The highly anticipated movie version of Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 novel, Kite Runner, has had its release date delayed until December due to fears that a controversial rape scene could put the young actors’ lives in danger.
A fictitious story of friendship, betrayal and atonement between two Afghani boys has provoked questions about the representation of reality and the responsibility of movie makers in the lives of their actors.
In Kite Runner, Amir witnesses the brutal rape of his best friend and servant, Hassan, by a Pashtun bully and runs away without trying to help. The scene haunts him for the rest of his life and becomes a reason for his subsequent return to his wartorn homeland. This very scene has created a real-life drama, as the young actors portrayed now feel that their lives are in danger because of the chance that some Afghani people may react violently – even try to kill them — because of the depiction of such a loss of honor, of a Hazara boy at the hands of a Pashtun man.
The Hazara are a traditionally downtrodden ethnic group in Afghanistan. There is a painful history of violence inflicted on Hazaras by the Taliban as well as inter-ethnic strife between the dominant Pashtun and Hazara tribes. It is believed that, in a tribal society where people don’t distinguish between fiction and reality, the film’s rape scene could reignite old tensions. In January, DVDs of Kabul Express, an Indian film in which a character hurls insults at Hazara people, led to protests, government denunciations and calls for the execution of the “offending” actor, who fled the country.
Although the book version of Kite Runner is admired by the Afghani elite, its story is less familiar to the general population. Most movie theaters in Afghanistan have been destroyed by the Taliban, but movies still circulate in the form of pirated DVDs. Paramount pictures has decided not to release the film in the country and has delayed the general release date to December 14, when its young stars, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada (Hassan) and Zekiria Ebrahimi (Amir) will have finished their school year.
There are conflicting stories about whether Ahmad Khan’s father had been told the rape scene in the film would be cut before allowing his son to act in the movie. Director Marc Forster denies he ever made such a promise, but when filming the scene, he did respect his young actor’s wishes to keep his trousers on. The result is an non-gratuitous, rather impressionistic depiction of sexual assault. Nevertheless, Paramount Pictures is taking no chances with the lives of its actors. They have offered to fly both boys and their families to the United Arab Emirates, and to arrange visas, housing and schooling for the young actors and jobs for their guardians, for an undetermined time.
This article was published Thursday, October 25, 2007.
