ASIAN MOVIES AND ACTORS Part 2

In this segment of Asian Movies and Actors I move from the Orient to other regions of what comprises the largest Landmass on Earth. Given the current political and social climate in the U.S., it has never been clearer to me that many Americans equate Asians with people who have Oriental features like those whose ancestors come from China, Japan, or Korea. Asia’s populace, however, is also made up of Russians, including the ancestors of the Americas’ Indians, Jordanians, Israelis, Pakistanis, and of course, India’s Indians.  In fact, religious leaders Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Mohammad were all Asian.

The first movie I discuss in this post is The Kite Runner which is about Afghanistan. Resources differ whether the country is in Western, Central, or Southern Asia, but the one thing certain is that it isn’t in the Orient. This story is told from the point of view of an Afghan-American refugee named Amir who is unexpectedly called back to his homeland. Next, I use the movie Audrey Rose to examine an American perspective of Indian culture. Although the film has been categorized as horror, I believe it is a discussion about the differences that exist between Western and Eastern philosophies. The plot is set in the mid-1970s at a time when many Americans were either abandoning religious beliefs altogether or were turning to concepts like Hinduism for enlightenment. 

Western (Central or Western) Asia: The Kite Runner, 2007 – Afghanistan

Afghanistan has been a topic of interest in the U.S. since the autumn of 2001 when Al-Qaeda under the leadership of Sunni-Muslim leader Osama bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Originally bin Laden’s goal was to drive Russian Communists from Afghanistan, a campaign that the United States was only too happy to fund. Once the Communists were gone, however, the group turned its focus on any people they thought threatened their interpretation of Islam. Meanwhile, civil war erupted in Afghanistan's northern provinces between warlords who wanted to obtain control of the country, causing even more strife.  It was this more than anything else that led to the rise of the Taliban which had a goal of stabilizing the country and affirming the beliefs of conservative Muslims.

The Kite Runner is set during the turbulent times that spanned from the years right before the Russians moved into Afghanistan to the establishment of Taliban control. Using Sharia law as a blueprint for governance the latter group quickly gained control of ninety percent of their country, including the nation’s capital in Kabul. Although members represented a variety of ethnicities, the leaders were primarily members of the Pashtun, a group that believes in a rigid interpretation of Islamic laws. Many were young men who tended toward violence because armed conflict was all they had known. Most either had older male relatives that fought in the wars or they came from orphanages that housed the children whose parents had died during those turbulent times. Even though the Taliban succeeded in unifying the country and garnering recognition from other nations, however, it failed its citizens. It denied females education, employment, and medical care, forbade men to cut their beards at the threat of death, and banned everyone from enjoying frivolous activities like watching television, listening to music, and flying kites.

Another important element introduced in this story is discrimination against the Hazara people. Afghanistan is home to a variety of ethnicities, the predominant tribe being the Pashtuns. Admittedly, there is a long history of conflict between most of the factions, but the people who have suffered the most are the Hazara whose are considered an inferior race.  There are numerous reasons for this.  First, they look more oriental than Middle-Eastern, making their fellow countrymen suspect that their ancestors were invading Mongolian soldiers. Second, they practice Shia Islam, which has a less strict interpretation of the Muslim laws than Sunni. Third, they speak a different dialect of Farsi than most Afghanis. As a result, among other things, the Hazara have been enslaved, massacred, denied education, and prohibited from speaking their tongue.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/22/the-persecution-ofhazaras/ https://www.cmi.no/publications/6404-adultery-rape-and-escaping-the-house https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2013/06/11/aus_afghanistan_sexual_minorities200902.pdf

