Why didn’t anybody tell me it would become this bad in Afghanistan (2007)

Directed by: Cyrus Frisch | 70 minutes | war, biography, documentary | With: Cyrus Frisch

The Dutch filmmaker Cyrus Frisch is known as an enfant terrible within the Dutch film world. With ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me it was going to get so bad in Afghanistan’, he confirms this reputation once again. The impossibly long title not only reflects the content, but immediately makes it clear that this is not a “normal” film. ‘Why hasn’t anyone…’ (to make the film title easier to read) is even the first full-length feature film to be shot entirely with a mobile phone. The film premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival and then toured several prestigious festivals around the world.

For the recordings of his images, Frisch used a 3.2 megapixel camera – which in itself is not particularly high quality, but perhaps good enough for a telephone screen without losing too much sharpness. On a larger screen, say a television, or worse, a cinema screen) it tends to get pretty blurry. Headaches – as reported by some reviewers who saw the film at a festival in theaters – don’t come on DVD, but it’s certainly not a sight to behold. On the contrary, watery or dry eyes are not excluded.

Using only a mobile phone, with which Frisch only records his immediate surroundings, has interesting dimensions: it feels authentic and is very personal and close. Especially when such, sometimes jerky and blurry images, are now known all over the world as “real life” reports by ordinary people about disasters, accidents, revolutions and war. As a concept it is ingeniously conceived, but in the execution the poor quality of the camera will avenge itself after a while. Shooting the images in this way makes it less suitable for the medium of film and certainly not in this format and playing time. Wouldn’t it have been better to make a short film of no more than ten to twenty minutes? Wouldn’t that have had much more impact than having to watch for seventy minutes – yes, what exactly?

Frisch is himself the Afghanistan veteran, who films from his balcony in Amsterdam what happens on the street and in his life. Young people hanging out in front of his door. Close-ups of herself. People who are at work. Police officers confronting the loitering youths. A biker. Household chores, such as taking out the garbage, moving a settee down the street, the pots on the balcony. After a while, everything swims away in a vague mix of grainy images. Every now and then a flash of Afghanistan comes through. These images are sharp, unfortunately the relief only lasts for a short time and you are quickly submerged again in shots that are difficult to interpret. Frisch clearly makes connections between the war there, introduced with the voice of the then minister Kamp (Defence) about why the Netherlands wants to contribute to improving the praise of the Afghans, to the hardening and roughening here. At the same time, the veteran appears to be having more and more trouble adjusting to “normal” life – which keeps spilling over into the war situation he was in.

It is a subject about which there is much to discuss and about which Frisch makes a statement. Yet the title ‘Why has no one…’ is somewhat surprising: you would expect that the soldiers who were sent out knew what they were getting into? Frisch does not explain, but leaves a lot in the middle. It is, to quote a well-known saying, an interesting failure.