[WARNING-REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS]<br /><br />Long before their downfall, the Taliban had virtually no friends outside their fundamentalist, Islamic circle. Certainly they had no international support. Unfortunately, not until they succored Al-Quada leading to the American intervention and continuing occupation were these terrorizing fanatics deposed.<br /><br />Director Siddiq Barmak's short feature-length film, "Osama," won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Were an Oscar category for Most Harrowing Movie to exist, "Osama" would face no competition.<br /><br />Set in Afghanistan, this is the story of a mother and twelve-year old daughter who become unemployed, and threatened with actual starvation, when their hospital jobs end with the tottering and inadequate institution's financial collapse. The mother comes up with the idea of cutting her daughter's hair and sending her out as a boy to earn subsistence money for the two of them and the aged grandmother. A sympathetic man who fought against the Russians with the girl's deceased father gives her employment but a Taliban impresses the disguised girl for a para-military training camp that by comparison makes the Hitler Youth movement look borderline rational.<br /><br />Marina Golbahari is the young girl and she acts the part of a boy with scarcely concealed terror, especially when she is put into the Taliban training camp where, among other things, she must learn Islamic ablutions involving genitals in a room full of boys. There is not a second of humor in her experiences.<br /><br />She's eventually detected and she goes on "trial" before a "judge" who, before dealing with her case, sends a foreign journalist to be shot and a European female doctor to be stoned to death. For the girl he pronounces forgiveness at the same moment marrying her to a pederast, a wife-acquiring mullah whose understated depravity leaves a stench in every viewer's nostrils.<br /><br />This isn't an easy film to watch. It begins with a peaceful demonstration by women demanding work and disclaiming any political motivation. They are violently dispersed by not very many armed Taliban using high pressure hoses and brute force. I had a sense that the many female extras were not so much acting as recreating a reign of terror and a time of privation. The riot scenes are harrowing, the cinematographer focusing closely on frightened and beaten women.<br /><br />Given Al-Quada's support by the Taliban there exist neither legal nor moral objections to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and our continuing efforts to extirpate any remaining terrorist and Taliban remnants. The more troubling issue, forcefully raised by "Osama," is how a civilized world can tolerate the known misogynistic degradation of women, and many other abuses of basic human rights, without intervening. Can respect for a nation's autonomy or its fundamentalist religion override the duty to alleviate conditions anathema to contemporary conceptions of human rights? We tried German judges for enforcing the notorious Nuremberg Laws that stripped civil rights from Jews and prepared the way for concentration camps and genocide. Should the world now tolerate regimes that in the name of religion kill and torture while subverting the most basic individual rights? "Osama" is a good cinematic brief for a resounding "NO."<br /><br />The cinematography is sparse and effective-the bleached colors of a ruined town reflecting the hopelessness of its inhabitants.<br /><br />I expect we will be seeing more from Barmak-I certainly hope so. <br /><br />9/10.