The Kite Runner is broken into three distinct parts, similar to the acts of a play. Part one, which makes up nearly half of the plot, is about the storyteller’s boyhood in Kabul at the advent of the Communist takeover; Part Two describes his adulthood as a refugee in the United States; and Part Three takes him back to his country under Taliban rule where he is given the opportunity to atone for an injustice he committed as a child. The movie opens on a sky that is filled with kites flying over the verdant landscape of Golden Gate Park on the shores of the San Francisco Bay. Among the onlookers is young writer Amir (Khalid Abdalla [Egyptian]) and his wife Soraya (Atossa Leoni [Afghan descent]). After watching for a while, the couple walks home and finds boxes of books from Amir’s publisher sitting on the doorstep. As they take the boxes inside, the phone rings. Amir answers and is greeted by the voice of Rahim Khan (Shaun Toub [Iranian]) a family friend from Afghanistan. The two men haven’t spoken in a long while, but rather than taking time to chat, the old man insists that Amir return to Kabul without delay. Since Rahim always did favors for Amir when he was a child, the young man cannot refuse.

As he contemplates the journey, Amir reminisces about being a young boy living in Afghanistan with his father Baba (Homayoun Ershadi [Iranian]), a wealthy man who is highly regarded for his generosity and unswerving convictions. Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi as child [Afghani]), who is an introspective child, avoids conflict by hiding in his room writing stories. This causes his father to fear that the boy will fail to stand up for what is right if the need arises. Not understanding this, however, Amir interprets his father’s standoffishness as an indicator that he is to blame for causing his mother to die in childbirth. For solace, the boy turns to Rahim, who is always on his side, and his best and only friend Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada [Afghani]), the son of Baba’s servant Ali (Nabi Tanha [Afghani]). 

The boys’ friendship is fraught with problems, however, not only because they are from different social strata, but because Amir is Pashtun whereas Hassan is Hazara.  A group of thugs led by a bully named Assef (Elham Ehsas), who is older and the son of one of Baba’s wealthy friends, openly denigrates the child because of his race. Likewise, Amir who claims that Hassan is his best friend, treats him as an inferior.  For example, he shares his stories with the boy but doesn’t teach him to read.  And when they fly kites together, a popular activity in Kabul, Amir controls the string that is coated in powdered glass to cut the lines of his competitors, while Hassan runs after the fallen kites and brings them back. Amir excuses the division of labor by maintaining that Hassan is a natural kite runner who always knows where the kites will land. It is obvious that Hassan’s task is a servile one, however, and that Amir would never consider reversing their roles.

The children usually stay close to home but when they go into town to fly kites, they invariably go together. There is always the chance they will bump into Assef, and Amir needs Hassan, who is exceptionally accurate with his slingshot, to protect him. Having to be afraid of someone he considers inferior makes Assef more spiteful than ever, but since he knows that Amir is an elitist who would never stand up to help a servant, he patiently watches for a chance to retaliate. The opportunity presents itself at the yearly kite flying tournament. During the weeks leading up to the contest Amir and Hassan practice almost every day. Baba set the record for cutting the most kites when he was a boy, and Amir hopes to gain his father’s respect by breaking that record. 

During the tournament Amir succeeds in cutting down one kite after another until the only contender left is a boy named Omar (Sayed Jafar Masihullah Gharibzada [Afghani]) whose kite is a striking blue. As a result of Hassan’s direction Amir defeats Omar and while he is being congratulated, Hassan takes off to find the prize-winning kite and bring it back. Once his admirers leave, Amir goes looking for his friend, and learns from a store owner that he saw Hassan being chased up the street by a group of boys. Knowing that the pursuers are probably Assef and his crew, Amir searches until he hears the voices of children in an alley.  He hides behind some wooden planks and, to his horror, sees Assef raping Hassan. Fearing for his own safety, Amir runs out of the alley and sits on some steps, waiting for his “best friend” to appear.  When he does, he is carrying the blue kite and trailing droplets of blood. 

That day changes the relationships between the Amir, Baba, Hassan, and Ali. For the first time, Amir’s father seems proud of his son as he frames the blue kite and hangs it on the wall. Rather than joining in Amir’s good fortune, however, Hassan avoids him, choosing instead to stay in the mud hut he shares with his father and sleep. When Ali asks Amir if he knows what has changed his son’s behavior, the boy only mumbles that perhaps Hassan is sick. As time passes Amir becomes riddled with guilt over his cowardice and attempts to convince Baba to send Ali and Hassan away. Baba refuses so Amir, who knows that his father considers theft the worst sin of all, pretends that Hassan stole the watch Baba got him as a birthday present. To his dismay, however, instead of condemning the boy, Baba forgives him. Fortunately for Amir, Ali has already packed their things and insists on leaving. The boys never speak again. A few months later the communists invade Kabul and Baba takes Amir out of the country.  They first go to Pakistan to join Rahim who left ahead of them then travel to the United States setting the stage for Part 2. 

