Women Make Movies: Progressively Multicultural Films by and about Women

The film lovingly and laughingly documents her attempts to figure out for herself the line between "freedom" and "responsibility" and attempts to understand through her "conversations with God" the age-old question of how a just God could be intrinsically "unequal" in his treatment of Men and Women.

The film is rich in its refusal to simplify issues or to present a stereotypical image of Pakistan or Islam. Anousheh is drawn to the Jamaat-I-Islami, the major Islamic political party that promises the liberating power of Islam for both men and women, in the age-old argument of "equal but separate spheres." Her visits to the Islamic Women's Organization and the Jamaat-I-Islami's madrassas (Islamic schools) are powerful renditions of the complexities of Islamic tradition. The women are strong and powerful in their determination to make the best of their separate sphere of activity, and as Anousheh puts it, "they must be brave to be willing to give up so much for Allah." The encounters with these women leave her ultimately dissatisfied in her quest to find a space that is both feminist and Islamic.

A powerful visual moment in the film shows Anousheh walking down a market street being pelted by the eyes of men and boys. The film captures in a nuanced way the difficulties of freedom and choice: is it better for women to keep themselves covered, because one can expect no different from men, and thereby stay protected? If not, how can change occur in a culture in which men seem more predatory precisely because men and women are kept so isolated in interaction? She also attends rock concerts and Pakistan's TGIF, which seem to offer more "normal" interactions, but still gives pause to automatic assumptions about what freedom for women really means.

Don't Ask Why does not offer any resolution to this dilemma, and we are left with Anousheh's haunting sense that it is "fear" that rules our lives - in our decisions and our choices - and in that sense, she is not that far removed from women elsewhere in the world.

The film employs an unusual technique: we hear the voice over of the narrator, and we see her finally only towards the end of the film. The interweaving of meta-analysis with the unfolding of Anousheh's everyday life provides both narrative and visual counterpoints, which result in delicious moments of irony. One such moment is when the narrator asks Anousheh why she would want to marry a man like her father when she finds him so "dictatorial and difficult"!

As a reviewer from India, I appreciated the rare glimpse into everyday life of Pakistan, and realized that it was in some ways no different from the experiences of those of us from similar socioeconomic backgrounds in India. Having said that, it is perhaps the issue of class that most gives me pause. This family is from Pakistan's upper middle class, if not the elite; and Anousheh's existential questions have much in common with middle class white women's struggles. It makes me wonder if viewers in classrooms in the United States will therefore be tempted to "universalize" the film, and elide the differences, or attribute all the difference negatively to religion alone.