Many schools and hospitals in today’s Afghanistan are named for that courageous girl, who was shot and killed in the fighting. News of this incident swept the globe, prompting global outrage and condemnation of the act. What it relies on too much, though, are the nonstop clips from news reports-the more filtered view of the speeches that Malala spends her time doing as an advocate for girls’ education around the planet.
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Yousafzai, whose father is featured prominently in the film, received a Nobel Peace Prize for her activism about female educational rights.
However, her work has not been without controversy. The film also has footage of Pakistanis who outright charge her father with manipulating Malala into near martyrdom. This was a suspicion Guggenheim initially had himself.
The message of He Named Me Malala is that we should stand up for what’s right and what you believe in, no matter the consequences. But she is the real deal. There is a far more interesting subplot about Malala’s mother and her education that is touched on but not fully explored that would have given a greater insight into Malala’s development, rather than coming at it from the father angle. (Among those accomplishments is the forceful stating of a more peaceful and progressive Islam than many in the West want to believe exists.) “I’m still an ordinary girl from Swat Valley”, she says, and Guggenheim is invested in that idea as a beacon of hope: If she can do it, so can others – so can you or your daughters.
That this apostle of education for all can be seen telling that to the General Assembly of the United Nations doesn’t stop her from getting a 73 on a history test and a 61 in physics. But upon meeting the teenager, they determined it would be impossible to cast and decided to make the movie a documentary.
“We can not all succeed if half of us are held back, education is the only solution.”- Malala.
So much official veneration had stuck to Anne Frank over the years that it was startling to hear her lively, witty, soulful voice come springing off the page.
“She has this poise that’s adult-like, but she asks simple questions, and that makes her voice very special”, Guggenheim said. It doesn’t neglect Khushal and Atal – the most adorable brothers in the world – and good times around their kitchen table in Birmingham. There’s one. She does that with President Obama, she does that with the head of Nigeria. The Islamic extremists arrived with false promises and kindness, soon began banning and burning “inappropriate” books and DVDs, then started calling out those who opposed their radical beliefs, including banning girls from attending school, and eventually escalated into all-out terrorism, killing their enemies and bombing schools. She also talks about the culture shock she has experienced in her adopted homeland, where girls her age obsess over boys and clothing in a way that is still foreign to a Muslim girl from the rural Swat Valley.
In order to depict Malala’s life before she was airlifted to England for medical care, Guggenheim made the unconventional decision to rely primarily on impressionistic, hand-drawn animation designed by Jason Carpenter. Her experiences seemed like something out of a scary movie.
While it’s trite to say what a better world we would inhabit if we were all more like Malala, it’s also true. “But seeing her as a normal girl tells me that my daughters could be that extraordinary”. I want to progress.
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The film opened in area theaters this weekend.