When we join Baba and Amir in America, it is ten years later, and they are living in San Francisco. Their lifestyle is much different from what it was in Kabul.  Baba makes a meager living running a small gas station and Amir is just graduating from college.  Some things never change, however.  Baba is still an extrovert who makes friends easily and Amir remains a quiet introvert whose first love is writing.  Instead of bickering over Amir’s shyness, however, the two now squabble over his plans for the future; Baba wants him to be a doctor while he insists on being a writer.  Yet, despite their differences, the men, who have been through so much together, are close and on weekends they sell goods at a local flea market.  One day, a pretty young Afghani woman approaches their kiosk, and Amir, who is immediately drawn to her, becomes uncharacteristically friendly.  Although she pretends not to be impressed, she reveals that her name is Soraya and that she lives in town with her parents, General and Jamila Taheri (Abdul Qadir Farookh and Maimoona Ghizal). 

Of course, Amir’s father knows the General and warns his son not to violate any Afghani norms because the man’s values are traditional.  Listening to his father’s advice for once, Amir treads lightly with the General and his family and is pleasantly surprised when Soraya’s father invites him to dinner then agrees to let him marry his daughter. Unwilling to hold anything back, however, Soraya confesses to Amir that she is not a virgin which is a big deal in Sunni law. For the first time in his life, Amir casts aside Muslim convention and insists on marrying her anyway.  After they wed, the couple is happy with two exceptions. Baba, who was a lifelong smoker, dies from lung cancer, and Soraya is unable to have children.  This sets the stage for Part 3.

Amir flies to Pakistan and visits Rahim in his modest apartment where the elderly man begins by explaining that he hired Hassan and his wife to take care of Baba’s estate in Kabul. They were living there with their son Sohrab (Ali Danish Bakhtyari [Afghani]) and everything was going well until members of the Taliban arrived and demanded to be let inside.  Still loyal to Baba, Hassan refused, and the soldiers killed both him and his wife after which their son went to an orphanage. Rahim is too ill to help the boy, so despite the danger to Amir, the old man wants him to go to Kabul, get Sohrab, and take him back to America.  Seeing this as a way to atone for the wrongs he committed against his childhood friend, Amir agrees. 

Rahim has already set up transportation, and soon Amir is riding across a windblown desert that had been a rich forest when he was a boy. To prevent being detected as an outsider, he dons a fake beard and carries false papers to present at roadblocks. The area around Kabul looks like a war zone with buildings that have been turned to rubble and starving children running in the streets. Since this will be the only chance he has, Amir asks the driver to take him to Baba’s estate, but when he gets there, the beautiful house is so run down that he just turns and walks away. Then they head to the orphanage.

Amir envisions being greeted as a savior who will take Sohrab back to America and give the boy a better life. Instead, the head of the orphanage greets him coldly, says Hassan’s son isn’t there, then offers him one of the many other boys instead. After Amir explains the situation, however, the caregiver confesses that Sohrab does live there but a member of the Taliban who procures children on a fairly regular basis, took the boy away with him. He describes the man and explains where Amir can find him, then lets Amir decide whether he wants to risk his life to rescue a child who is literally a stranger. This is the day that Baba had always feared, the point at which Amir would be called on to do the right thing. The question is: Will he? I am not going to reveal his decision. If you want to know the outcome, along with a couple of pretty neat twists, you’ll have to watch the movie.                           

