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The challenges a film director faces when adapting 'The Kite Runner' novel for the screen. Topics include casting, location, scene adaptation, and character development. The text also explores the deep bond between Amir and Hassan, their friendship, and the betrayal that tears them apart. The document also highlights the significance of kite flying in the story and the emotional impact of the film's scenes.
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The Kite Runner
Responses to Preparing for the Film
Responses to Reflecting on the Film
refreshments to the older boy Assef who raped him. Hassan’s humility and self- effacement are evident and a change in the personality the audience has earlier seen. Amir also has observed the personality changes in his old childhood friend and feels discomfort and guilt about those changes in Hassan. Amir must feel responsible for what happened to Hassan when the three older boys, bullies, accosted him and raped him. Amir remained hidden but aware of what was happening to his friend and did not try to help or run to seek help. Amir’s cowardice haunts him and his guilt promotes his distance from Hassan when Hassan most needs it, immediately after the assault and later when it is clear that Hassan is depressed. At his birthday party, Amir realizes that Hassan accepts his Hazara subservience with his father’s friends—including the bully and his father, and Amir’s guilt and lack of support for his friend is profound. He has earlier tried to motivate his father to remove Hassan and his father from their home, to get Baba to hire new domestics, but his father is adamant in keeping Hassan and his father on to maintain their home. To give his father cause for dismissing them, Amir plants his new watch, a birthday gift from his father, under Hassan’s pillow, thinking this act of apparent theft will provide his father, who is intolerant of stealing, the reason to dismiss his servants. Baba’s open forgiveness of what he thinks is Hassan’s theft is gracious and understandable when the audience realizes the full story of Hassan’s paternity. However, Hassan’s father realizes the damage that Amir’s turning from Hassan has done to the boy and the unwarranted treachery of claiming that Hassan has stolen something from their employer’s son. Even before Baba has openly forgiven Hassan for the alleged theft of the watch, Hassan and his father are packed to leave the home. In addition to its function in the plot, the watch suggests thematic concerns of the film. As a material item, the birthday gift is significant. It is clearly a dazzling, flashy object of Western influence that only an affluent father could purchase for his son. When Amir first reports it missing, laying the groundwork for the planting of the watch in Hassan’s family’s quarters, Baba’s response is, “Have you lost it already?” but he is not significantly distressed. His response seems to be more concern about his son’s carelessness than regret that something expensive that he bought for him is lost. Later in the film, when Baba and Amir are hidden in the bottom of a dark tanker truck escaping into Pakistan, the watch’s illuminated face glows in the darkness, as Amir recites a Rumi verse that he has memorized. Years later, at his father's funeral in California, Amir kisses the watch face just as the coffin is being covered with dirt. A thematic interest in time continues to punctuate the film. When Baba senses that something has occurred to distance Amir and Hassan, he advises Amir to “deal with it before too long.” He tells his son, “Take care not to let these things fester; time will only make it worse.” In fact, time does make the estrangement worse because Amir never sees Hassan again after he and his father leave Kabul. Although he finds a “way to be good again,” he does not have an opportunity to right the wrongs with Hassan. The chronology of the film, its sense of time, is distorted. The film opens in the present with the adult Amir’s receiving boxes containing copies of his first book, A Season for Ashes , another image of time. Immediately, the telephone call comes from Rahim Khan summoning Amir to Pakistan, “to come home” and while Amir is on the telephone, the film flashes back to Amir’s childhood in Afghanistan with Hassan. Flooded with guilt about his negligence in that relationship, and advised by Rahim Khan that “there is a way to be good again,”Amir travels to Pakistan to meet with him. There is still time to right some wrongs.
At the end of the film, we see Amir’s willingness to let time take its course with Sohrab, his nephew who has been brutalized by the Taliban who control the orphanage and the orphans who live there. It is clear that Amir and Soraya’s gentleness and love will guide Hassan’s son, Sohrab, back to strength and mental health.
by rescuing his son from abuse and providing a loving home for him in an Afghani community in California.
