allowed to follow two Taliban officials, the air force commander and a pilot, around the US military base at Kabul known as Hollywood Gate. The two films are a big contrast because Heinemann has lots of material and has artfully edited it. Nash'at has very limited material and his movements are highly restricted. It's a wonder he was ever allowed in there with a camera, and survived. The atmosphere is mocking at best, hostile at worst. It's even said of him, in his presence. that if his "intentions are bad" he will die. We don't actually hear or anyone being taken off and shot, but it seems not inconceivable. We do see a woman in a burka openly beaten in the street.

Nash'at is allowed to film Mawlawi Mansour, the Commander of the Air Force of the new Afghan Taliban regime, and they are hoping for the film to be promotional material, something to show off. Nash'at of course is seeking to film truth, as he says in his whispered voiceovers at the beginning and the end of this film.

What we get is not quite either exactly, but it's deeply atmospheric, even though the people, as some reviews note, are empty shells. They are dummkopfs. Mansour can't even multiply 67 x 100 (he gets 67,000). These guys are living in a safe little world where they're alone with their retrograde interpretation of Islam, their ignorance, their incompetence, and the wealth of stuff the American left them. They allow female TV announcers, but she must appear on camera with the bottom of her face covered. How that even happened is unclear. Wives are not allowed to work. At some points one wishes Nash'at provided an explanatory voiceover. There's a lot we just can't easily understand.

AT Hollywood Gate, the Americans reportedly left behind $7 billion worth of equipment on departing from the country. They tried to sabotage it. They cut wires in planes, smashed computers. But there was too much to sabotage, too little time. As Mansour declares on first touring the base, the Americans had dug in, planning never to leave and left a "treasure trove." There are whole warehouses full of stuff. The Taliban flyboys and mechanics, with their incongruous beards and long shirts and scarves, set about getting the planes and weaponry back in operating condition, and later in the film, with a year passed, seem to have largely succeeded.

This is one of the main impressions this strange film gives us. The men in it (no women appear directly on screen) look like they came out of an earlier century. They also look a little befuddled sometimes, definitely not sharp and alert. Mansour's public addresses are clumsy. He and his men giggle. . They're too collegial to be professional. They often dine in a big group sitting in the traditional way on the floor and eating with their fingers, scooping up hummus with their right hands. Yet we have to remind ourselves: these guys caused the US forces to retreat. They are in charge of a country now. They can't seem to do arithmetic. Do they have men who can repair airplanes? It seems so implausible. Nash'at's film can't provide us with insights into these paradoxes.

Most of our time is spent with Mansour and his posse of up to a dozen men. They dress in a wild variety of outfits and hairstyles, which are creative to say the least. And the hats. Crenulated, crinkly, flat, different colors. When they encounter a group of soldiers all in standard uniforms, the contrast between the uniforms and the motley looks is striking. I have to remind myself that LGBT people in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan "face severe challenges," as the relevant Wikipedia article ("LGBT RIGHTS in Afghanistan") says, because there is something awfully gay about the imaginative ways in which these men dress, though a long beard isn't of course normally a gay thing.

Another oddity I wish somebody would be around to comment upon but that instead slips by almost unnoticed is that the man usually there with Mansour, just before he gets anointed as the person who will pilot the Black Hawk with the commander in it, performs a very impressive, professional quality recitation of the Qur'an. So he fills the bill, I guess. One imagines him being interviewed for the job... "So you can fly a plane. Alright. But how's your Qur'anic recitation?"

But the other matter that stands out is all that military power left behind for the dangerous regime the US couldn't defeat. The appalling amount of waste is matched only by the appalling carelessness. You can't help feeling we either ought to have done a better job of destroying this base or just shouldn't have been defeated and left. However calculatedly so, those stand out as dangerous and irresponsible things to do. This is not only a (restricted) portrait of a creepy, extraordinarily backward regime. It's the indirect portrait of a mammoth American fuckup.

Hollywoodgate, 93 mins, debuted at Venice Aug. 31, 2023, followed by Telluride, Woodstock, Zurich, and about 20 other festival appearances. Limited US theatrical release from July 19, 2024. HOLLYWOODGATE opening weekend Q&A on August 2 ,7 pm at the Landmark Opera Plaza, San Francisco .
Metacritic rating: 76%.