Summary

Although there are numerous themes in this story, including soaring kites symbolizing freedom (per Roger Ebert), I think the most important one is loyalty. Amir calls Hassan his best friend, but he is jealous of the way his father treats the boy, and he fails to stop or even reveal the rape.  Then to assuage his feelings of guilt, he accuses Hassan of theft, costing both him and his father their home and livelihood. Unlike Amir, Hassan has always been completely committed to their friendship. When Assef threatens Amir, Hassan aims his slingshot at the bully knowing he can be executed just for threatening the boy. In fact, Hassan loves so Amir so much that he overlooks his friend’s bigotry. When Amir returns to the Middle-East, he discovers that Hassan taught himself to read and write so he could compose a letter for Rahim to give him, almost as if he knew that Amir was coming. Unsurprisingly, he talks about himself humbly, but refers to his old friend kindly and admiringly. It almost seems as if Hassan became literate just to let Amir know he loves and forgives him.                                

Southern Asia: Audrey Rose, 1977 — India

When I first read the novel Audrey Rose, I couldn’t help but recall Ira Levin’s book Rosemary’s Baby. The truth is, both stories seemed similar to me in that they addressed secularization in the United States in the mid-Twentieth Century. A couple of years later Levin’s book was made into a movie and became the first of innumerable films about living in a world where people don’t believe in an afterlife. These included The Exorcist and The Omen in the 1970s and continue to pop up in the Twenty-First Century in movies like The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and Jennifer’s Body (2009), which even I liked.  I don’t know if Mr. Levine was influenced by John Lennon’s comment in 1966 that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus (a statement that caused incredible backlash) or an edition of Time Magazine which sported a cover that asked, “Is God Dead?” in bold red letters on a black background. The cover referenced an article about a group of theologians who were trying to create a religion that had no God.  

Whatever the inspiration, Levin’s tale revolved around a nonreligious couple named Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse who moved into a creepy apartment building in New York City. They were soon befriended by a group of tenants who turned out to be members of a witches’ coven that helped Guy strike a deal with the devil. The agreement was that in exchange for granting her husband fame and riches, the demon would impregnate Rosemary (ask your friendly neighborhood feminist her opinion of that).  Ten years later the story Audrey Rose went a step further by contrasting American secularism with Eastern mysticism.

The movie opens on a busy interstate highway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during a downpour. The pavement is so slick that the driver of a black sedan loses control, slides across the medium, and plows into the path of an oncoming car. The vehicles collide head on, and one rolls down an embankment, flips over, and as the face of a small girl appears in the window, bursts into flames. In the scene that follows, Janice (Marsha Mason) and Bill Templeton (John Beck) ride bikes with their eleven-year-old daughter, Ivy (Susan Swift), in New York City’s Central Park. The parents smile as they follow their beautiful child who giddily leads the way. The day is achingly beautiful, and the park is full of people sharing picnics and strolling along paths, but from the shade of a large tree an ominous looking man studies the trio. The Templetons return to a luxurious apartment that has original oil paintings by renowned artists on the ceiling and rich woodwork throughout. The daughter is obviously the benefactor of well-off parents. Janice is a professional photographer who crowds the dark room with photos of her breathtaking daughter and Bill, a successful executive, earns enough money to buy his child anything she wants, and he does.

All is not as perfect as it appears, however. Rather than being nirvana, Ivy’s home is a cavern haunted by a spirit that tortures her with nightmares so terrifying her moaning bleeds through the walls, waking her mother. The next day, Janice picks up her daughter from school, and notices that the man from the park is standing across the street watching them. When Bill gets home, she tells him about it, only to learn that he already knows. In fact, he has seen the stranger hanging around for a couple of weeks. He says that as soon as he noticed the man, he went to the police, but they refused to take an incident report because the guy wasn’t doing anything illegal. (There were no stalking laws in the 1970s.) All the couple can do is hope that the stranger will disappear as mysteriously as he surfaced, but to their horror he becomes more present, instead. One afternoon on her way to pick up Ivy, Janice becomes dizzy and faints. By the time she comes to, the school day has ended, and when she gets to the building, everyone is gone.

