Moving Picture

In 1842, after a failed effort at occupying Afghanistan to keep the Russian Empire at bay, the British Army withdrew from Kabul under the heat of a native insurrection.

4,500 of His Majesty’s finest, escorting 12,000 civilians, fled Kabul, seeking the mountainous border with modern-day Pakistan, hoping for safe refuge in British India.

One man made it. Dr. William Brydon, an Army surgeon, was the sole survivor, flogging his struggling pony across the foothills of the Waziristan mountains with musket balls at his heels.

It was not till 1920, when British diplomacy returned to Afghanistan and two old white women were presented, did it become clear that two infants had been spared and brought up by local nobility. For eighty years before the Raj had bugles sounded and drums beaten to guide those lost in the mountains. Finally they fell silent, leaving eighty years’ worth of echoes hence.

It is said they left Dr. Brydon alive to tell us the story. This is that story.

Producer: Peter Jackson
Director: Michael Bay

Starring:

Hugh Jackman, Orlando Bloom, Jack Davenport and Johnny Depp as British Army Officers

Pierce Brosnan and Nicholas Cage as Company Commanders

Sean Connery as Regimental Commander

Ewan McGregor as Dr. Brydon

Maggie Smith as the Regimental Commander’s Wife

Keira Knightley as the Regimental Commander’s Daughter

Evanna Lynch, Emma Watson, Tom Felton and Rupert Grint as Civilian Teenagers

******

Just a dream, but a nice one. If only I have someone to pitch this idea to. How brilliant would that be, with Afghanistan shaping up to be Obama’s war as it is.

Piaroh-Cze:

Dreams are the stuff movies are made of.