There's a moment a little more than halfway through Ian Olds' latest film, FIXER: THE TAKING OF AJMAL NAQSHBANDI, wherein Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo is pleading with his country to do something to save him. Mastrogiacomo has been kidnapped while working in Afghanistan, along with his Afghan driver Sayed Agha and Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi.
It's at this moment that you may remember Mastrogiacomo's story and the international headlines of his capture, his ordeal and, ultimately, the decision by Afghanistan's government to release 5 Taliban fighters in exchange for Mastrogiacomo's release.
Until this moment, nothing in Ian Olds' filmmaking gives you the sense that you are part of a story that made headlines around the world. Much to his great credit, Olds operates purely from the personal. And rightly so, as FIXER is not about Mastrogiacomo, nor about the world-wide coverage of his ordeal, but rather about his guide, the young Afghan journalist Naqshbandi, who was later murdered by his Taliban captors.
Naqshbandi is "the fixer" of the title and apparently he was quite good at it. Arranging transport, translation and general advice about the rapidly changing Afghan countryside, Naqshbandi is seen, in footage shot months before his kidnapping by Olds, guiding Christian Parenti, an American journalist writing for the Nation. He's not yet 25 but he seems worldly in ways that the American journalist does not.
We know from the start what happens to Naqshbandi - Olds has said that he had no desire to turn his friends' death into a plot point - so the filmmaker uses his footage to very subtly reflect the rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground. From trip to trip, we hear that new areas are becoming unsafe for travel.
Olds edits (as well as photographing and producing) the film with little regard for chronology, which is all to the better. Hearing Naqshbandi continue to reassure his clients that they are safe, that they will not be kidnapped and that certainly the Taliban would not kill a Muslim as we leap forward to and from his kidnapping is gripping and quietly emotional.
Like Havana Marking's AFGHAN STAR, THE FIXER tells us more about what's happening in Afghanistan - and how it came to be like this - than anything you'll see on American network news (which may not be saying much). Both are able to trace back to a time - just a few decades ago - when Afghanistan was stable and advanced in its attitudes toward education and women. Olds' recounting of the Soviet/Afghan war (and America's role in it) is told - as is everything in the film - with a steady and purposeful pace.
FIXER is Olds' first feature since OPERATION: DREAMLAND, which he co-directed with Garrett Scott. Olds has said in interviews that in the days and months after Scott died unexpectedly (just two days before the duo would win the Truer Than Fiction Award at the Spirit Awards), he didn't want to do any more documentaries. It was Parenti who encouraged Olds to go to Afghanistan, where he might find a subject worthy of his next film.
There's another moment in FIXER and it comes very early in the film, after we've seen an interview shot with handheld video. There's nothing inherently bad or ugly about the footage (consumer camera, predictably grainy and unsteady, panning back and forth between friends), except that it is followed by Olds' first shot in the film. Wide and steady of a dusty, windy street near the mountains, empty except for a boy pushing a wheelbarrow. The shot lasts a full 20 seconds without movement. The high energy music from the previous scene has faded away. Everything that has come before is but a memory.
Few filmmakers would approach this subject with such restraint or such artistry. Few would know to edit their own film with such nonchronological daring, so skillfully combining his own richly composed footage with archival material, web videos and other assorted sources.
It's good for all of us that Ian Olds is making documentaries again.
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