As Janice rushes outside frantically looking for her daughter, the strange man approaches and says that he helped the girl get home. Then he announces that he’ll call that evening to speak with her and her husband and turns away. Alarmed, Janice hurries back to the apartment where Ivy is waiting. That night the man contacts the Templetons as promised and invites them to meet him for a drink at a bar around the corner from their building. Hoping they can convince their tormentor to leave them alone, the couple gets a babysitter and goes to the establishment to meet him. He introduces himself as Elliott Hoover (Anthony Hopkins), describes how his wife and daughter died in a car accident eleven years earlier. Then he goes on to explain that a couple of years after their deaths he encountered two psychics who both assured him that his child was alive. Just as he is getting around to explaining how this involves their daughter, the sitter calls and tells the couple that they are needed at home right away. When they arrive, they find Ivy once again loudly groaning in her sleep, obviously trapped in another bad dream.

The weird encounter with Elliott makes Bill suspect that he is being set up, and he asks his lawyer Russ Rothman (Stephen Perlman) what he should do. Russ advises him to invite Elliott over so he can surreptitiously record the conversation. Bill does as his friend suggests, and unaware that Russ is secreted on the stairs, Elliott begins to explain that his daughter Audrey Rose died just two minutes before the Templeton’s daughter was born. Suddenly, Ivy sleepwalks out of her room, screams, then rushes back into her bedroom and begins beating on the windows while calling for her Daddy. Bill naturally rushes to her side but nothing he says comforts the girl. Believing he is the man she really wants, Elliott intervenes by calling out the name Audrey Rose which calms Ivy down. While Bill glares at him with hatred, Elliott mumbles that he had no idea things were so bad and leaves. Even though the threatening stranger is gone, however, Bill senses that he will be back. 

The next evening Bill has to work late, and Janice has to take care of Ivy alone. When the child once again jumps out of bed screaming, Janice tries to grab her, but the girl pulls away weeping, trips down the stairs, and scurries to the living room windows. Pounding on them while calling for her Daddy, Ivy whimpers that the glass is hot. When Janice tries to help the child, she falls and is too badly hurt to get up. Just then Elliott calls on the house phone and Janice answers. As soon as he hears the commotion going on in the background, he offers to come up. Desperate for help, she agrees. Seconds later he strides through the door, astutely assesses the situation, and using the name Audrey Rose calls the child to him. Relieved, the girl willingly obeys and soon is peacefully sleeping in his arms.

Elliott lays Ivy on the couch then turns to help her mother.  As he baths Janice’s wounds, he describes an extended trip he took to India where he discovered that the belief in reincarnation brings the people of India great peace of mind. He then warns Janice that Ivy is in mortal danger because Audrey Rose was reincarnated too soon and cannot rest. At that moment Bill opens the door, spies Elliott, and charges after him. Elliott manages to lure both him and Janice into the hall, then runs back inside and locks them out of the apartment. While they anxiously wait for the police to arrive and for the super to unlock the door, Elliott takes Ivy out a back entrance and moves her to an apartment that he has rented on a different floor.  When the police and the Templetons track him down, he lets them in, then allows the police to handcuff him as her parents recover Ivy. 

While awaiting Elliott’s trial, the Templetons enroll Ivy in a Catholic girl’s school outside the city in hopes that her life will return to normal. Unfortunately, the upcoming case is in all the papers and soon her classmates know that a man is saying that Ivy is the reincarnation of his child. They call her names and shun her, which means that she is not only without her family but also is without friends. The turning point in the story begins on the night of the school’s annual bonfire when Ivy literally walks into the flames. The next day two defense witnesses appear in Elliott’s trial that really hurt the prosecution's case. The first is the Maharishi Gupta Pradesh (Aly Wassil) who explains that the wonderful thing about reincarnation is people no longer have to fear death because “the end is good, and all are blessed.” As he steps down, the defense calls Janice to the stand. Knowing that this will mean the end of her marriage, she nevertheless testifies that she believes her daughter Ivy is the reincarnation of Elliott's daughter Audrey Rose.

