Afghanistan on the silver screen

RON FRIEDMAN

After the release of The Lord of the Rings, New Zealand received a surge of tourists and, after the film Madagascar came out, another drove of visitors made their way there; even Kazakhstan became popular after the release of Borat. It seems that anywhere Hollywood focuses its cameras receives a boost. If that is true, Afghanistan should be in for a windfall. Although the war in Iraq is getting the bulk of news media attention, this year on the silver screen, it's all about Afghanistan. Three movies, released within a month and a half of each other, tell stories that focus on that desperate country and its unfortunate history.

The Kite Runner, based on the bestselling book by Khaled Hosseini, is the very personal account of a young boy who grew up in 1970s Kabul, fled the country at the start of the Soviet invasion and immigrated with his father to the United States. Twenty years later, he returns to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, to make up for childhood sins.

Amir and Hassan are best friends, but unequal. Amir's father is rich and belongs to the Pushtan sect and Hassan is a Hazara, whose family serves Amir's family. The two 12-year-old boys share stories, watch American films and play games together.

On windy days, the eyes of Kabul are raised to the sky, watching the kites battle it out. Amir, steering his kite, and Hassan, feeding him both string and advice, try to cut the strings of opponents' kites. Once cut, a kite flutters to the ground and it is the task of the kite runner to retrieve it from wherever it lands. Hassan is known as the best kite runner in town.

Happiness turns sour, however, when, in a secluded alley one day, boys who are a little bigger and a lot nastier, rape Hassan. Amir, who sees everything, but is too scared to act, comes to despise Hassan for being a reminder of his cowardice.

When the Soviets march into town, Amir and his father cross the border into Pakistan. When he returns to Afghanistan as an adult, it is to save Hassan's son. By that time, the Soviet army is defeated and the Taliban controls the country with their fundamentalist laws and brutal tactics. One of the most shocking scenes in the movie is the stoning of an adulteress in the middle of a weekend soccer match.

The book was a bestseller for a reason. It is a beautiful, tragic story told in a touching way. Both the child and adult actors do an excellent job of displaying the deep and complex emotions that run through the movie and, though the characters aren't developed enough for viewers to know them intimately, they are enough to make us care about them.

Charlie Wilson's War, written by Aaron Sorkin and starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, is about Afghanistan during the Cold War. It describes how the Afghan rebels removed the Soviet occupation through the efforts of a Texan congressman (Hanks) and a Huston millionaire socialite (Roberts). Sorkin, the creator of the award-winning television show The West Wing and movies such as The Tail that Wags the Dog and A Few Good Men, provides intellectual uplift. The fast dialogue, heady issues and ideologically driven characters, which are Sorkin's feature traits, make you want to deal with geopolitical crises on a regular basis.

The film, based on real people and events, tells how a properly situated and well-connected congressman named Charlie Wilson (a politician more famous for his involvement in cocaine scandals featuring prostitutes, limousines and hot tubs, than for his interests in foreign policy) was credited for winning a major battle in the Cold War.

In 1979, the Afghan rebels, the Mujahideen (Muslim strugglers), were the only ones in the world firing at the Soviets. And they were suffering horribly for it. Roberts plays an outspoken right-winger who has the money, influence and will to turn things around in Afghanistan. She hates communists and pities the Afghans, so she recruits Wilson to the cause and makes some key introductions. A visit to an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan drives him to action.

With the aid of a blunt and sarcastic, but still dedicated, CIA agent, played by Seymour Hoffman, Wilson engages in one of the biggest covert operations in American history. Wilson manages to broker a deal between six countries to get weapons into the rebels' hands. Since the United States couldn't be seen to be involved, the weapons couldn't be American, so Israel became involved. It happened to be the country with the biggest stockpile of Soviet weapons, which it had captured from Arabian armies in the 1967 and 1973 wars; Egypt secretly transferred the arms to Afghanistan. All this was managed by a mixture of high-level agreements, selective oversight and Wilson's special brand of shuttle diplomacy, which included using Texan belly dancers and generous amounts of social lubricants.

The unusual trio manages to increase U.S. assistance to the Mujahideen from five million to half a billion dollars and put in the Afghan rebel's hands some of the most effective weapons of the time, turning the tide on the war and ultimately forcing a Russian withdrawal.

The main message of the movie, however, only comes in the last few minutes. Once the mission is complete and the Soviets are forced out of Afghanistan to the jubilation of all, the CIA agent reminds both Wilson and the viewers, that victory doesn't last: the Mujahideen, now armed with state of the art weapons, will not disappear into the night.

Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford and starring him, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise, tells the story of present-day Afghanistan, and asks tough questions of the future, during the period of a single morning in the lives of three pairs of people.

Streep plays a veteran television journalist in Washington, D.C., who is invited to the office of a rising Republican star senator (Cruise), so he can give her "an exclusive" on a new counter-terrorism effort in Afghanistan. Skeptical, she challenges the charismatic war hero-senator to tell her how his new strategy is any different than the ones that have been used for the previous six years.

Streep and Cruise engage in a verbal duel, with the Republican senator admitting that the administration made terrible mistakes in the war on terror and the Liberal journalist admitting that the press had lost its moral compass.

Meanwhile, on the campus of a California university, a popular and admired political science professor (Redford) invites a promising undergraduate student (played by unknown Andrew Garfield) to a heart-to-heart talk about his grades and attitude. The professor chides the student for wasting his intellectual talents and leadership skills, in a sense chiding the whole generation for relinquishing their potential. He tells the student about two of his other students, who also had great promise and, though from a far less privileged background, decided to commit themselves to a cause.

The third story focuses on these two former students of the professor (played by newcomers Michael Pena and Derek Luke), who are now U.S. soldiers, participating in the military's so-called bold new strategy in Afghanistan.

As the script jumps from one location to another, a moral is pedantically constructed for the viewer. Redford has been criticized for creating a film that is more a civics lesson than entertainment and, truth be told, he does lay it on a little thick at times, but you have to respect a filmmaker who in a single movie tackles some of the most highly controversial issues in American society. The characters in the film say explicitly what many other films may only show or hint at. The result is invigorating, if over-scripted.

In all three movies, Afghanistan is depicted as a rugged country, swamped in violence. Nearly all the Afghan characters in both Charlie Wilson's War and Lions for Lambs are armed militants. In the former, aside from the refugees, the only other Afghans are the Mujahideen, who are shown either carrying or firing weapons. In the latter, we see only the indistinguishable gunmen who fire at the soldiers. The one film that did show some nuance, The Kite Runner, still left the impression of Afghanistan as a depressingly violent place.

Unfortunately, reality doesn't provide a rosier picture. Since roughly 1500 BCE, Afghanistan has either been the passageway of armies and empires on their way to and from their conquests or a semi-autonomous buffer kingdom, nestled between two empires. The last 40 years seem to be indicative of the region's more distant past, with the only difference being the lethality of the weapons.

Of the three films, Charlie Wilson's War is definitely the most entertaining. Its first-rate cast and brilliant writing and directing make it one of the smartest and most stylish of the "serious movies" recently made in Hollywood; it's serious, but still manages to be lots of fun. As for the other two, they are both enjoyable and thought provoking, but people might be better served by reading The Kite Runner and leaving Lions for Lambs to those who enjoy civics lessons.

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