Two-legged Horse

‘Two-legged Horse’ is a flagrantly cruel and hopeless movie. It is an allegory of power and totalitarianism. It shows a difficult yet unapologetic view of power, struggle, and victimisation dynamics. There is also the presence of multiple child actors in the movie. The film very interestingly shows the concept of dominance and tyranny. The audience continuously keeps switching between the two children and their miseries. After watching a bit of the movie, it becomes clear who the real victim is in the film. All the empathy felt towards the rich, legless boy disappears soon, and the viewers are overwhelmed with the agony of the poor, starving horse boy.

I can relate this movie to the book ‘Animal Farm’ in multiple ways. The book also has themes of despotism and enslavement but is shown in the form of a fable. In the book, even though the animals overtake the farm by chasing out their owner, it is not too late before they start a hierarchy system. They create a working class, the elite, the dumb, the smart, the tyrants, and the ruled classes among themselves. In the same way in the movie, I can relate the poor boy to the character of Boxer from Animal Farm. It is a great irony that Boxer is a horse, and, in this movie, the boy is being forcefully converted into one by the end.

They also play with themes of animal cruelty. Throughout the film, there is a vivid metamorphosis of the poor boy into a horse, which bothers us in multiple ways. To think that we do the same with animals (in this case, horses and donkeys) without thinking that this might be the same amount of torture on them. We view it as degrading a human to a lowly animal, but at the same time, we feel completely okay doing the same thing with that lowly animal. Why? This is one major conflict portrayed beautifully in the film and keeps getting clearer and clearer as the shots become more vivid.

This film is essentially based in Iran but shot in Afghanistan instead due to some problems with permission. This movie sets a record in terms of the dangers faced during shooting. The production had to be delayed by quite some time due to a bombing that took place at the shooting site, which was directly aimed at the film crew. This film approaches these limits of insufferable beautifully yet uncomfortably in depicting these difficult subjects.

The script rightly made Samira Makhmalbaf say, “It was bitter and hopeless but more real than reality.”