Enraged at his wife’s betrayal, Bill demands that the prosecution obtain a hypnotist to prove that his daughter did not have a previous existence. Janice, who understands that Ivy cannot survive if her soul is regressed to the day that Audrey Rose died, opposes the action. Hoover knows this as well but capitulates because he realizes that Audrey Rose will continue trying to destroy Ivy until her soul is free to heal.  I don’t want to spoil the ending.  If you decide to watch this film, however, I strongly encourage you to read both Frank De Felitta’s novels Audrey Rose and sequel For Love of Audrey Rose to gain a more complete understanding of how the author saw reincarnation.

https://diaboliquemagazine.com/my-daughter-is-not-possessed-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-an-exorcist-rip-off/

Summary

Eleven-year-old Ivy’s relationships with her parents is pretty typical of Western Society in that there is tension between daughter and mother and mutual admiration between father and daughter. In this case, however, the father-daughter relationship is complicated because two men are fighting over two daughters who share the same soul.  Bill represents the West in that he is convinced that everything he has is due to his own accomplishments and that his family’s standard of living proves it. Thus, as far as he is concerned the only child involved in this drama is his daughter Ivy. To his way of thinking, Ivy’s nightmares are perfectly normal, and they will go away. The real problem is Elliott Hoover. 

Elliott’s resume, which includes having a degree from a prestigious college and being the entrepreneur of a thriving business, is equal to, if not greater than, Bill’s. The tragedy of losing his child, however, caused him reconsider who he was and what he believed, which opened him up to the possibility of reincarnation. He represents the East in that he thinks Audrey Rose’s soul was reincarnated too soon, and she is trying to free it so it can heal.  The result is that Bill believes Elliott is to blame for all of their problems whereas Elliott believes that Bill needs to accept that there are some things he cannot control. Or as they say in Slumdog Millionaire “it is written.”

Discussion

Neither The Kite Runner nor Audrey Rose were big hits among critics.  Although The Kite Runner has a respectable overall score of 7.6 on IMDB this is due primarily to public opinion because the critic metascore is only 61%. That is pretty close to the 65% that critics give the movie on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience awards it a high 85%, however, indicating to me that people who love movies will enjoy it regardless of what the critics think. The only other thing I have to say is that Roger Ebert called it a “magnificent film” so if you trust his opinions, you might want to give it a glance.   

Audrey Rose fared much worse. The overall score on IMDB is a low 5.8 (there is no meta score) and on Rotten Tomatoes the critics’ rating is 53% which is actually higher than the audience rating of 43%. In my opinion, this is probably due misclassification of the movie's genre. By being designated as horror, the film gets compared what truly are horror movies from the same era, like The Exorcist (see the referenced link to the article by Laura Kupp-Beerman) and The Omen.  This results in it appearing anemically derivative, but there is no demonic possession or Satanic activity in this movie.  In fact, I don’t believe there is another story quite like it, not then and not now. Instead, it seems to me that the flavor smacks a bit of Rosemary’s Baby which also examined what happens when people believe that the' here and now' is all that matters. Audrey Rose just goes a step further by suggesting the alternative, that there is something more, an afterlife. Other movies that deal in similar currency include All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989), Defending Your Life (1991), and What Dreams May Come (1998) all of which I love.

The Kite Runner is also more or less a one-off. Most movies about Afghanistan are war stories or terrifying tales about the awful things the Taliban did when it was in power. But as is made clear in the first part of the movie, not all Afghanis are our enemies or agree with Taliban laws. Of course, Afghanistan is not the only Middle Asian country to be portrayed one-dimensionally. It’s also true about Iraq and Iran. Movies about Israel probably show people in the softest light, but most of those films are older, often set in the 1950s, and focus on the aftermath of the Holocaust or Israel’s struggle to adjust to independence. Khaled Hussein, the author of The Kite Runner, wrote another novel about his homeland named A Thousand Splendid Suns. Maybe someday someone will make it into a movie.

My next post will present films that are written, produced, directed, and performed by American Indians. Once again it will take me a while to research, watch, and write so until I’m back, enjoy some good flicks and have a wonderful spring. Alvida and Felan (look it up).