" It’s a dangerous thing being born ": Baba’s wife, Amir’s mother, died in childbirth, and in one scene in the film Amir shares his fear with Rahim Khan that his Baba must hate him because he “killed” his mother and Baba’s wife. Rahim explains to him that birth is dangerous for the mother as well as the child. In the troubled times that the citizens of Afghanistan must endure at the hands of the Communists who have tried to subjugate them and then during the repressive control of the Taliban, the people must reiterate the expression: “It’s a dangerous thing being born.”
" Stealing is the only sin and all sins are variations of this sin ": Baba, who is outspoken and often didactic, finds the Mullahs “self-righteous monkeys,” and
has no use for their holy hypocrisy. Yet he explains to Amir his position on theft with the pronouncement that “all sins are variations of this sin.” When you kill a man, Baba explains, “You steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to her husband and his children’s right to a father.” He goes on to define a lie as stealing “someone’s right to the truth.” These explanations are especially meaningful to Amir who has claimed that Hassan has stolen his watch, and he realizes that he has stolen Hassan’s right, as well as Ali’s and his father’s right to the truth.
" I admire your notion of fair odds, mister ": This line, from The Magnificent Seven, is known to both Amir and Hassan, and they anticipate its coming up as they watch the film together. On the day of the kite-flying competition, Amir is clearly nervous, but Hassan calls it “a beautiful day” to encourage Amir. Hassan exclaims, “It’s the two of us against all of Kabul,” to which Amir retorts: “I admire your notion of fair odds, Mister.” The humor is short-lived. After the final kite is cut and Hassan takes off to retrieve their competitors’ blue kite, he must face impossibly unfair odds when the three older bullies trap him and Assef rapes him. Later in the film, Hassan’s son Sohrab must deal with the unfair odds of the Taliban who have removed him from the orphanage for their amusement and sexual pleasure. Finally, Amir will face unfair odds in rescuing Sohrab from the Taliban and escaping to Pakistan.
" I’d rather eat dirt ": We encounter this expression when Hassan and Amir are boys and Hassan chases after a cut kite, knowing where it will land. Amir says that the kite has drifted the other way, but Hassan insists that it will come where he is waiting for it. Amir asks, “How do you know?” and Hassan replies, “I know... Have I ever lied to you?” Amir responds, “How should I know,” to which Hassan openly replies “I’d rather eat dirt.” Clearly, it would seem that nobody would willingly eat dirt, so what Hassan means is that he would never lie to Amir. Sadly, Amir forces Hassan to metaphorically “eat dirt” by not helping him survive the ordeal of his humiliation by Assef who attacks him in part because he is Hazara and fair game for the arrogant Pushtan bully. In that scene, Assef wants Hassan to admit he is dirt, and a servant rather than a friend of Amir. When Hassan insists that he and Amir are friends, Assef is enraged and shoves him into the dirt for the assault. In one final scene of degradation, Amir throws a piece of ripe red fruit directly at Hassan’s chest, staining his shirt. Amir hands Hassan a piece of fruit and invites Hassan to throw the fruit at him, but Hassan will not do it, no matter how many pieces of fruit Amir throws at him. Finally, in fact, Hassan—who has courageously stood up against Assef to protect Amir— pushes the ripe fruit into his own face, accepting his own self degradation, or eating dirt, rather than returning fire on his friend.
" There is a way to be good again ": Rahim Khan calls Amir to bid him “come home,” agreeing with Amir that it is a bad time, but “there is a way to be good again.” Rahim Khan knows that the Taliban is a terrible threat and it will be difficult for Amir to rescue Sohrab. Rahim is preparing for death and he must tell Amir his father’s history and encourage him to go after Hassan’s son, to rescue him from the Taliban. By the end of the story, Amir has accomplished that rescue and has put the General, his father in law, in his place by forbidding him to ever